Narrative Drive Craving
May. 9th, 2006 03:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dangermousieI am getting a bit bored with both GetBackers and Saiyuki. I’ve realized I can’t watch them in more than small doses. And when I wondered about why (after all, I enjoy the individual episodes quite a lot), I realized it’s because they are very close to normal American TV shows: they are episodic (though they have cumulative character development). They are not just one (albeit very long) story with a beginning, a middle and an end, an anime version of Babylon 5 or Farscape. They have no narrative imperative, no driving force. Saiyuki ostensibly has a goal: going to India to fight the experiments to revive a powerful demon, but that is not what the show is about. The ending hasn’t even been written yet and doesn’t even show up in the anime. It has no clear ending it is working towards. It could, arguably, run indefinitely. And as for GetBackers, since the concept is a recovery agency, it does not have one storyline by its very definition.
And that is why I lose interest. That is why I don’t marathon. There is no sense of urgency, no ‘how does it end?’ I am not much of a TV person, but I am a huge book person and my tastes generally reflect that: I love something that is one narrative, one story, basically a very long book put on screen. Anime as different from each other as Fushigi Yuugi, Trigun, Escaflowne, Ceres, and RahXephon have that. And while I like some of them better than others, they kept my unflagging attention to the end because of that.
Fushigi Yuugi, for example, is a story that is working towards end goals which are summoning of that deity, defeating the villains, getting back Yui, and finding a way for Miaka and Tamahome to be together. The whole story arises from that and progresses towards that. It gives it structure and pace. Trigun is about Vash defeating the enemies his brother sent after him and finally confronting his brother, as well as facing his past and modifying his ideology. And the show works towards that end. Escaflowne is about saving Gaea and restoring peace (as well as sorting out certain characters’ issues). Ceres is about returning Ceres’ cloak, freeing Aya from the circle of death and enabling her to be with Toya (who should regain his memory). And the show works towards that. RahXephon is about Ayato brining harmony to the world, and recovering his past as well as discovering his nature, and it is written with that end in mind.
And if I look at other shows I watched non-stop, they are also that way: Peach Girl is very much like a chick lit book (with more angst) that is working towards Momo being free from Sae’s manipulations (whether through a defeat of her wiles, or through Sae maturing) and finding true love (which she does with Kairi). HYD is working toward Tsukushi reciprocating the matured Doumyouji’s love. Even something more fragmentary like Rurouni Kenshin, once it gets into the Kyoto arc is one 30+ eps, coherent, unified story about defeating Shishio, saving Aoshi, and giving Kenshin peace and acceptance and bringing his and Kaoru’s story to a boiling point of sorts. True, the first eps (Tokyo arc) are not one story, but they serve to introduce the characters. And after that it is two very coherent arcs: Kyoto and Enishi (that one wasn’t animate though and I haven’t seen the filler anime did instead). One can view RK as a relatively small number of intro, loose eps, and then two separate story arcs: as if they were adaptation of two novels. Peacekeeper is perhaps the loosest in structure of all the anime I loved, but it is not only 24 eps, it does work (and achieves) towards the confrontation with Yoshida and towards Tetsu both growing up and overcoming his trauma. Cowboy Beebop lost me in a lot of eps not just because of the leisurely pace, but because it didn’t have arc-connected eps, not explicitly. But it clearly had an over-arcing structure and was working, though not with every ep, towards Spike fighting Vicious and discovering Julia. It’s half arced and half isn’t. It’s also a lot shorter than Saiyuki and GetBackers.
Now, I think some of these shows are better than others. For example, Ceres was enjoyable but is not a huge favorite. But they all have structure I crave.
Neither GetBackers nor Saiyuki have any clear, written end they are working towards. The goal of Saiyuki the show is not for the guys to change in certain ways so they would be “x” at the end, or for them to get to India to fight and everything working towards that. The goal of Saiyuki is to have a bunch of episodes where we learn more about the guys and see them fight bad guys. GetBackers has a similar lack of imperative. There is nothing wrong with it, it’s an alternative narrative structure. But it doesn’t hook me as much. And because they are long (Saiyuki total count is over a 100 and GetBackers is 50), I lose interest before the end and so must break it up and watch it in small pieces.
And that is why I lose interest. That is why I don’t marathon. There is no sense of urgency, no ‘how does it end?’ I am not much of a TV person, but I am a huge book person and my tastes generally reflect that: I love something that is one narrative, one story, basically a very long book put on screen. Anime as different from each other as Fushigi Yuugi, Trigun, Escaflowne, Ceres, and RahXephon have that. And while I like some of them better than others, they kept my unflagging attention to the end because of that.
Fushigi Yuugi, for example, is a story that is working towards end goals which are summoning of that deity, defeating the villains, getting back Yui, and finding a way for Miaka and Tamahome to be together. The whole story arises from that and progresses towards that. It gives it structure and pace. Trigun is about Vash defeating the enemies his brother sent after him and finally confronting his brother, as well as facing his past and modifying his ideology. And the show works towards that end. Escaflowne is about saving Gaea and restoring peace (as well as sorting out certain characters’ issues). Ceres is about returning Ceres’ cloak, freeing Aya from the circle of death and enabling her to be with Toya (who should regain his memory). And the show works towards that. RahXephon is about Ayato brining harmony to the world, and recovering his past as well as discovering his nature, and it is written with that end in mind.
And if I look at other shows I watched non-stop, they are also that way: Peach Girl is very much like a chick lit book (with more angst) that is working towards Momo being free from Sae’s manipulations (whether through a defeat of her wiles, or through Sae maturing) and finding true love (which she does with Kairi). HYD is working toward Tsukushi reciprocating the matured Doumyouji’s love. Even something more fragmentary like Rurouni Kenshin, once it gets into the Kyoto arc is one 30+ eps, coherent, unified story about defeating Shishio, saving Aoshi, and giving Kenshin peace and acceptance and bringing his and Kaoru’s story to a boiling point of sorts. True, the first eps (Tokyo arc) are not one story, but they serve to introduce the characters. And after that it is two very coherent arcs: Kyoto and Enishi (that one wasn’t animate though and I haven’t seen the filler anime did instead). One can view RK as a relatively small number of intro, loose eps, and then two separate story arcs: as if they were adaptation of two novels. Peacekeeper is perhaps the loosest in structure of all the anime I loved, but it is not only 24 eps, it does work (and achieves) towards the confrontation with Yoshida and towards Tetsu both growing up and overcoming his trauma. Cowboy Beebop lost me in a lot of eps not just because of the leisurely pace, but because it didn’t have arc-connected eps, not explicitly. But it clearly had an over-arcing structure and was working, though not with every ep, towards Spike fighting Vicious and discovering Julia. It’s half arced and half isn’t. It’s also a lot shorter than Saiyuki and GetBackers.
Now, I think some of these shows are better than others. For example, Ceres was enjoyable but is not a huge favorite. But they all have structure I crave.
Neither GetBackers nor Saiyuki have any clear, written end they are working towards. The goal of Saiyuki the show is not for the guys to change in certain ways so they would be “x” at the end, or for them to get to India to fight and everything working towards that. The goal of Saiyuki is to have a bunch of episodes where we learn more about the guys and see them fight bad guys. GetBackers has a similar lack of imperative. There is nothing wrong with it, it’s an alternative narrative structure. But it doesn’t hook me as much. And because they are long (Saiyuki total count is over a 100 and GetBackers is 50), I lose interest before the end and so must break it up and watch it in small pieces.
