Lamenting sequels
We touched on it a bit in our Year in Review article, but 2008 did have a lot of sequels and 2009 so far seems to be following that trend. Is it more sequels than usual? Well, I haven’t bothered sorting through the data, but it sure feels that way. The difference between last year and years before isn’t so much that there have been a crapload of second seasons, but that these second seasons have cropped up in places where one wouldn’t initially expect them, and there have also been a rise in prominence of third seasons. We’re currently into a third season of Minami-ke and a fourth season of Marimite. Last year we had a third season of Zero no Tsukaima and the third season of ARIA. Later this year we’ll have a third season of Nodame Cantabile. I’m not going to bother with the question “has there been more sequels of late” because I’m not prepared to do the number crunching to answer that question… at this point in time anyway. My question is, is the proliferation of sequels a good or bad thing for anime as medium for creative storytelling.
One might immediately think that the answer is probably no, but I don’t think it’s that obvious. Anime tends to have more success with quality sequels than, say, Hollywood does (Hollywood has a reputation for uninspiring sequels when compared with the original), and I’d speculate that anime, as a medium, is better geared towards making the most of sequels since it has the right mix of between the self-contained stories of Hollywood films and the serial-like nature of Western television. The most compelling sequels are the likes of ARIA and Full Metal Panic! The Second Raid, which work because we’ve had time to familiarize ourselves with the characters. In both cases, the logical next step was character development of a more intimate and meaningful nature, and both franchises managed to deliver, which is why their sequel works ended up being more memorable than the originals.
The two big sequels of the Fall 2008 season were ef – a tale of melodies and Nodame Cantabile ~Pari-hen~ and in both cases, by the time they had finished, the unfavourable comparisons with their respective first seasons were pretty much universal. These were follow-ups to quality works and in both cases the expectations were high and similarly, in both cases, neither lived up to expectation. Personally, I’d also put Clannad After Story in the same category, if we were to only consider the first eight episodes (the part which isn’t actually “After Story” as the source material defines it), but the difference is that After Story is still going and has plenty of time (and means) to redeem itself. But were sequels of any of these three titles necessary? On one hand, no one of these titles presented a complete narrative in their first seasons. On the other hand, all three of them did present a conclusion at the end of their first seasons that did have some sense of resolution, if not finality. melodies did likewise, but it worked with a largely new cast which simply wasn’t developed as well as the first series’ (in fact, melodies is a bit of an odd-ball in that it’s story wasn’t a direct continuation of the story from memories, but they were more two stories that had multiple connecting threads), but Pari-hen‘s ending was a weak resolution, and was so open that one couldn’t be sure it was the end of the last episode of the season unless they were told explicitly. Nodame Cantabile gets away with it because its producers know that a third season has already been promised, but ultimately that’s still an excuse for weak storytelling. The same can be said about the first season of Code Geass. The frustration of a cliffhanger ending is numbed because the audience knew it would be soon before the story would start again (quite literally as we later found out). We unfortunately weren’t given that luxury with the anime version of Berserk (accept it, there’ll never be a second season, just read the manga…)
I guess part of the reason is that endings are so important in anime, particularly for Western viewers. Endings are what separates anime from the average Western TV series, which, unabated, would take every opportunity to keep going on and on and on. Sequels do two things: firstly, it has the potential to forgive the writers from the pressure of having to come up with a proper ending and, secondly, it gives producers an excuse for just presenting the same thing over and over again. Zero no Tsukaima is a particularly infamous example. How much development have we had in its two sequel series? It doesn’t matter, because almost all of the development from a season gone by is reset right at the beginning of the next. The consequence is a repetitive story, but producers know people will watch because they’re already attached to the franchise. They’ll watch because they want to know what’s going to happen next. A sequel has a huge advantage over an original series because it already has an established audience, while an original series has to earn one. This not only explains why sequels are becoming more and more prominent, but also why there’s (seemingly) less and less anime-original scripts (ie, anime not based on an existing source material). There was Kaiba and Xam’d last year, and Dennou Coil back in 2007, but other than that, I can’t think of too many other anime-original works. Which is a pity, since anime-original works tend to be among the medium’s most creative.
ef – a tale of melodies is an aberration which has its own unique explanations, but titles like Nodame Cantabile ~Pari-hen~ in particular, and Zero no Tsukaima: Princesses no Rondo, Minami-ke Okawari, the first eight episodes of Clannad After Story, Rozen Maiden: Träumend, Gunslinger Girl ~Il Teatrino~, Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS and (believe me, I know how controversial it is to make implications about the following series’ creative staff in the current climate) Code Geass R2, among numerous others, almost suggest that anime makers don’t put the same amount of care and effort into making sequels than they do with the original.
Is anime becoming like the video game industry? At every E3, invariably the titles that generate the most hype are ones from established franchises. Of late, the new season anime line-ups have proved to be very similar. I can see the sense in pushing sequels from a marketing perspective, but I’ve never been one to think that marketing considerations aid the creativity, storytelling power and enjoyability of anime series. Sequels are fine, but not every series needs one. This is part of the problem, I think. We, as fans, talk in terms of series “deserving” sequels. Just because a series “deserves” a sequel, doesn’t mean it needs one. Series that need a sequel are the ones where the story is still wide open and/or the characters stand to truly benefit from a more refined and pointed type of analysis and development that can only be done once the necessary familiarity has been well and truly established by the original. People forget that when you make a sequel, you also put the reputation of the original on the line. Why do that? For the sake of marketing? How sad. Especially on the back of a year where creativity in anime has been at a premium.
I believe the main plight of sequels are that they have the ability to be either big successes or disappointments in comparison to their prequels. Since sequels are already built on the fact that the (mostly main) characters are already introduced in the prequel, the sequels should focus more on the plot and storyline development. Furthermore, it’s also the chance for the staff to improve on the things that mar the prequel, should there be some.
With these expectations, sequels often fell into mediocrity mostly of either not being up to expectations, or they offered more of what wasn’t really the best for the sequel i.e. simply more of what made the prequel instead of something different. I’ll give a strange analogy: it’s like a bowl of spaghetti with meatballs. It’s normal for people to be drawn to the meatballs and not to the spaghetti. For the second dish (aka the sequel), more meatballs are given and people would be bored perhaps it’s still the same thing no matter how one looks at it. It’s not wrong to give a little more of what people want, but to be better than their prequels, sequels must offer something different. That’s how Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei – which I’m currently watching – becomes better than the first season, by making the humor more nonrandom in my view (ignoring episode 2).
Every production has its own particular elements, requirements and circumstances that help determine its quality but there does seem to be a trend of inferior or at least mediocre sequels coming out recently with only a few exceptions.
Curiously enough, you’d think adaptations should usually allow for better sequels, because of past experience with the preexisting material, yet that isn’t always the case.
I can’t really speak about most of the shows mentioned -make of that what you will- but in the case of Full Metal Panic! the most important factor seems to have been move from Gonzo to KyoAni, which also led to higher quality production values all across the board.
I’ve heard that also applies, although usually in the opposite direction, to some of the other series under discussion. Moving a certain production from one studio to another can be both a blessing and a curse. The same could be said about certain branches within certain studios, I imagine.
And to make this something of a reply to both the above and the Year in Review editorial…Code Geass R2 is a good example of what happens when external factors and new demands upset a fragile balance between seasons. Marketing, of course, is included, though how much that affects a show varies. The Gundam franchise is incredibly commercial all across the board but its quality also wildly varies.
Even so, in my opinion Geass R2 is also an example of how, despite the fact most people won’t care or notice this at all, busy as they were with memes…superficial insanity and other evils in scriptwriting are not always an obstacle to providing proper closure and respecting certain themes. The core of the script, if you will, can be strong even if its corners seem to fall apart at times.
I would in fact like to see more sequels that, at least, accomplished this much instead of going nowhere.
Oh yeah, it might have received mixed reactions here, but I thought that Code Geass R2 was still essentially a good anime, it just didn’t live up to its predecessor. Unfortunately, for every R2 we get, a series that mightn’t have been as good as the original, but was still a worthwhile addition to the overall storyline, we seem to get a crapload of Zero no Tsukaima Season 3s or School Rumble Season 2s or Nanoha sequels (Nanoha is to action moe what Gundam is to action mecha, neither will die unless the market kills them) or even Gunslinger Girl ~Il Teatrino~, which is an example of one of these changes in production company gone horribly wrong that you talked about. These are series that added very little to the overall storyline of their franchises, and felt very much like exercises in gathering audiences than exercises in telling a story.
I’ve been doing some light reading and thinking on this topic and reached a conclusion of sorts that the economy does play a massive role in dictating how willing a studio is to take a risk on something creative. We probably wouldn’t see something like Kimikiss (for example) being made under the current economic climate. Things are going to be tough for a little while, so anime makers are probably going to resort to proven formulas more often than trying to come up with ambitious ideas. This might partly explain why 2008 wasn’t such a great year for creative anime.
The main difference that sets anime sequels apart from, say, sequels of movies or video games (which, I believe you do not touch on) is the fact that, while sequels to movies and video games require lots of time to brainstorm a plot, most anime sequels have the plot cut out for them. A vast majority (indeed, I would argue more than half) of all anime produced is based off a work in an already-existing medium, be it an eroge (ef), a visual novel (Higurashi), a manga (Gunslinger Girl) or a light novel (Shana). Now, that being said, it takes significantly less creativity on the part of the writers to churn out sequels. Animating volumes 4-6 of Gunslinger Girl takes much less work than planning and brainstorming out a plot for Halo 2, for example.
It’s very interesting that you bring up the Western TV analogy; as someone who grew up with anime as opposed to CSI or Law and Order, I treat anime the same way as I treat Western TV shows. To me, they’re the same; this is why I’m never surprised by a sequel of an anime coming out; rather, I believe sequels are to be expected, especially if the original work from which the anime was derived is especially long.
The reason why anime is percieved to have better quality sequels than Hollywood also lies in the fact that it is mostly a derived, as opposed to original, medium. An interesting manga isn’t suddenly going to turn crappy after three or four volumes (well, some do, but this is extremely rare, you’d agree), and therefore, as long as the animation studio continues to do what it has done and stick to a great original work, it will continue to churn out quality material.
This is also why sequels fail; the lack of original material dooms an adaptation of a mediocre series to mediocrity. Light Novel adaptations are perhaps the best example of this phenomenon: light novels, being a medium in which each volume tells a different story, rarely have any HUGE overarching continuity. As such, character development is often slow, across multiple volumes, and, in the worst of cases, contradictory. Some volumes of light novels (e.g., Haruhi I) are noticibly better than subsequent volumes of the same series. Animation studios animate a less-than-stellar volume of a light novel series, and the result is mediocre. What else could one expect?
[...] I’m not watching all that much this season, for two reasons. First, other than the slew of sequels (again), there’s not too much that seems interesting. Second, I’m too busy right now to [...]