Whenever I think of seriality, the first format that comes to mind is television series. Traditionally TV shows would come out with weekly episodes, but the nature of watching television has changed largely since streaming services (such as Netflix and Hulu) came out. Nowadays, people are able to watch an entire season (or more) in a day. The only TV show that I still watch weekly is Grey’s Anatomy, and even that I watch on Hulu the day after it aires. It’s become a sort of ritual for my mom and I to watch the latest episode together every week. We watch it in serial instalments, but we both agree that we’d rather have the freedom to watch multiple episodes in a row, especially when there’s a particularly interesting cliffhanger. I think I remember Dr. Gibson saying that she hasn’t watched this past season of Grey’s Anatomy, so just in case I won’t be posting any spoilers, but there was an episode last month which ended on a cliffhanger. My mom and I wondered all week how it would turn out, only to find that the next episode didn’t include the character or plot line that we had expected it to focus on. It was a filler episode.
Filler episodes are essentially episodes that don’t follow the main plot line of a series. I believe they’re pretty common in animes, so I thought it would be interesting to look at what the function of a filler episodes is and why they exist in the first place. When I think of filler episodes, I think of Naruto. It’s a show I used to watch weekly with my older bother when we were kids. It ran from 2002 to 2007, and according to animefillerlist.com, 90 of its 220 episodes are filler episodes. Its sequel, Naruto Shippuden, ran from 2007 to 2017, and of its 500 episodes, 203 are filler. This means that in both shows, 41% of the episodes are fillers. I remember getting really frustrated as a child after waiting all week for the next episode, only to find that it had nothing to do with the main storyline. And it wouldn’t just take a break from the main plot line for one week, multiple episodes in a row would do this. This type of episode is so ingrained in anime that there are websites, such as the one I just mentioned, where fans can look up which episodes they can skip.
So, why are there so many filler episodes?
With Naruto, the creators would only be a couple of episodes ahead of what was released each week. The show is based on the manga, (which is a comic/graphic novel), and the manga always has to stay ahead of the show. However, mangas can take longer to release – sometimes a few months for each chapter. The tv series wouldn’t want to get ahead of the manga because they need the source material, so the solution is to create filler episodes.
While these episodes certainly drive fans crazy, they also create a lot of revenue. More episodes = more money. For that reason it’s smart for the creators to make filler episodes, but I’d argue that they overdo it to the point of being harmful for the show. Yes, Naruto is extremely successful, but I’m sure there are a ton of people who got tired of the fillers and called it quits on the show entirely. (Or who waited for the whole season to come out and then looked up a list of the filler episodes so they could skip them).
However, not all fillers are bad! One of my all time favorite episodes of Avatar the Last Airbender is a filler episode titled ‘Ember Island Players.’ In this episode, the protagonists attend a play about themselves which essentially makes fun of them. It’s light hearted and fun and provides a needed break from the tension of the season and the quest to defeat the Firelord.
It’s interesting to think that, especially with animes like Naruto, filler episodes can be seen as a vital part of what keeps a show running serially.
Thanks for reading! Until tomorrow,
Dessi