For my first thinkpiece, I wanted to ask a question. It was fueled by a picture, which I will show below.
Shows used to be quick and to the point. At least in anime, way back during shows I loved, you could get an entire story across in a season or two. At around 26 episodes, you’d be wrapping things up, with maybe a special or two. And a lot of shows even today follow the same principle, with Persona 4 The Animation being around 26 episodes, Persona 5 being the same, plus a few specials, Outlaw Star, Senran Kagura, and I could keep naming shows.
But a lot of shows feel this need to hit hundreds upon hundreds of episodes, which is great for fans, but makes for a difficult sell. How can I recommend a show to people when it’s over 200 episodes long? My friends often tell me to check out Naruto, but Naruto itself is 220 episodes, Naruto Shippuden is 500 episodes, and now there’s Boruto, numbering 109 episodes so far. It’s hard to want to even try getting into a show when faced with 829 episodes. That would be like if I asked you to play the Final Fantasy series and then I hit you with the following;
- Final Fantasy: 18 hours
- Final Fantasy 2: 26 hours
- Final Fantasy 3: 29 hours
- Final Fantasy 4: 24 hours
- The After Years: 34 hours
- Final Fantasy 5: 34 hours
- Final Fantasy 6: 36 hours
- Final Fantasy 7: 39 hours
- Crisis Core: 20 hours
- Dirge of Cerberus: 13 hours
- Final Fantasy 8: 43 hours
- Final Fantasy 9: 41 hours
- Final Fantasy 10: 49 hours
- Final Fantasy 10-2: 35 hours
- Final Fantasy 12: 40 hours
- Revenant Wings: 27 hours
- Final Fantasy 13: 49 hours
- Final Fantasy 13-2: 28 hours
- Lightning Returns: 34 hours
- Final Fantasy 15: 28 hours
- Total Hours: 647 hours (AKA 27 days of gameplay)
According to HowLongToBeat.com, those are the games’ playtime for the main story alone. If you try to do everything, you’d be pushing 1000 hours. And this ignores the Tactics series, Crystal Chronicles series, Final Fantasy 11, Final Fantasy 14, and any other side games I’m forgetting. This is just the main series and only accounts for the main story hours, not the side content.
If I weren’t to know Final Fantasy that well, I wouldn’t even touch the series with that kind of hours I’d need to dedicate to it. Now, people in the know know that very few, if any, of the games are connected, so you could just play, say, Final Fantasy 9 and enjoy it fine without playing the previous games. But TV and anime are rarely like that. If you just dropped in on season 4 of Game of Thrones, you wouldn’t know what’s going on, right?
I think we can all agree that when faced with such large shows, the ideal thing to do when recommending things is to break it down. Like if I were to recommend Ranma 1/2, let’s break it down.
- 161 TV episodes
- 12 OVA episodes
- 3 movies
Would I recommend it that way? No. It may be my favorite anime of all time, but I would never recommend it by spelling it out like that. I’d do it something like…
- Season 1: 18 episodes
- Season 2: 22 episodes
- Season 3: 23 episodes
- etc etc
Because 18 episodes is a lot easier to recommend. Someone would be like “Oh, that doesn’t sound like much” and would be more likely to watch. And if they enjoy that, you can recommend Season 2.
Shows like Naruto can’t really do that. Why? Season 1 is 57 episodes. Ranma 1/2 season one would run just under 8-9 hours. Season 1 Naruto? That’s pushing 25 hours. So, how modern anime seems to work with that issue is to recommend ‘arcs’.
Some of you may ask ‘what is an arc?’. An arc is a specific story within a show, something that connects a bunch of episodes. Arcs break down a show even more than seasons do, as a season may feature multiple arcs. Let’s go back to Naruto.
Season 1 is 57 episodes. That’s a lot to watch, but most people would recommend you begin with the ‘Land of Waves’ or ‘Zabuza’ arc. This is the first real mission of the show and spans from episode 1 to episode 19. Now, the big issue is that arcs are not confined by seasons. Not being a big fan, I’ll try to explain.
- Land of Waves arc: Episodes 1-19
- Chunin Exams arc: Episodes 20-67
- Konoha Crush arc: Episodes 68-80
- Search for Tsunade: Episodes 81-100
- Sasuke Recovery Mission: 107-135
Those seem to be the major arcs of the show. The first big issue comes in the Chunin Exams arc. Note that it runs from episode 20 to episode 67. And now recall that the first season was only 57 episodes. This means the Chunin Exams take most of season 1 and rolls into season 2. I’m not even going to check Shippuden with it’s 500 episodes.
The problem comes in buying these shows. Let’s say you buy Naruto Season 1. Well, if you want to see the conclusion of the Chunin Exams, you need to buy Season 2. Now, there’s only five seasons of the show, but that still gets irritating.
Or I could buy Outlaw Star, a 26 episode show, and get something contained in a single boxset. Usually for the same price, no less. Considering I have two expensive hobbies, video games and anime, I need to make my money stretch where I can.
This coming from a guy who’s considering buying the $80 special edition for Persona Q2 over the $40 basic edition. I should listen to my own advice…
The Professional Protagonist 