HOBBY CHAOS - Bruneian Otaku | Geek | Entertainment Blog: Anime Fillers: Love it or Hate it?

I read a very interesting article on JEFusion this afternoon; Anime fillers. In the article, GekiDan shares his opinion on anime fillers.

Anime fillers: Do you like it? Or do you hate it?

Before that, here is a brief description of an anime filler. Anime fillers are basically episodes that do not exists on the original source material or manga. A filler can be as short as a single episode (existing on short animes) or can be as long as an entire season (existing on long running animes). Fillers, as the name implies, "fills" an episode with non-canonical material which has been written usually by the same company which animates it.

So why do they make fillers?



First, most of the time, the animation company had begun catching up with the source materials (manga/light novels) and they need to give the author an ample time to write more chapters. This is very much present on most ongoing manga/anime adaptations like One Piece, Bleach and Naruto.

Second, most animes adapt two or more chapters in each episode, and there are times that the climax very crucial, they add some scenes to give a cliffhanger to the episode. This will make the climax on the fresh and new episode.

[Image from OSiRis ANiMe]

Lastly, there are animes which have alot of popularity among viewers, that the animation studio tends to add fillers to extend its airing. With that popularity, they could earn lots of profits through advertisers and merchandises. This reason is present on the anime Naruto. With it's popularity, they delayed the airing of Shippuuden and aired almost 100 filler episodes.

If you read the manga, you can easily see if the episode is a filler or not. But if you are not a manga reader, how could we know if the episode we are watching are fillers or not? Here are some characteristics of a filler:

• It has pointless and boring episodes. You can always see this when each episodes focuses on the main characters' whole training period.
• It gives you more confusions on the actual story which will lead on the anime having plot holes.
• The story is very much different than the rest of the series since filler episodes are written by different persons.
• It introduces a new set of villains which are not an actual part of their main villain.
• Most of the time, it is shown before or after the climax of an arc.

Those are also the reasons why many anime fans hate filler episodes.

Based on my knowledge, most ongoing manga/anime adaptations, like Naruto, Bleach and One Piece, have the most fillers. And Naruto has the most number of fillers which lasted for almost a year.

There are also some animes which don't have any (or less) filler episodes. Most of the instances, these are short anime series which only lasts less than or at least 25 episodes (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Shakugan no Shana). Or animes which don't have any (Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann) or finished source material (Black Blood Brothers).

But in my experience on watching anime for more than a decade, there are fillers episodes in which the story are good and exciting to watch which will build-up the excitement throughout the climax.

You can read the original article here.

In my opinion, some of the fillers are great and acceptable but some are don`t. Most of the episodes are usually boring and predictable. Sometimes they are confusing and it is ridiculous when they throw in a useless female who loves the main character.

Fillers are the reason why I stopped watching Naruto Shippuden. They suck, Naruto filler is ridiculously bad, specially when they mix in canon with filler episodes. Who would wanted to watch 18 minutes of crap to enjoy 2 minutes of canon?! For those who don't watch filler, this will actually ruins the whole story.

In your own opinion, do you love or hate anime fillers?

Credits to JEFusion^^,