[KrabbiPatty]

A rant from an anime fan, other anime fans don't get butthurt I'm one of you:

He's right about the glacial pace of anime though, but I would say it has little to do with the absurd (let's be honest) amount of smut in anime. THAT exists because people like sex and sex sales, no deeper meaning than that. And the "tough girls beat you up" trope is just a way to justify having smut without feminists getting pissy about it...because, for some reason, some people are stupid enough to mistake SEXUALITY for SEXISM. Here's a hit: Dead or Alive is NOT sexist, it's sexy, if it were sexist the two most important and able fighters wouldn't both be beautiful women. Metroid Other M is sexist, and if you've ever played it you know why.

Now, back to my rant: THAT, all of that, has NOTHING to do with why anime plots are so goddamn glacial. It's partly because of poor production values, partly because of the Japanese simply not understanding what "pacing" and "character arcs" are. Because I have come to believe those concepts simply don't EXIST in Japanese storytelling--and have seen no evidence to the contrary.

Basically, first off, production values for anime are LOWER despite the flashy appearance than most western shows. Most western shows tend to use more cells of animation and you know it, because fluidity of movement tends to be quite obvious when compared to the otherwise stiff anime characters, whose movements are extremely rigid and "precise", i.e. overdone. This may have changed, in principle, over the recent years with digital animation techniques but the practical end result has not. As a result it LOOKS flashy and cool...but it takes forever to do anything. Combine this with most anime being tied to some cockamamie manga (anime fan, not manga fan here) and the delays in that--because god forbid the guy who writes the manga just TELLING the anime production crew what is going to happen ahead of time--and you have plots that move quite slow.

But that's not the only or even main reason. ALL OF THAT would be irrelevant, or at least not as obvious a problem, if the Japanese understood pacing and arc structure...which they do not. At all. Even a little.

Take for example the fact that in 99% of anime, characters don't even have or develop arcs, and no, changing their fighting style or motive is not an arc. Christopher Nolan's Batman Trilogy had an arc--it started in one point, evolved to something else, and where it ended might as well have been a separate movie. DIE HARD, as a series, has a character arcs. Twilight, Jesus help us all, Twilight has character arcs.

What was Goku's character arc? Or Shinji Ikari? What was different, in the end, for these guys than when they started. Their personalities, goals, abilities were effectively unchanged--better maybe but not significantly different. The only anime I can think of with an actual character arc is Gunbuster. And that still has the other, huge problem of anime which is the utter lack of pacing.

I genuinely believe the Japanese simply have no idea what pacing IS, like it simply does not exist in Japanese storytelling, and I think I could prove it if given the task but that's not relevant right now. Here's what is: one time I decided to watch One Piece, on an episode (picked at random) where they were introducing some new crewmate or another. The one with the big nose who lies a lot. That guy. In a plot which, in a Western cartoon, would last MAYBE two episodes, possibly just one (and I've seen it done as a sub-plot in some shows) they two AT LEAST three episodes--I gave up when part two ended on a cliffhanger.

All they were doing, I must stress this, is introducing Big Nose Guy. That's it. That is not something that takes a minimum of THREE episodes. That's not a story arc, that's not a saga you can release on video like the Green Ranger miniseries, that's introducing a minor character who--unless I'm seriously misreading the One Piece wiki--has little real impact on the course of the series. But that's the thing, the Japanese do this ALL. THE. TIME. They literally take two or three or, God help us, even four episodes to introduce a minor character or minor plot arc or even just for the dreaded "filler".

One Piece is actually a perfect example of my point. Pacing doesn't exist in this series, and that's not just because it's shonen (or whatever) it's because the Japanese have no idea what pacing IS. Even Gunbuster just barely avoided it, because of the series brevity. One Piece has been going on now for, what, twelve years? And how close are they to finding the treasure? Or anything relevant happening? Again, unless my reading of the wiki is incorrect, the answer is "not close at all". Even soap operas have pacing, have the story eventually reach a conclusion.

But the thing is, in anime, the STORY is not relevant: the PEOPLE are. Animes and manga to a much greater extent focus on individuals, usually the prettiest and most girlish looking boy of the bunch (e.g., Shinji, Raiden, Sasuke etc) and nothing else. As a result, reaching the end of the story is less relevant to them than watching the story unfold around someone very, very pretty. That may offend western anime fans but frankly I think the Japanese would agree.

So that's why anime plots are so glacial: they're secondary aspects of the series, maybe even side-stories, to following the main character around and watching him do random things. In other words, a reality show. I find it ironic that the Japanese created reality shows before we did but they always were on the cutting edge.