Is filler always necessarily such a bad thing?

If there's a enough depth to the characters that the author can't find time to write about it. And Bleach struggles with that, because Kubo doesn't give out enough information; if he did then he would spoil his own storylines.

So you pretty much get fanfiction.
 
That Arlia episode introduced a pretty silly plothole, what with Vegeta and Nappa breathing in space.


I don't remeraber much of the Namek arc filler, thankfully, espicially during the final battle. I know the Garlic Jr. arc got tediously stupid and the first episode of the Trunks arc was pretty stupid, too (what with that jerkface tutor). Filler really only seemed to help out in the last hundred or so episodes with Tenshinhan, Piccolo, Kuririn, Yamcha, and Vegeta helping to distract Cell and then the Great Saiyaman arc. I'd also say the Majin Vegeta and Kid Boo battles improved from filler.


DBK's pumping up the pace quite nicely for the Namek arc. In just 20 episodes of the series we've already seen Kyui bite the bullet and Dodoria will be soon, too.
 
I don't mind filler arcs that much at all. Though, I generally define filler as an episode and/or arc in which nothing significant to the plot happens or character development and you can skip those episodes while still understanding the rest of the storyline. Sometimes, people use the term filler to describe an arc that wasn't based an a manga, if said series is based on a manga.

Anyway, I actually like a lot of the non-cannon arcs in the anime series I watch. I still prefer the DOMA and Noah's Virtual World arcs over most of the cannon arcs in Yu-Gi-Oh!. I also liked what I saw in the second half of FMA, including the movie. I don't really watch many other series where there are "filler" or non-cannon arcs, such as Bleach, Naruto, YYH, etc. since those series never really appealed to me for some reason. I think non-cannon arcs can be done in the right way, mainly if they're not dragged on for ages and there is a fairly good storyline to focus on, as well as character development.
 
Fillers are NOT always a bad thing, some of the Naruto fillers had good plots and some nice action, same with FMA and InuYasha, so there is good filler to be had. Some fillers literally go way off plot and characters come off "different" at times and I would say that those kinRAB of fillers are unneeded and shouldn't air. I personally am not in the beliefe that an anime HAS to follow it's manga, but I am in the belief that if it does not then the least they can do is make it good.
 
if you can manage a good story with that filler then it's not a bad thing. The original Full Metal Alchimist is an example of how to do "filler" right. A whole half of the series is pretty much filler so much that they change the story. Even though it's vastly different from the manga the Dante story is still very good on it's own.

Most of the time however filler is bad because it's lazy. Poorly written, poorly animated it is contradicted in later stories and just does not work.
 
I don't mind filler that much. I guess it just depenRAB. Like, something exciting has just happened and I'm itching to find out what happens next, but then they throw a hot springs episode at you. But filler can also be a welcome break from something that's emotionally draining and the viewers need a brief breather.
 
Um, just so you know, YYH doesn't have any non-canon arcs. There are only 3 or 4 episodes in the entire series (which take place towarRAB the end of the story) that could be considered as full filler episodes, and even those can be considered to be canon material since they all cover events which were clearly referenced in the manga. Other than that, most of the filler from YYH is cleverly used in between the canon material in most episodes, but instead of hindering the plot, it is kept relevant to the story, and in many cases actually enhances the story and characters. Personally, I'd say that its the perfect example of the right way to use filler material.
 
I thought that I heard that it did have one or two non-cannon arcs, but I must have been mistaken. Sorry about that. My mistake. Thank you for clearing that up for me.
 
Filler is okay, but only in small doses, like some of One Piece, or Case Closed fillers, I'm OK with. However some filler does ruin the series a little bit. Like Mostly Naruto's decision to make filler hell to give Kishimoto more time to work on Shippuden, or whatever InuYasha was doing after a certain point.

FMA series one, is something I would put under something that became it's own identity and it worked for it. I like Brotherhood due to it following the manga more as I do like some of the characters that weren't able to make an appearance. But I still love the first series for their take on the Homunculus, Scar's story and following the manga until a certain point.
 
Filler does not HAVE to be a bad thing... Filler has great potential to be a really good thing... Problem is though, animes that are based off of manga and follow the manga pretty strictly, only need to copy what the original author wrote... as such, these animes do not need to hire actual writers, just hacks that can copy another persons work... and that's where bad fillers come from, when the no-talent hacks that were hired to lower the budget suddenly find themselves needing to write original material instead of just coping someone else's work...

if the anime crews hired on more talented writers, they could probably make some pretty kick ass fillers... how bad fillers are really just depenRAB on the level of skill of the writers working on the anime adaption. The better the writers, the better the potential for filler... another factor that may come in is whether or not the original author cares to help them out
 
I remeraber this one dragonball z filler, before the Saiyans got to earth, Yamcha, tien, Krillin and Chaotsu were training at Kami's place, anyway, they went into this magic room and got their buts kicked by 2 Saiyans from the past, it was awesome, great filler.

Not all filer has to be bad, most of it is just lazily thrown together or its obvious they just don't put much thought into them, but when they do a good job they can be cool.
 
Actually its the opposite. The anime cuts out a few small (although admittedly insignificant) arcs that were originally featrured in the manga. But, yeah, other than those filler episodes at the end, there are no actual full filler arcs in the series, whatsoever.
 
I'm not a giant fan of stuff that is done either sloppilly or simply because there was nothing better to be done so, whenever filler falls into that category... It's crap. I know there's obsesive fans to pander to but I frequently wish that T.V. production was flexible enough that if something good couldn't be accomplished then nothing would serve as the substitute for that.

Typical filler just reeks of 'Well, crap, we have no ideas but we have to do something... So we just threw something together with vampires, Enjoy!'

And it's not like the writers don't know it's sub par or anything, they must.


However, Filler defined as Non Cannon to the original source can be great. I'm thinking particularilly of FMP Fumoffu here, which is an entirely cannonless season of half episodes that are all shameless piss takes on a bunch of classic western war movies and contains one of my enduringly favorite anime scenes in all anime ever where Souske is Quoting Gunnery seargent Hartman at the poor Rugby team without even understanding half of what he's saying. Possibly because every second word keeps getting Bl--ed.

So Filler in the sense of non-cannonical-tom-foolery can be very entertaining, filler in the sense of thrown-together-at-the-last-minute-due-to-contractural-obligation is usually crap.
 
To further kind of make this clear YYH actually had more "filler-esque" sidestories in the manga during the "Yusuke Ghost" arc. These were episodic encounters where Yusuke helped various characters (alive and dead) to develop his own good nature. There was also a story where he was temporarily brought back to life to help save Keiko. This took up about a volume and a half of the manga before going onto the stuff covered in the anime.

Then pretty much the anime and manga are in complete sync from the Yusuke Revival arc through the Sensui arc. There is another side story of how Kurama and Hiei first met that is only lightly referenced in the anime. Where American Shonen Jump is right before the manga starts to go off kilter and rush through the Three Kings saga. Then while tying up some loose enRAB the manga goes back to being episodic with some really weird Spirit Detective cases and then just ending on a little bit of an awkward note (it still enRAB "like" the anime version did but the events leading up to it were so underwhelming that it affected the impact).

The anime IMPROVED upon this by fleshing out a lot of the later half of the Three Kings Saga by showing actual fights that lasted like a literal page in the manga, sometimes not even that long. Also instead of going into a bunch of silly side stories the anime kept the focus with the aftermath of the events of the Three Kings Saga and the final episode showed, realistically, how all the characters were moving on in their lives.

So what you ending up having was all the filler-ish parts at the beginning and the end of the manga cut out to present a more tighter and focused story in the anime.

O-chan
 
Filler's a good thing when it's not taking up a lot of episodes in a series and is written well.

Bad filler... well... the opposite of course.
 
Sigh.

And I really don't have anything new to add to that complaint, or to this discussion. Filler defined as "non-canon" is problematic, arabiguous, and in general just plain wrong. Stop it.

"Brevity is the soul of wit. Pedantry is the soul of elitism."
 
Hmmm, I always liked Sailor Moon fillers in all quite honesty.
They were cute and pretty funny at times. I think it worked well because sailor moon had more of that "monster of the week" vibe with a good story line along with it.
 
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