Is filler always necessarily such a bad thing?

J

jake1236987

New member
Is anyone out there willing to admit that some filler was actually-dare I say it-good? I can't be the only one who liked seeing Vegeta and Nappa raise hell on planet Arlia, and I know I'm not the only one who liked the second half of Fullmetal Alchemist, so...Filler...is it really always such a bad thing?
 
Filler gave us Goku and Piccolo learning to drive, so you definitely can't say that filler is ALWAYS a bad thing.

Just the vast, vast majority of the time, that's all.
 
Filler itself is a neccessary evil for some anime particualarly the long-running shounen (unless it's YuYu Hakusho and I still have no idea how they pulled it off). Whether or not the filler itself is a bad thing is a tough decision but I think the quality is what matters which in that regard, most of it is crap. There's good filler like the current Bleach arc, D. Gray Man filler and considering that Case Closed is like 2/3 filler it can't be all bad.

Of course, filler gave us stuff like the mod souls and an infamous Naruto label. Filler also gave us the troll that is Endless Eight so I mean, it's kind of relative
 
Filler derailed Bleach in my view. It's one thing to have filler arcs. It's another thing to interrupt a canon arc with a completely different story that has nothing to do with it. It's crazy.

Whatever was filler in Full Metal Alchemist, it was good. I pretty much enjoyed the entire original series.

I don't mind anime original content at all. I do mind horrible pacing and ideas that aren't at all interesting, or are illogical.
 
I used to not have a problem with fillers. Before I even started reading manga I had no idea there was such a thing called fillers. I guess my main problem with fillers is that majority of them are pure comedies. (At least some of the ones I've seen are.) Give me filler where it's fighting, and the fighting is actually, well, good and then I just might be satisfied.

This zanpakuto filler for Bleach has me entertained so far. (At least the fight's have been pretty good and decently animated.)

Unless I can be convinced that the filler for One Piece is good I won't even bother with it.

I refuse to even bother with Naruto. (The only one I tried checking out was aimed at the comedy crowd.)

I wouldn't even have known that there was filler in FMA if people hadn't stated it. (Since I don't read the manga.) Outside of Ed and Al, I really had no problems with it. (I hear Soul Eater went in the same direction.)

I still haven't watched the last bits of Rurouni Kenshin. Especially ever since CN took it off-air after the Shishio arc ended.
 
To me, it's not always bad. Filler episodes help me take a break from a series which I think is important in some series that have serious plots. Anyway, there are some filler episodes that I like in different shows so it doesn't bother me.
 
Anime fandom in general has too broad a definition of filler, which all too often includes any form of episodic content, breather episodes, side plots, or adaptations of manga omake, so no, "filler" isn't always necessarily such a bad thing. On the other hand, studios crafting original endings or making up crap to avoid outpacing a manga is usually best avoided.

--Romey
 
Filler doesn't have to be bad, but it's usually hard to make well, and the studios usually don't seem to put much thought into it. The best "filler", by the definition of "not canon", is the second half of the first Fullmetal Alchemist anime series. Also, filler episodes for comedies like Gintama are usually good if the studios put some effort into them, because continuity isn't much of an issue.
 
I agree 100%


On a somewhat related tangent...

I kind of like it when an anime goes on it's own direction. When a show uses the manga as a literal storyboard, it kind of defeats the purpose of watching it.

edit:Now by that I don't mean that they should just abandon the canon source material, but they should try to shake things up a little.
 
Filler can be a very good thing, it saves shows from being canned when getting caught up to the original material, and it can give us a better look at the world the anime takes place in. Of course if the filler is bad as in durab plots and etc..then yeah it's bad filler. I think people get the idea of filler too much from Naruto.
 
Filler episodes, a lot of the time, are good. They're little glimpses at other scenes not taken from the manga - funny or scary or badass little bites of story. One of my favorite episodes of Rurouni Kenshin, for example, is the one where they ride a train up the coast. It make sense for the period, it shows some fun character interactions (Sanosuke does seem like the type that would be wary of new technology, doesn't he?), and has a simple but entertaining plot. And the aforementioned Goku/Piccolo driving episode - a silly little diversion from the main, serious plot. There's also stinkers, but... if it's just one episode, does it really hurt?

It's filler arcs - long stretches of filler - that AREN'T good. The entire second half of Naruto. The end of Rurouni Kenshin. Bleach's Bount storyline. They're not BAD ideas, in theory - a lot of the time, at least; stuff like Feng Shui Ninja Wars are just painful - but they're stretched and mangled and distract too much from the main plot. If they suck, unlike episodic filler, you need to deal with this suck for weeks while they try and hammer things out.
 
I was talking more about the manga-based episodes of the original series vs. the original ones. A lot of the stuff from the manga that they tried to use felt very forced - the pacing for a lot of emotional/humorous scenes felt off, and in other places it was like they were putting in manga stuff "just because." (Keeping Barry around for an extra episode so that he can do... nothing? And then trying to squeeze the "Do you hate me, Al?!?!" conversation into the ensuing fight scene? Bleh.) I still haven't seen any of Brotherhood.
 
I definitely agree with you about YYH. That's the perfect example of the "right" way to handle filler. It actually made the anime's story feel better and more fleshed-out than the manga's, rather than feel slower-paced and more dragged out. I also have no idea how they managed to pull that off, but I still wish that more anime would somehow follow that example.
 
Man, even though Dragonball had a lot of fillers, its no near where Naruto fillers.

Well, at least Naruto didn't got cancel by its fillers unlike Inuyasha.
(I think)
 
FMA doesn't have any filler. It's just a very loose adaptation. Filler episodes are generally ones that don't advance any plot or character development, which pretty much every single episode of FMA did.
 
Back
Top