Absurdly Long Anime

You know what grinds my gears? Anime series that are absurdly long.

Some anime series are short and sweet with 26 episodes, such as Samurai Champloo, Trigun, and Cowboy Bebop. These are all wonderful shows. There are long anime shows that are good as well, such as Naruto, Bleach, and to some extent, Dragonball Z. It's understandable that some shows have a large cast and a long storyline to develop. Bleach and Naruto are prime examples of this. They both have large story lines that probably wouldn't fit well in only 2 seasons.

However, the problem arises when a long anime becomes too long by adding in obvious filler episodes and pointless content. Naruto and Bleach are guilty of having close to 50 episodes of filler each! These episodes are noted as filler because these episodes to not develop the main plot and they deviate from the source of the story: their respective manga comic. This deviation might be bearable under a few conditions.

First, if greedy companies didn't try to force me to pay $20 plus tax per DVD which contains only 3 or 4 episodes. Using Bleach and Naruto as an example, if I were to pay $20 per DVD for those 50 episodes of bunk, I would be paying between $250 (assuming 4 episodes per DVD) and $333 (assuming 3 episodes per disk), excluding taxes. I cannot consciously purchase DVD's when I feel that these filler episodes are a cheap way for someone to take my money. It's as if they assume that I will think, "Oh, this is Naruto. I love Naruto. I don't care if these episodes are pointless and not entertaining. I'll buy them anyway because they're Naruto." This arrogance makes me think that these sellers' egos are out of control, and it irks me to no end!

Second, filler episodes might be more bearable if there weren't huge amounts of them at once. Fifty episodes of filler at 22 minutes per episode is 1,100 minutes (18.33 hours) of do-nothing. You could almost watch two full length series of anime that are short and sweet, such as Trigun or Samurai Champloo, in the time it would take to watch pointless filler.

Third, these long anime series grind my gears not only because of the filler episodes, but because of the pointless content that seems like a blatant attempt to milk out more minutes of animation without continuing the story. Dragonball Z is a prime example. If the animators of DBZ would have cut out all the footage of landscape panning and people explaining the obvious, DBZ would probably have been 100 less episodes. Have you seen all of DBZ? It's an absurd 270+ episodes!

Let's look at a good anime for comparative purposes. Samurai Champloo had two filler episodes out of the 26 episode series. One filler episode was essentially a recap of everything that had happened thus far in the story. The other was a hilarious episode where our Japanese friends faced mean Americans in a game of baseball. These two episodes were very bearable because there were only two of them, and they weren't worthless. Also, the episodes moved very fast. There wasn't someone who explained everything that was happening. If a long anime series would able to mimic Samurai Champloo or Trigun or Cowboy Bebop by keeping the episodes to no fat and all meat, it would be a rock solid legend among anime.