Non-thread-worthy discussions

[JulieYBM]

The Japanese Blu-rays don't have the anime-original arcs? That fucking sucks, those arcs are a lot of fun and interesting side stories. The closest thing long-running anime have gotten to perfecting the formula, considering the challenges they face.

From what I know, they don't.
I don't know. I watched the Bount Arc. It was neither fun nor interesting. The quality dip from the previous manga material was pretty steep & I didn't enjoy a lot of it. If I were to rewatch the earlier stuff, I'd skip it & I wouldn't watch any of the other filler arcs. The 3 characters from that arc that they kept around were also quietly removed from the next arc within a few episodes & forgotten about because they didn't matter whatsoever despite dropping them into manga scenes they weren't in originally. I'm not interested in filler that adds literally nothing to the ongoing story & even the anime writers tell you in the material itself is filler &, thus, not important whatsoever.

I remember them keeping Ririn, Kurouda and Noba in the Arrancar arc for a bit while also having them appear in the future anime-original arcs. For characters meant to be cute mascot characters, I thought that they were a lot fun. I think the anime should have altered comic-adapting arcs to better develop them, but that's not what they went with and I don't think it's necessarily a big deal that they exist at all.

Among those anime-original arcs, I watched the Bount arc twice and really enjoyed it for feeling like a continuation and build up on the Soul Society arc, while also having to build its own entire group of beings like the comic did with the Shinigami, Quincy, Arrancar, et cetera. The Bounts were treated with seriousness by the anime team and I really liked that. It feels like a lesser series director would have had Ichigo use his Bankai without issue from the word go, but Abe was determined to give Ichigo an arc with his Bankai and an arc in his interactions with the Bounts.

That's my long-winded way of saying that I really wish Dragon Ball had similarly altered its comic-adapting episodes to add their own flavor and character arcs in substantial ways that didn't just feel like spinning wheels.

I need to do a full rewatch of those BLEACH arcs that are anime-original. It's been too long, especially with the Kageroza arc, which went absolutely insane with the episode direction and animation lol

[MasenkoHA]

That's my long-winded way of saying that I really wish Dragon Ball had similarly altered its comic-adapting episodes to add their own flavor and character arcs in substantial ways that didn't just feel like spinning wheels.

I do wish Toei would at least stick to their guns when making a change instead of falling back in line with what Toriyama does.

Gohan talking about how he’s rather play than study and sneaking off to train won’t matter because he eventually needs to fall in line with Toriyama’s version who is a nerd with no interest in martial arts and only fights when he has to. Ironically robbing him of any agency and giving the impression he ended up the way he did because of Chi Chi and not because…he just prefers a book to boxing.

Goku can show affection to Chi Chi in filler until he needs to be Toriyama’s asexual interpretation


Kuririn’s daughter being named Marron is always going to have an awkward subtext in the animation that doesn’t exist in the manga because nobody at Toei thought “uh maybe we should give his daughter a different name than what Toriyama -sensei used since we already used a similar name for our OC girlfriend for him?”

[JulieYBM]

That's my long-winded way of saying that I really wish Dragon Ball had similarly altered its comic-adapting episodes to add their own flavor and character arcs in substantial ways that didn't just feel like spinning wheels.

I do wish Toei would at least stick to their guns when making a change instead of falling back in line with what Toriyama does.

Gohan talking about how he’s rather play than study and sneaking off to train won’t matter because he eventually needs to fall in line with Toriyama’s version who is a nerd with no interest in martial arts and only fights when he has to. Ironically robbing him of any agency and giving the impression he ended up the way he did because of Chi Chi and not because…he just prefers a book to boxing.

Goku can show affection to Chi Chi in filler until he needs to be Toriyama’s asexual interpretation


Kuririn’s daughter being named Marron is always going to have an awkward subtext in the animation that doesn’t exist in the manga because nobody at Toei thought “uh maybe we should give his daughter a different name than what Toriyama -sensei used since we already used a similar name for our OC girlfriend for him?”

Not to mention using the Saiyan arc anime-original episodes as material to guide Gohan as a character. Imagine how they could have tweaked Gohan freezing up against Nappa to have Gohan remember what he learned on his adventures while living in the wilderness? How that could have been mitigated and character beats changed? Or referencing them and the space orphans to bolster Gohan and Kuririn's rage towards Freeza early on?

Or heck, straight up changing Gohan's arc at the Cell Games.

[Scsigs]

That's my long-winded way of saying that I really wish Dragon Ball had similarly altered its comic-adapting episodes to add their own flavor and character arcs in substantial ways that didn't just feel like spinning wheels.

I do wish Toei would at least stick to their guns when making a change instead of falling back in line with what Toriyama does.

Gohan talking about how he’s rather play than study and sneaking off to train won’t matter because he eventually needs to fall in line with Toriyama’s version who is a nerd with no interest in martial arts and only fights when he has to. Ironically robbing him of any agency and giving the impression he ended up the way he did because of Chi Chi and not because…he just prefers a book to boxing.

Goku can show affection to Chi Chi in filler until he needs to be Toriyama’s asexual interpretation


Kuririn’s daughter being named Marron is always going to have an awkward subtext in the animation that doesn’t exist in the manga because nobody at Toei thought “uh maybe we should give his daughter a different name than what Toriyama -sensei used since we already used a similar name for our OC girlfriend for him?”

I'd argue Kai's solve a lot of those problems with cutting out almost everything that Toei added in explicitly filler materials, tbh. Especially because the filler shit won't show up outside of some references to some of the stuff Toriyama actually liked like the baseball episode in Super. Don't get me wrong, they still left in some of the filler stuff unnecessarily & there was stuff still in the animation that they couldn't cut, but cutting the filler arcs & individual episodes helped with inconsistent characterizations, (most) inconsistencies with later material, & whatever else that was bad from Toei's added fluff. Outside of them rebooting the animes to get a more manga-accurate take on the anime stuff, it certainly helped with a lot of that stuff. I certainly don't care for those, tbh.


Also, different topic. What's with the rumors that Toei may be rebooting the Super anime with an adaptation on the manga's version of events? I don't think that makes any sense to do unless they're adapting the arcs that they haven't animated yet that people want them to do.

[Yellow Flower King]

That's my long-winded way of saying that I really wish Dragon Ball had similarly altered its comic-adapting episodes to add their own flavor and character arcs in substantial ways that didn't just feel like spinning wheels.

I do wish Toei would at least stick to their guns when making a change instead of falling back in line with what Toriyama does.

Gohan talking about how he’s rather play than study and sneaking off to train won’t matter because he eventually needs to fall in line with Toriyama’s version who is a nerd with no interest in martial arts and only fights when he has to. Ironically robbing him of any agency and giving the impression he ended up the way he did because of Chi Chi and not because…he just prefers a book to boxing.

Goku can show affection to Chi Chi in filler until he needs to be Toriyama’s asexual interpretation


Kuririn’s daughter being named Marron is always going to have an awkward subtext in the animation that doesn’t exist in the manga because nobody at Toei thought “uh maybe we should give his daughter a different name than what Toriyama -sensei used since we already used a similar name for our OC girlfriend for him?”

Not to mention using the Saiyan arc anime-original episodes as material to guide Gohan as a character. Imagine how they could have tweaked Gohan freezing up against Nappa to have Gohan remember what he learned on his adventures while living in the wilderness? How that could have been mitigated and character beats changed? Or referencing them and the space orphans to bolster Gohan and Kuririn's rage towards Freeza early on?

Or heck, straight up changing Gohan's arc at the Cell Games.

I wish Gohan went through an arc like in Steven Universe Future where he actually DOES want to be a peace loving nerd... but the trauma from his childhood has him develop a really dark side he never noticed because he failed to get therapy for the trauma.

[ZeroNeonix]

Also, different topic. What's with the rumors that Toei may be rebooting the Super anime with an adaptation on the manga's version of events? I don't think that makes any sense to do unless they're adapting the arcs that they haven't animated yet that people want them to do.

First I'm hearing of this. That would be a pretty bad move, IMO. They should just adapt the arcs that are manga exclusive. I don't think anybody wants another reboot for Super. It's bad enough that they started the series by doing Battle of Gods and Resurrection F again, but worse.

[Yuji]

What does everyone think of the lack of dragons in the series?

They're obviously plastered all over Toriyama illustrations and covers, as well as anime filler and GT, but in the series itself, the only dragons are wish granting ones.

Even Daima had a key visual of Goku riding a dragon to hype the release of the show, yet does a dragon even show up for more than a frame or two?

[MasenkoHA]

What does everyone think of the lack of dragons in the series?

They're obviously plastered all over Toriyama illustrations and covers, as well as anime filler and GT, but in the series itself, the only dragons are wish granting ones.

Even Daima had a key visual of Goku riding a dragon to hype the release of the show, yet does a dragon even show up for more than a frame or two?

I don’t see why it matters since the series has always referred to one specific dragon. It’s not like the series is called “We totally have a fuckton of dragons in this story”

[Yuji]

What does everyone think of the lack of dragons in the series?

They're obviously plastered all over Toriyama illustrations and covers, as well as anime filler and GT, but in the series itself, the only dragons are wish granting ones.

Even Daima had a key visual of Goku riding a dragon to hype the release of the show, yet does a dragon even show up for more than a frame or two?

I don’t see why it matters since the series has always referred to one specific dragon. It’s not like the series is called “We totally have a fuckton of dragons in this story”

I think it's curious it flirts so much with the imagery of dragons without including any in the story proper.

[Scsigs]

Also, different topic. What's with the rumors that Toei may be rebooting the Super anime with an adaptation on the manga's version of events? I don't think that makes any sense to do unless they're adapting the arcs that they haven't animated yet that people want them to do.

First I'm hearing of this. That would be a pretty bad move, IMO. They should just adapt the arcs that are manga exclusive. I don't think anybody wants another reboot for Super. It's bad enough that they started the series by doing Battle of Gods and Resurrection F again, but worse.

Yeah. It's all just rumors & speculation as far as I know. All based on apparently Toei repeatedly DMCA-ing a storyboard of an alternate take of the scene from Battle of Gods where the other Saiyans power up Goku to Super Saiyan God where Gohan's in a different outfit than either the movie or the show. I don't know if that's indicative of Toei doing a reboot of the show adapting the manga, though. Especially since most of it would be stuff they've already covered in 2 movies & their own show to mixed results & the manga's own versions of some things are bad in their own right.
It would just make more sense to bring back the show to adapt the arcs that they haven't done yet & even throw in show adaptations of the Broly & Super Hero movies since there was a lot cut from the Broly movie & seeing a 2D animated Super Hero would be cool.

[ABED]

I think I would have liked Fake Namek better if it wasn’t 3 episodes and also tied to the canon stuff. You can’t really skip those episodes because Vegeta recovering at the medical bay and finding out about Freeza going after the dragon balls are in those episodes and the last episode has the trio making it to actual Namek.

Speaking of, I wish Toei had done more stuff with the voyage to Namek beyond the space orphans and fake Namek episodes. Feels like they ended up paying for not spacing themselves out further from the manga with the Goku vs Freeza fight. Perhaps they didn’t anticipate Toriyama keeping everyone on Namek for as long as he did.

The curse of the longrunning anime based on a manga. I'm assuming this type of shit is why Toei's switching to a seasonal format with One Piece & Studio Periot waited way too damn long to do the last arc of the Bleach manga. I think doing that is smart because it'll take less episodes to adapt an arc, the manga can get farther ahead with material, they can put more of a budget, time, & manpower into producing episodes, & not have to produce filler. Bleach got especially egregious with its filler, of which they went with doing smaller arcs rather than strings of episodes. Apparently, even the Japanese Blu-Rays for the series don't have the filler episodes. I specifically remember a filler in the middle of the 2nd or 3rd manga arc the anime adapted had the narrator break the 4th wall & just tell the audience it was filler (not with those specific words, but that's what the words meant), so I was just like, "Ok," & just looked up a guide & skipped to the next episode that adapted the manga again because I didn't give a flying fuck about it. Otherwise, Bleach generally has good pacing in the anime adaptation.
I think this is also where Kai benefited from the recut. The fact that they had to add so much filler later on to the arc that literally added up to nothing necessitated it.

The point is that I've come to enjoy filler. I don't know why everyone is in such a rush to get to the end of a TV show. So much of what people think is filler isn't actually filler, nor does something being filler make it bad just like something being canon doesn't make it good.

[Kid Buu]

I enjoy most filler, to be honest. There was even a point where I dreadded using the word filler because it has such a negative conntation to it.

[JulieYBM]

What gets me is people taking the term 'filler'—so heavily associated with anime-original story beats—and applying it to one-off episodes, regardless if they advance the story a ton. Episodic stories are useful tools, people, don’t shit on them!!

[ABED]

What gets me is people taking the term 'filler'—so heavily associated with anime-original story beats—and applying it to one-off episodes, regardless if they advance the story a ton. Episodic stories are useful tools, people, don’t shit on them!!

This drives me nuts. If you just want a streamlined plot, then maybe movies are more your lane. Part of the assumption is quality over quantity, but given the current phenomena of fewer episodes with longer gaps between seasons and not a commensurate increase in quality, I don't think that maxim holds true. Meanwhile, Toriyama had an insane workload and that stretch from the 22nd TB through Freeza is stellar. Sometimes quality is because artists hit a groove.

[Yellow Flower King]

People complain about filler and bloated episode totals but if DB didnt have the ammount of episodes it does, it would have never endured on like it did on tv. Sure Linear TV is DEADER THAN DEAD but back then having DB, DBZ and DB GT run on a strip like they did meant you could literally stumble upon a cool new random episode and have fun.

[MasenkoHA]

What gets me is people taking the term 'filler'—so heavily associated with anime-original story beats—and applying it to one-off episodes, regardless if they advance the story a ton. Episodic stories are useful tools, people, don’t shit on them!!

This drives me nuts. If you just want a streamlined plot, then maybe movies are more your lane. Part of the assumption is quality over quantity, but given the current phenomena of fewer episodes with longer gaps between seasons and not a commensurate increase in quality, I don't think that maxim holds true. Meanwhile, Toriyama had an insane workload and that stretch from the 22nd TB through Freeza is stellar. Sometimes quality is because artists hit a groove.

Honestly kill the 6-9 episodes seasons with like 2-3 years in between crap. Strangers Things taking 9 years for 5 seasons is crazy. Especially for a show that, from everything I heard, carried its success off a solid first season and never kept the momentum.

13 to 26 episodes tv seasons is always going to be more ideal. You need those breather episodes. I believe we had this convo before but Buffy’s 4ths season is a great example of a show’s done in one episodes being stronger than it’s storyline episodes.

I also wish filler was seen more as a neutral term than the negative connotations it has as “a waste of time”

[JulieYBM]

What gets me is people taking the term 'filler'—so heavily associated with anime-original story beats—and applying it to one-off episodes, regardless if they advance the story a ton. Episodic stories are useful tools, people, don’t shit on them!!

This drives me nuts. If you just want a streamlined plot, then maybe movies are more your lane. Part of the assumption is quality over quantity, but given the current phenomena of fewer episodes with longer gaps between seasons and not a commensurate increase in quality, I don't think that maxim holds true. Meanwhile, Toriyama had an insane workload and that stretch from the 22nd TB through Freeza is stellar. Sometimes quality is because artists hit a groove.

I know that I say this a lot, but the major issue at hand is both money and bad producing habits. These productions SHOULD be higher quality than they are, but they aren’t, because they're not being made with skill and discipline. Marvel movies and shows change shit in post constantly, higher production series all have ugly senses of how to use digital cameras, and lighting is terrible, too.

When it comes to Hollywood use of digital cameras, I think the best that I've seen for a series is Superman and Lois, especially before its budget was slashed. Even still, there are some really gorgeous shots in the final season set outside on the Kent family farm that have beautiful colors.

Severance as a series really soured my opinion of it during the second season, but Season 2 Episode 7 is still really mind blowing to me on all levels. This episode was largely a flashback and those scenes were shot on 35mm, instead of digital. As a result, the flashbacks all have a really gorgeous and grainy look that make them easily look really nice on the eyes.

I don't think the shorter season format is inherently an issue, and I like the greater focus on giving actors and directors time to do the work, but there’s absolutely a ton of room to work in improving modern Hollywood television. I also very much would like to return to the era of longer seasons, and that typically requires more writers—staff and freelancer alike—which I absolutely want to see happen. Executives have been trying to kill the writer's rooms—which mean salaries and royalties—for years and the move to streaming has definitely helped with that. That shit needs to be fought against and I don't think that we should be arguing from a position of our art getting less time and money for productions as a result.

[super michael]

That's my long-winded way of saying that I really wish Dragon Ball had similarly altered its comic-adapting episodes to add their own flavor and character arcs in substantial ways that didn't just feel like spinning wheels.

I do wish Toei would at least stick to their guns when making a change instead of falling back in line with what Toriyama does.

Gohan talking about how he’s rather play than study and sneaking off to train won’t matter because he eventually needs to fall in line with Toriyama’s version who is a nerd with no interest in martial arts and only fights when he has to. Ironically robbing him of any agency and giving the impression he ended up the way he did because of Chi Chi and not because…he just prefers a book to boxing.

Goku can show affection to Chi Chi in filler until he needs to be Toriyama’s asexual interpretation


Kuririn’s daughter being named Marron is always going to have an awkward subtext in the animation that doesn’t exist in the manga because nobody at Toei thought “uh maybe we should give his daughter a different name than what Toriyama -sensei used since we already used a similar name for our OC girlfriend for him?”

Not to mention using the Saiyan arc anime-original episodes as material to guide Gohan as a character. Imagine how they could have tweaked Gohan freezing up against Nappa to have Gohan remember what he learned on his adventures while living in the wilderness? How that could have been mitigated and character beats changed? Or referencing them and the space orphans to bolster Gohan and Kuririn's rage towards Freeza early on?

Or heck, straight up changing Gohan's arc at the Cell Games.

That is a brilliant idea and I like it. I don't know why Toei didn't do that, I mean that did change the battle with Tenshinhan Vs Piccolo in the anime, which Tenshinhan used the Mafuba but captured the wrong opponent.
In the manga Tenshinhan never got to use the Mafuba since it was broken before the battle started.


Lets not forget the trial that Goku had to go through to get the Ultra Divine Water in the anime. In the manga Goku is just given the Ultra Divine Water.



Gohan remembering his time in the wild, as a way to help with his battle against the Saiyans would have been good.

[Scsigs]

People complain about filler and bloated episode totals but if DB didn't have the amount of episodes it does, it would have never endured on like it did on tv. Sure Linear TV is DEADER THAN DEAD but back then having DB, DBZ and DB GT run on a strip like they did meant you could literally stumble upon a cool new random episode and have fun.

I disagree. Dragon Ball had running storylines & characters the audience grew to love & some pretty inventive storytelling as well as Toriyama's artstyle that evolved over the decade he wrote the manga. This is similar to the people who argue that the FUNimation English dub of Z, as produced, is why Z became popular rather than everything else. Toei produced the animes the way they did because that was the standard in Japan for decades. Seasonal television was always more of a Western thing & animes going for seasonal routes is still relatively new. Japan treats it more as "Produce content to make money off merch & keep the hype going by constantly having something on TV." And, I really don't mind a show running all the time if the quality stays up, but the way DBZ was produced was constantly being bottlenecked by the production schedules Toei was throwing at the people involved. Toei had at least 4-6 studios producing the animation for DB & Z, but because they started producing 2 movies a year, they put their best animators on those, which took a few of the best studios off episodes for large swaths of time & half of the remaining studios produced mostly dogshit quality animation for Z & even GT. A more flexible production schedule for the studios with less episodes would've allowed for higher quality & consistent animation, or at least for the episodes to be corrected for their worst shots. It doesn't help that the episodes were usually produced in, what, the 2-3 months before they aired?
I think Super & Daima also show how production schedules have heavily impacted the franchise. Super was rushed into production & produced some of the worst-looking episodes of the franchise, as well as I think the writing really took a hit because the Toei writing staff didn't have a great handle on some of the characters or how to execute some of the story bits. Though, by contrast, I felt like most of the arcs after the first 2 had decent pacing to them due to adapting a plot outline rather than a manga. Daima, by contrast, they took their time with the animation & it looks great as a result. The writing, I've heard, can fluctuate, but I assume it has more good than bad before the...last few episodes with the transformations, at least.

In regards to certain manga-based animes being seasonal & them taking forever to release new batches of episodes, that's an unfortunate side effect of the slowly-changing anime industry & definitely started by Attack on Titan in 2013, where they adapted RIGHT up until about where the manga was at the time &, because the author of the manga needed time to produce more chapters to adapt, they had to halt production of the show for a few years. However, because of how they produced the show the way they did, the first season at least had great pacing & animation (minus the weird moments where they just drew 1 frame & shook it to imply what was happening under the music, sound effects, & voice acting). Other shows I think greatly benefitted from being produced as they were are Death Note & Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Death Note had fantastic pacing that keeps you engaged & wanting to continue the binge...at least for the first arc because the second sucked ass. Brotherhood, likewise, had great pacing, even if they rushed adapting the first handful of chapters that they previously adapted in the original anime to get to the new stuff. And I've had even otherwise diehard fans of the original Z say to me that Kai cutting down the majority of the filler & padding genuinely improved the pacing of the arcs from removing them.
I think the best filler is stuff that doesn't bog down the pacing of a story to make people think their time's being wasted. I mean, look at the smaller mini-arcs of Super. Most people love them because they focus on characters that don't usually get the spotlight anymore & some of them actually inform things that happen in the bigger arcs even if they're not always the best-animated. I think that's the best use of those kinds of episodes that you can produce. That's why some fans will defend the filler that the Toei writers wrote for Gohan in the Saiyan arc, or the driving episode, or the Great Saiyaman filler in the Buu Arc. Hell, I even enjoy the Otherworld Tournament mini arc in Z because it's a lot of fun in 4 episodes.
However, when what feels like filler is bad, it's bad in Dragon Ball, even passed the genuine padding. In GT, I fucking hate the board game episodes in the Baby Arc. While things happen elsewhere & it's a different take on getting Goku out of the way so the villain can advance their plans which even Z did way too much, I can't stand the space raccoons, the board game isn't very fun to watch being played, & it lasts too goddamn long. Hell, even the Super 17 mini arc, I don't care for. It rips off Fusion Reborn, a lot of it doesn't make any sense even by Dragon Ball's sometimes wonky logic, a lot of the writing sucks, & some of the episodes are really poorly animated.

It all depends on writing, pacing, & production values. There's also a distinct difference between the filler meant to actually pad out time by adding useless nonsense in the middle of an actual moving story, which I think is what most people rag on Z for having, & the filler that's stuff that takes place between the next parts of stories after an end to a previous plot point before the next one. Unfortunately, it all gets thrown together by a lot of people, but there IS a distinction.

[JulieYBM]

Seasonal television was always more of a Western thing & animes going for seasonal routes is still relatively new. Japan treats it more as "Produce content to make money off merch & keep the hype going by constantly having something on TV."

'Seasonal' anime have always existed. Not every anime is a long-running series like Dragon Ball was. Plenty of series were produced only to last for one, two, three or four cours (13-52 weeks).Even long-running anime were still planned out six months in advance so that studios and networks knew what the hell they would be airing and when.

I think Super & Daima also show how production schedules have heavily impacted the franchise. Super was rushed into production & produced some of the worst-looking episodes of the franchise, as well as I think the writing really took a hit because the Toei writing staff didn't have a great handle on some of the characters or how to execute some of the story bits. Though, by contrast, I felt like most of the arcs after the first 2 had decent pacing to them due to adapting a plot outline rather than a manga. Daima, by contrast, they took their time with the animation & it looks great as a result. The writing, I've heard, can fluctuate, but I assume it has more good than bad before the...last few episodes with the transformations, at least.

A series director leads the creative project as a whole, with a freelance writer—or writers—brought in to execute their idea, assuming the series director themselves does not know how to write (many don't, some do). A project like Dragon Ball Super was being produced based off of story outlines from Toriyama, but otherwise was influenced both by the series director and the needs of the production committee partners, which includes representatives from various parties. Kids cartoons like Dragon Ball have a ton of different factors to balance, one of which is both the audience they're making the series for—kids and their families who have to sit through that shit with them as well as whatever some producer wants to shill. With Super in particular, we knew that there was interference from a certain old producer for the series that was fucking up the production even worse during the early stages of the series.

On Dragon Ball Daima, the series had sixteen episodes finished before it began airing, if memory serves. The scripts were all written by Kakihara Yuuko, but were apparently supervised by Toriyama himself and Iyoku Akio, which meant that they didn't really reflect typical anime scripts. This also meant that the scripts don't really function as proper television episode scripts and therefore the structure feels off, although a large part of that probably also has to do with Daima being Series Director Yashima Yoshitaka's first time ever being a series director, a role he got without even having episode director experience.

I'm sure there are details I'm not privvy to, of course, but Daima's weaknesses are their own set of troubles. Giving Super the production schedule and that Daima got would have made for a more complete project than either wound up being.

In regards to certain manga-based animes being seasonal & them taking forever to release new batches of episodes, that's an unfortunate side effect of the slowly-changing anime industry & definitely started by Attack on Titan in 2013, where they adapted RIGHT up until about where the manga was at the time &, because the author of the manga needed time to produce more chapters to adapt, they had to halt production of the show for a few years. However, because of how they produced the show the way they did, the first season at least had great pacing & animation (minus the weird moments where they just drew 1 frame & shook it to imply what was happening under the music, sound effects, & voice acting). Other shows I think greatly benefitted from being produced as they were are Death Note & Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Death Note had fantastic pacing that keeps you engaged & wanting to continue the binge...at least for the first arc because the second sucked ass. Brotherhood, likewise, had great pacing, even if they rushed adapting the first handful of chapters that they previously adapted in the original anime to get to the new stuff. And I've had even otherwise diehard fans of the original Z say to me that Kai cutting down the majority of the filler & padding genuinely improved the pacing of the arcs from removing them.

Death Note works because it's a big ol' game of gay chicken between Light and L. The second part of the series is less gay chicken and more "Light is an even bigger misogynist, somehow," so of course the series falls apart. Inoue Toshiki's scripts leaning into the queerness of the series also helped to make the anime hit hard.

Hagane no Renkinjutsushi: Fullmetal Alchemist does a terrible job of adapting the series at first, because instead of adapting the story to move quicker, it's carelessly written. The writing and the greater focus on action scenes later in the series help lift the series up, but that first cour or two is really rough.