Animated Serials - When you think they'll catch on?

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ilovelife24

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Serials are all around prime-time television with shows like 24 and Heroes, but there's been very few treks into the format with animated shows. The only few I can recall in (somewhat) recent memory are Invasion America in 1998 and W.I.T.C.H.: TAS in 2004.

I understand why networks don't make them; it's more or less impossible for new viewers to tune in which equals low ratings, but when do you think people (and I suppose networks) will open up to the idea more and they'll become more popular for the action genre? I'm hoping the success of prime time serials will eventually help.
 
I have a problem with your initial assertion that there haven't been many animated serials. Off the top of my head, Avatar, X-Men: Evolution, Spectacular Spider-Man, The Secret Saturdays, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and the latter seasons of Justice League were all serials. I'm pretty sure that Ben 10 and Ben 10 Alien Force were serials, too, although the latter far more than the former from what I can tell, and Speed Racer: The Next Generation seems to be a serial as well. I thought American Dragon: Jake Long and The Batman were both serials by their last seasons, but I never watched either one regularly, so I can't say for sure. The upcoming Wolverine and the X-Men is a serial, and I think the new Iron Man cartoon is going to be more like a serial than something like Batman: The Brave and the Bold. If you want to stretch it to shows which just have a sense of continuity but don't have to be watched in a strict order, I think you could probably rule in Three Delivery. There's tons of serials out there.

I am also not convinced that serials are impossible to get into if you don't start from day 1. I've picked up serials well past their debuts and back-tracked on DVD or on-demand or used Wikipedia and episode guides on the Internet to catch up. I do think that most serials hit a point when they stop writing to be accessible and start writing for the existing fans, but if a serial is cool enough, people will make the effort to watch the older stuff.

Serials are harder to produce and program than non-serials, though. Most animated shows are working on 2-3 episodes simultaneously, but if one gets held up in production, it's going to delay everything that comes after it in a serial. The fact that you have to air them in order for the story to make sense also damages their prospects for syndication, but with the increasing number of channels on cable these days, I think that problem has become less of an issue.

-- Ed
 
To tell you the truth, those shows aren't completely serials. Sure, they have a season (or even series)-arcing plot, and many episode contribute to it. But not every episode in a few of those series added anything. They had a few stand-alones where you can easily get on, and from that point you can kinda ease into the plot (though seeing earlier episodes would help).
 
To be honest, cartoons done in a serial fashion have never been a major attraction for me; if a show is done in such a manner and it's done well, then that's nice and all, but it's never been all that important or fascinating to me.

But then, it should be noted that I'm more into comedic cartoons than action-oriented ones, so I guess it wouldn't be a big deal to me. :sweat:
 
I guess I should clarify.

This is what I mean. If you want to use Wikipedia's definition of serial format Basically a series where each episode picks up where the last left off in a main storyline; like 24 and Heroes flow into the next episode with no downtime or random sidetracking. Invasion America and WITCH build upon each previous episode and had no real "filler" episodes. Stuff like Ben 10 Alien Force and Avatar, while they have continuity and set goals (defeat the DNAliens/Fire Lord) are told episodically and often veer off track from the main goal. They're set up in a "adventure of the day" sort of thing, and their adventures can have nothing to do with their goal (like Ben fighting random villains who aren't the DNAliens, or Aang helping out numerous people/towns with their problems on his journey)

So, basically, think of animated shows similar to 24's structure; which is pretty much impossible to jump onto midway and understand everything; which obviously isn't great for reruns. I'm just wondering if the rise of more primetime serials will begin to apply to animated series.
 
Sure, but each networks only hand a few at a time.



The Spectacular Spider-Man I'd say is a serial cartoon in that each episode plot does carry over into the next. Infact Season 1 for instance has 4 story arcs each about 3 to 4 episodes. The end of the story arcs will set up the next story arc in turn.



The fact that serials exist in any medium at all proves that there is a market for them. I attribute it to the general public not being use to the idea that the serial format can work in animation. When people think cartoons, they immediately think of comedy or semi-serious action cartoon.

To look at it another way, when a kid tries a new food item, it sometimes takes awhile to acquire a liking to it. The problem with animated serials on the other hand is that they are in small supply, thus not enough titles to get the audience use to them.
 
The main thing that I don't like about animated serials is that they can't be shown in a completely random fashion without baffling newcomers to the show. Unless you've seen every episode of the series leading up to that point, you'll have no idea what's going on.

That's why I personally prefer shows in which each episode is a self contained story with no cliffhanger endings. As long as you know the general overview of the series, you can tune in to pretty much any episode and know what's going on.
 
If you're going to go with that strict of a definition of a serial, then I'd question whether they really have caught on in live-action TV, since I don't think there are that many shows other than 24, Lost, and Heroes that have a single season-long story arc and don't ever digress from it (I'm taking your word for it on Lost and Heroes, since I don't watch either). What other live-action shows do you think qualify as serials under this definition? I would have called The West Wing, the new Battlestar Galactica, or this season of The Unit serials, but I don't think any of them would really qualify because they all have their filler/digression episodes or episodes where the main plot only inched forwards and the rest of the episode was largely irrelevant.

I would also say that The Spectacular Spider-Man and Avatar are still serials by your definition, although the first half of Avatar's first season wasn't so tightly coupled and the first half of the third season was a bit padded. Avatar might not have been an exceptionally well done serial by the end, but it was definitely intended to be one.

In any event, I think the obstacle to doing something like 24 in the past was that before VCRs, 500 cable TV channels, and TV on DVD and Internet video, you were dependent on seeing the episode when it aired the first time and there was no easy way to catch up if you missed it. Between all those technologies I mentioned, this is no longer true. It's easier than ever to watch an episode of a show and catch-up on what you missed if you like it. In a sense, I think more serial-ish fiction (if not proper serial fiction as you define it) may be becoming more common because it's an incentive for people to buy the DVDs. If something is a true serial, then people will want to watch it again to see if things line up properly and pick out all the little minutiae.

However, as I mentioned, I think the way animated series are made makes it a lot harder for them to be as tightly serialized as something like 24. You have to work on 2-3 episodes at a time or else you're going to spend a lot of time twiddling your thumbs, but that also means that if episode 6 gets delayed for any reason, then you're also stuck delaying episode 7 and 8, and probably every episode after that. A network is then faced with a scheduling nightmare or a much larger outlay (and risk) to do all the episodes up front and not schedule them until they're almost all done. Of the 2 serials you mentioned, Invasion America was a mini-series (and, judging by the way it aired, was indeed finished before it started airing) and WITCH was an import, meaning Disney bought the show a season at a time. Don't ask me how the folks who did WITCH did it, though.

-- Ed
 
Pretty much. There's a few, like Shin-Chan, that aren't, and the same goes for a lot of filler in long-running shonen series like One Piece, Naruto, or Case Closed, but Japanese animation, especially considering the shows that are licensed for international markets, tend to be more serialized than Western animation.

Also, I've noticed the French/Japanese co-pro Oban Star-Racers has been virtually ignored. That show is a pure serial. with a lot of seemingly innocent/nonsensical plot elements introduced early on that become a lot more important later.
 
If enough serial anime series have become popular in the U.S., then why not produce more serial cartoons here? I think their relative absence has more to do with tradition than anything else. Although it is difficult to start watching a serial in the middle, most shows are eventually replayed. For that reason, although the serial format may cause fewer new people to start watching the show, it could also increase the ratings of reruns as people who missed the first several new episodes decide to watch the reruns. Also, with a serial, people who have watched the early episodes often become attached to the show and want to keep watching to see what happens. In other words, they may be less likely to stop watching in the middle. Therefore, I find it difficult to accept the argument that the serial format would reduce ratings.

I also do not accept that the presence of filler material disqualifies something from being considered a serial. If it is difficult to understand episode 7 without having seen episode 5, then why does it matter if episode 6 is merely a filler? A more difficult question is where to draw the line, as in how much filler material a show can contain and still be a serial, but to say 0% sounds too exclusive.
 
For the original poster...

I think they have already caught on, look at Ben 10:AF and Clone Wars, both are doing very well. I hope to see more in the future but to the casual toon watcher they may not be too popular because of the plot flow...
 
I suppose so; it's hard enough to find a serious cartoon with a main plot, let alone one with a serial narritive.

I would say they have "caught on" in the ratings. They are (or at least were, haven't checked in awhile) huge in the ratings on primetime. While most of TV is episodic, the few serial series were met with much commercial success and weren't backlashed against, so it must mean there's a market and viewers like them. Though rather than make more new serials, they seem content with milking the ones they already have (24's been going for...wow, over 7 years now?) I suppose while the format is accepted, the networks seem to be reluctant with making anything than something they already know works (i.e renew 24 for another season rather than make a replacement series) but you could say that for all TV shows, I suppose.

I don't know, the definition states that each episode has to flow into the next, and while Avatar has a few times like that (like the Ba Sing Sei stuff) a lot of episodes entail them helping a random person/village and flying off into the sunset at the end so the next episode can start similarly. Compared to the other shows where the ending events of the episode are basically the beginning or basis for the next episode. Spectacular Spider-Man might fit, but it's only had a fraction of the episodes so far and I don't think we can properly judge it until it ends (though to me it doesn't seem like it, the arcs may have serial narritive, but there's not as much between the arcs themselves since the show was written in arcs rather than a series-long storyline like IA or WITCH which each had a main goal)

This I agree with. I think serial narritive complement DVD sales; I know I bought the first season of 24 to "catch up" before I watched season 2 (the first time I saw the show on TV), atleast, and the rise of VHS/DVD has given networks more assurance.

WITCH was American (the writing was done in the US, anyway, the animation was done overseas though, obviously). And I'm not sure I follow, I know networks have a habbit of airing episodes out of order, but I'm not sure how often that's because of production problems so much as them simply not caring, or because they want to do some gimmicky marathon (i.e. airing Halloween episodes around Halloween) WITCH didn't suffer from production hinderances, it aired fairly consistanly (besides all the channel/time changes, I mean, and airing an episode out of order because it was a Halloween one, which spoiled about 20 major plot issues)

I was trying to limit it to US animation (or at least US-co-pros) Though I never watched much of Oban so I can't comment.

Serial narritive relies on the episodes all being connected and flowing into one another. I personally dislike filler and find it just lazy writing. I suppose technically as long as the filler flowed into the previous/next episodes it would be serial, but it probably wouldn't be filler if it was that important.
 
There a few more serialized animated series out there that haven't been mentioned. Like the early seasons of the 2K3 TMNT series - for the first season at least, even the "filler" episodes had something happen in them that played into the next episode. So they weren't real filler I guess.


There were still lots that weren't successful though. The year after Lost premiered there was a whole ton of new serial dramas (Invasion, Surface, etc.) and pretty much all of them flopped. The season after that networks went back to primarily episodic shows. There were a few more after that, like Jericho (I'm under the impression it's a serial, I don't actually watch this though) that also flopped in the ratings.

The thing about serial dramas is that their reruns get terrible ratings and they're a hard sell for syndication, where the real money lies. The DVDs tend to sell great though, so that's why they keep pumping out new seasons of the older ones. Though in the case of Lost, it's been planned to end at Season 6 for a while now, so that they aren't milking at all.



Prison Break. Hell you can't miss even part of a given episode for a bathroom break without falling horribly behind.


Anime series are kind of dying out in popularity though. Look at how few anime series are on TV now.


Except the fact is, the reruns don't get higher ratings. That's just how the trend has been for serialized series thus far. They used to show Lost reruns during the broadcast season but now they don't because the reruns did terrible, getting mere fractions of the first-run episodes' ratings. While ratings of episodic shows have done much better.

I know that may not sound right but that's just how it's happened. That's why they don't air reruns of competition reality shows like Survivor or American Idol either. Same idea, they're shows that you watch specifically to find out what happens next.


Well yeah, you've got a more dedicated core fanbase, but there's hardly anyone new coming in. And you steadily lose viewers as the show goes on. The first season tends to always get the highest ratings. This is true for Lost, Prison Break, Heroes, and so on.

24 is pretty much the only serial series to buck this trend, but if I'm not mistaken (I don't watch this show) the individual seasons themselves are more or less self-contained, hence the show can go on for so many years, which isn't true for the others I mentioned.
 
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