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Narration does have its place in anime at points when necessary to detail on past events with characters via flashbacks or to detail on elements to the world of a series. However, there are some titles where I find the narration to be way too intrusive by popping up frequently and detailing on things that I would have already known, this happening from my watches of Beast Player Erin, Rose of Versailles and as of recently, The Third: Girl With the Blue Eye. Have you ever encountered any anime with the annoying habit of having a narrator detail on things too frequently and if so, what are your thoughts on it?

I you even need a narrator, it means you're doing something wrong in the story department in my opinion.

I think the narrator of the Ikkitousen English dub had things to say about the topic in an extra.

There are times when I prefer the infodump to come from a disembodied narrator rather than individuals in the show. A lot of long-running shonen shows have folks standing around describing what's going on, when we ought to be able to tell from seeing it. And I can think of a few recent ridiculous-premise high school shows where the infodump comes from an instructor lecturing a class about basics that, according to the plot, should be incredibly old news for the folks listening.

I certainly remember the narrator in The Third being pretty obnoxious. But I disagree with the idea that there is no place for narrators in effective storytelling. People don't explain things that are common knowledge, but there are tons of anime where "common knowledge" within the context of the show is not actual common knowledge, because the setting is so different from reality. How do you communicate these details to properly contextualize what's being shown?

In a book, authors just write the context as needed, which isn't that different from narration. But in anime, either you use a narrator, or you have a gratuitous explanation between characters who would have no reason to explain these things, or you have an ignorant character to follow (who probably shouldn't be so ignorant), or... In any case, I don't think choosing the "narration" route universally represents "bad storytelling" more than the alternatives.

Haruhi Suzumiya just wouldn't be the same without Kyon's narration. Wink

In this case the unreliable narrator adds a brilliant layer to an already clever show.

Narration doesn't annoy me in the slightest. I have seen Rose of Versailles and I didn't mind the narration there. It is just a different form of storytelling and that's fine with me. I think narration was more frequently used in the older series and it is not as popular as it used to be.

Besides, there are narrators that are great. I love the narrator from Princess Tutu, who tells the famous stories adding a sinister twist to them. Twisted Evil

Only the narrator from LotGH annoyed me when he spoiled one of the most important events.

Once. Ookamisan or whatever. It was just unnecessary and annoying voice. She also spoke at the same time as the characters.

Kruszer wrote:

I you even need a narrator, it means you're doing something wrong in the story department in my opinion.

Oh yeah, Legend of the Galactic Heroes totally sucked story wise. Sorry, can't agree with that at all.

Well, the narration in The Third is a special brand of horrible and completely indicative of a show that doesn't trust itself to tell the story by its actions (I've ended up stalled about 2/3 of the way through that show in part of how annoying that narrator is). I haven't seen the other two Ggultra mentioned but bad narration isn't something I notice in anime too much. Maybe you've just run into a bad stretch?

I can imagine being extra sensitive to it after watching The Third, every emotion explained, scenes that could be nicely mysterious ruined by having everything explained.

Action: Honoka frowns.
Narration: "Honoka was sad"
Me: "Oh Thank you! I never would have guessed!"

Last edited by Kruszer on Tue Aug 23, 2011 2:21 pm; edited 1 time in total

egoist wrote:

Once. Ookamisan or whatever. It was just unnecessary and annoying voice. She also spoke at the same time as the characters.

Kruszer wrote:

I you even need a narrator, it means you're doing something wrong in the story department in my opinion.

Oh yeah, Legend of the Galactic Heroes totally sucked story wise. Sorry, can't agree with that at all.

I never said narration makes the show suck, just that it's doing something wrong story-wise if it has to use a narration to "tell" instead of "show". It's kinda like montage scenes in a movie, they're both lazy shortcuts.

Quote:

errinundra wrote:

Haruhi Suzumiya just wouldn't be the same without Kyon's narration. Wink

In this case the unreliable narrator adds a brilliant layer to an already clever show.

That's not a narration it's called an Internal Monologue. They're two different things. I actually don't mind those.

egoist wrote:

Ookamisan or whatever. It was just unnecessary and annoying voice. She also spoke at the same time as the characters.

Oh, wow, I can't believe I forgot that. Meaningless banter between characters is what builds chemistry in a cast, and in a show like that, chemistry was crucial. I can't believe someone thought talking over the banter would be a good idea.

Kruszer wrote:

I never said narration makes the show suck, just that it's doing something wrong story-wise if it has to use a narration to "tell" instead of "show".

While this is true in some contexts, I don't see why it would be a particularly universal rule. Some things can't be shown, or showing them is incredibly awkward compared to just telling them. If someone wants to, say, tell you where a story takes place and in what year, do you really want them to waste an incredible amount of time to give the proper context clues to allow you to draw that conclusion, especially when it's not clear how universally the context is understood? I think it's better that they just put a little "City, Year" overlay at the bottom of the screen for a couple seconds.

And can you imagine trying to do Night Raid 1931 without narration? I hope you remember your obscure and often deliberately obscured history!

Quote:

While this is true in some contexts, I don't see why it would be a particularly universal rule. Some things can't be shown, or showing them is incredibly awkward compared to just telling them. If someone wants to, say, tell you where a story takes place and in what year, do you really want them to waste an incredible amount of time to give the proper context clues to allow you to draw that conclusion, especially when it's not clear how universally the context is understood? I think it's better that they just put a little "City, Year" overlay at the bottom of the screen for a couple seconds.

On screen text is acceptable. If they must do some kind of info dump or place and setting confirmation I'd prefer that method.

Quote:

And can you imagine trying to do Night Raid 1931 without narration? I hope you remember your obscure and often deliberately obscured history!

I wouldn't watch a movie/show about semi-historical events from countries whose histories I'm not familiar with and expect to fully understand it in the first place anyway. Anyhow, that show was apparently so mediocre and unmemorable that I don't even remember much of what it was about or whether or not it had narration even though I watched it no more than a year ago. Historical fiction is not really my thing though.

Kruszer wrote:

I you even need a narrator, it means you're doing something wrong in the story department in my opinion.

That's . . . that's . . . dammit I'm under Moderation so I can't say what I actually think about your opinion . . . so I'll simply say that thinking the mere presence of a narrator warrants an automatic fail is a huge error.

What, so the Lord of The Rings film trilogy should have been hours longer just to fit in a whole load of backstory that the audience didn't want explained in every single detail?

Sometimes narrators can add something to a work in a positive way. To use an Anime example, the lemony narrator in the third arc of Amagami SS was the best part of the arc. Well, that and the Sae fanservice . . . . . .

dtm42 wrote:

Kruszer wrote:

I you even need a narrator, it means you're doing something wrong in the story department in my opinion.

That's . . . that's . . . dammit I'm under Moderation so I can't say what I actually think about your opinion . . . so I'll simply say that thinking the mere presence of a narrator warrants an automatic fail is a huge error.

What, so the Lord of The Rings film trilogy should have been hours longer just to fit in a whole load of backstory that the audience didn't want explained in every single detail?

Sometimes narrators can add something to a work in a positive way. To use an Anime example, the lemony narrator in the third arc of Amagami SS was the best part of the arc. Well, that and the Sae fanservice . . . . . .

For the second time in topic, "doing something wrong" does not mean automatic fail/anime bad it means doing one single thing, of possibly hundreds of components in a story that could be flawed, wrong; the others of which could be right. Comparatively, it's like getting one answer wrong a test. You still might pass unless too many other questions are wrong too like if the anime had bad pacing issues or recap episodes, or didn't tie up loose ends.

The fact is that narration is sometimes a necessary evil. Yeah, it would usually be better if you could convey information without narration but to do so may simply not be feasible without creating a whole bunch of other problems and pacing issues. So yeah, sometimes narration is your best option. That said, there are plenty of cases where narration is just sloppily executed or used unnecessarily as a crutch or a shortcut.

Kruszer wrote:

I never said narration makes the show suck, just that it's doing something wrong story-wise if it has to use a narration to "tell" instead of "show". It's kinda like montage scenes in a movie, they're both lazy shortcuts.

Why do I get the feeling that the "show don't tell" is one of the most widely misused phrases in anime communities. Having narration doesn't automatically mean that what you're watching is telling and not showing. Otherwise books would be huge failures as a storytelling method. There is a difference in telling and showing in written form too.

What the phrase means is that you don't summarize important plot events in few phrases/screens/whatever and then move on. You can "tell not show" completely without narration too, like in many summary movies.

I don't mind narration on some older series, after all, talking is much cheaper then animating. It all depends on how it was used, for example, Legend of the Galactic Heroes used a narrator all the time, so much so that I was seriously expecting the final episode to pull out to a dude sitting on a couch closing a history book. For the most part, he tended to describe where everyone was and why, though there were some hilariously pointless uses of the narrator but what can you do? Still, for me it all depends on how the narrator is used, how much he or she is used, and if it hurts the show at all.

A lot of shows, even today, might have a narrator going "previously on _____", for example, Avatar: The Last Airbender has one used like this, but that's the only time you see him.

But I can certainly think of a bad use of a narrator, and that is one that never shuts up. I'm talking about Robotech here, I don't complain about most of the changes they made to the series cus it was still awesome but damn, the narrator never shuts up! When you watch the Japanese, it takes a few eps for it to dawn on you and then you go "the narrator! That's what's missing here!" because the original Robotech counterparts had plenty of silent moments in it, almost all of which were replaced with the narrator speaking. Rather than give the audience time to just watch the characters and digest it, the narrator just goes "and then Rick was feeling ____ at how he felt about _____", which the audience honestly could've inferred themselves. Must've been an American thing where they feared if anyone ever stopped talking that the kids would get bored or something. Granted, it's not the most offensive form, but damn is it annoying, though it's easy enough to filter out I suppose. I didn't even notice it until I saw the second season of Robotech in the original sub, but it is really really noticeable.

So yeah, I think narration has its place, but it has to be used correctly, namely not stating stuff that audience can infer for themselves, that's kinda intelligence insulting if you ask me.

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