Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Beyond Bebop
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omiya
 Posts: 1871 Location: Adelaide, South Australia |
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I was subconsciously calling this column "Beyond the Bebop"
Funnily enough I saw Mountain Mocha Kilimanjaro live long before I watched Space Dandy. Does this clip of MMK give you any Bebop vibes? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrSVM1gXn4c |
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2356 Location: Online Terminal |
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I'm probably going to get flak for this, but I think you can single-handedly use Watanabe's works to bust the myth that filler is bad. Barely a fraction of his episodes advance an overall plot but it still all works because the stories are well-told and the vibes are immaculate.
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dmanatunga
Posts: 85 |
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I don't think "filler is bad" is really discounted by Watanabe's work, mainly cause I don't think the phrase really applies. Generally, people say filler is bad when referring to manga adaptations, not original works. The issue with those kinds of fillers is by their nature, they can't have any real stakes or outcomes. And it is dubious if any characterization they might introduce in filler ever get referenced in the future. If anything, I think Watanabe's works are a great illustration for something I am a strong believer of in for anime and general TV: one cour/10-13 episode series can be a big detriment to certain shows. When you are guaranteed a lot of episodes, you can have a "filler" episodes that slow things and let you get to know the characters better and tend to be a great way to increase their popularity. But due to limited budgets, we don't really ever get that anymore with original works. |
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Dr. Wily
Posts: 409 |
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Oh yeah, Samurai Champloo rules and anyone who hasn't seen it because they like Watanabe's more sci-fi stuff is missing out.
Also so far I prefer Space Dandy's multiverse episode to anything the MCU's done
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4746 |
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I'm reminded of a bit of Samurai Champloo where Mugen points out how sketchy it sounds to be "searching for the samurai who smells of sunflowers." Even he caught onto there being less of a plot and more of a vague excuse for things to happen. 
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EmeraldSaucer
 Posts: 61 |
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Unfortunately, the ship has long since sailed on this. When people refer to filler nowadays, it's no longer in its original context, which is for adaptations of preexisting works as you say. People now refer to episodes in completely original shows as "filler". You can find whole guides for Yugioh shows on what is and isn't filler, with people complaining about how much "filler' there is in GX Season 1, for example. Because for a bunch of people the word now just means anything that doesn't directly advance the main plot of a story |
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5541 |
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EmeraldSaucer
Posts: 61 |
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It is the original context when it comes to anime, anything else is just being a bit pedantic. And regardless of how wrong it is, it's how the term has been morphed over the years and is now generally used Last edited by EmeraldSaucer on Thu Mar 06, 2025 7:12 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6466 |
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Weird I thought everyone knows the difference between “padding” & “filler”. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4889 |
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Yeah, and that's an incredibly frustrating development. I mean the entire reason the word "filler" is used is that those episodes were literally used to fill time until the source material built up enough of a buffer that it could start being adapted again. And even then the anime-original content wasn't doomed to be bad by its mere existence, but as dmanatunga noted because most of it told low-stakes poorly-written stories that by necessity had to stick to the status quo by the end. I wonder if the people using the term this way are aware that for decades, pretty much every television series consisted mostly of stand-alone episodes with the occasional two-parter or season finale cliffhanger. It was only after series like The Sopranos and Lost became huge hits and the "Golden Age of Television" started that serialized content became much more common. There was more of it on the anime side of things, but even then a lot of all-time classics were episodic or monster-of-the-week in nature.
Absolutely. When I started watching anime, the "standard" for a big prestige original series project was 24-26 episodes (though there were still numerous 12-13 episode original productions too). I loved that format, because it gave the show plenty of time to introduce the characters and their relationships, and even dedicate the occasional one-off episode to a minor character to give them time to shine. That way, when the big serious story stuff started kicking off, it was all the more impactful because we knew the characters it was affecting so well. Hell, at this point it's rare enough that we get any sort of original production, so maybe I should just be happy whatever the length is. As for Watanabe, I've seen all of his full-length directorial work outside of Terror in Resonance, and I rate them on a scale from "great" to "the best thing I've ever seen." He's an absolute master of the medium, able to hop between genres and produce something that always feels incredibly human. He's also done great work as a music supervisor on a few series with some of his past collaborators. Speaking of, it's worth nothing that Space Dandy was as much Shingo Natsume's series as it was Watanabe's, and the former has produced some great work himself. (If you haven't, go and watch Sonny Boy, it's fantastic.) I know the track record of Toonami originals is...well, "mixed" might even be too generous, but if there's any production that can break past trends, it's going to be Lazarus. |
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Wilco499
Posts: 12 |
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I just watched Macross Plus the other week. Unfortunately, in the English dub, and I didn't even realize it was a work from Watanabe. To be honest, I wasn't actually impressed by it, but I think it was because it seemed too much of a Top Gun rip off plus the dub. But yeah, I have watched all of his full-length stuff except Champloo. I do find it funny how little respect Kids on the Slope gets, which I thought was better than Terror in Resonance or Carole and Tuesday. In fact, I forgot about Terror in Resonance existence until reading this article. Space Dandy to me is actually my favourite work from him. All the amazing animation (my favourite episode being the old man fishing) and zany antics just worked so well for me. There is barely a week that I don't think about the wave and fish animation in that one episode.
I am actually a bit irked by the premise of the new anime, Lazarus, and I accept it is me problem, with my brain making weird connections. There is something about living in a post-COVID world and seeing a series playing in the idea of drugs made secretly to destroy humanity, especially after all the real-life conspiracy theories, that just...leaves me irked. Part of the reason I won't make the 1.5-hour trip to Brussels to see its premiere at an animation festival and just wait for its streaming premiere to see if I get sold on what is happening. |
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Joe Mello
Posts: 2356 Location: Online Terminal |
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I'd like to think you're being sarcastic. And yes I'm using "filler" in the modern context. For example, if you had to invent Cowboy Bebop today, just about anything that didn't add a character, remove a character, or involve the syndicate/Vicious would be decried as a waste of time. Episodic series haven't been in fashion for some 10-15 years, and that's Watanabe's bread and butter. |
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gsilver
Posts: 666 |
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I was going through the list of Watanabe's works on this site, and realized that besides a few early-90s oddities and 'A Girl Meets a Boy and a Robot' (which has only screened at festivals?) I've seen at least Shinichiro Watanabe's contribution (such as openings or endings) for everything he has any kind of 'director' credit for, from major titles like Space Dandy to short films like the Animatrix shorts and Baby Blue, including ones with just a unit director or music director credit, like Star Driver ep1 or Mind Game.
With one big exception: Samurai Champloo I've seen *some* of Champloo, but only a few early episodes. I know it ran at a time that I was watching basically *every* anime I could get a hold of, so I'm not sure why I didn't finish it. I sure finished a lot of anime that *weren't* as good as Champloo back then. It's also the kind of show where the first episode plays really well, so it gets screened at various anime watch groups often and I've seen the first episode many times as a result, but rarely gets selected as something to watch all the way through. As for the 'filler' discussion: I'm pretty much of the mind that in an original work, 'filler' is content that adds nothing to the world, characters, or plot, or protracted scenes that just add to the runtime but not the mood (which I would argue excuses the Evangelion elevator scene). There is none in Bebop. In an adapted work, one could argue that it's things that deviate from the manga, but I'd still apply the above definition. I would *hope* that no one calls "One Piece Fan Letter" a "filler" episode, even if it isn't strictly an adaptation of anything in the manga. Taking that into consideration, the back half of Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) isn't filler, since they did their own world building. |
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dmanatunga
Posts: 85 |
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I was more referring to the phrase "filler is bad" versus what can be viewed as filler. But to be honest, I don't really keep in touch of the community today to see if they are now using "filler is bad" to refer to anything that does not directly advance the plot. I guess it would make sense since nowadays we don't get the typical manga adaptation filler and instead just have breaks in the adaptations. But for me, "filler is bad"always referred to the low quality of the non source material episodes in the big three of Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece. Heck, I vividly remember how I angrily stopped watching Naruto when the curry of life filler arc happened.
Yup, it was good times. Now we barely get originals. And then fact people sometimes complain about any filler. I remember when Beyond the Boundary had a filler episode in its single cour run that I thought it was hilarious and great. But going online, people complained why it was an actual episode and not an OVA. I wonder how people would react today on something like Champloo, where before the final arc you got the episodes where the squad trips on musgrooms or has that random baseball game. Then, you have the other downside of single (or even certain two cours), where things get crammed and rushed badly. Still sad thinking how Witch from Mercury needed the traditional Gundam 4 coues, or how Arcane desperately needed more seasons. |
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meiam
Posts: 3479 |
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Space Dandy problem wasn't because it was "too off-beat", it was a problem of uneven episode. Like other have mention, most of Bebop or Champloo is unrelated to the plot stand alone story, but even the "bad" and unrelated episode are really entertaining, so you come back week after week for that.
Dandy is just all over the place, you have some of the best content anime has produced, follow by just really boring stuff. Once you hit a few episode in a row that don't land for you, its really hard to justify coming back. Maybe it would have worked better nowaday, but solely because if it was release all at once, you'd be able to just skip to the next episode. |
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