Comments on: The Anime Blog Poll: Which Style of Anime Storytelling Do You Prefer?

By: Rachel

Rachel — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 18:34:37 +0000

@Asuka, sorry, I was having a conversation inside my head when I wrote this, and forgot that people can’t read my mind. That sadly happens all too often. I went back and inserted a few examples. Thanks for the tip!

By: Asuka

Asuka — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 18:22:04 +0000

I think this post might have been a little more helpful to The-Me-Who-Has-Never-Taken-Any-Literature-Classes-Beyond-High-School if you had actually listed anime examples for each style besides the Pokemon and Naruto ones you gave. Based mostly on my imagination, I’d say I like Flashback Linear, Combo Platter and Radial.

By: Rachel

Rachel — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 18:07:43 +0000

@DKong, spiral makes me queasy @_@. I couldn’t even have a brief affair with that style of storytelling. (Spiral and I did try and make it work, but after a few days, I had to end it.)

@David, whoopsie! I used your ‘puter for a sec and didn’t realize you were logged in! lol, my bad.

@griever, AD is indeedy radial.

@ordance11, lol, lazy screenwriters? Really? Can’t be true, look at Eva, wait….

By: ordnance11

ordnance11 — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 03:46:01 +0000

One of the more interesting plots I’ve seen was in RahXephon. Linear with a twist: The story starts “in the middle” and you go crazy trying to figure out the who, why and how.

Of course there’s the “reset” variant. Thru some event, everything rewinds to the beginning. Like the first season of Sailor Moon, Magikano and Mai Hime for example. Frankly, I consider this laziness on part of the scriptwriters.

By: griever

griever — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 03:04:40 +0000

I dunno if this is necessarily different from linear, but I picture this version of linear are more of a mountain graph – there’s an overall A-Z plot, but there are a few random episodes in between for comedy, general break, character development, etc. Examples would be Cowboy Bebop or Trigun where the main plot actually shows up on a fairly regular basis, but it’s not in every episode.

Examples in the first two examples would be helpful, like you have in the spiral example. Is the radial example like Azumanga Daioh?

By: Haruda

Haruda — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 23:13:54 +0000

I like linear, particularly what you named the “combo platter.” The style of storytelling used in Naruto, Bleach, and so on can get sort of tiring, mainly because it’s repetitive, which makes it boring and predictable after a while. The only shows like that that I can stomach are magical girl shows.

By: David

David — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 22:11:24 +0000

Hey – the above comment (“I hate never ending anime…”) was by Rachel, not me.

Rachel – You must be logged in under my account, LOL!

By: DKong

DKong — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 21:06:13 +0000

This is a cool post. I don’t think you missed any story types…as far as I know.

I like linear the best.
Radial is alright every now and then…and spiral is alright every now and then as well…depending on how it’s used. I really liked Yugioh and Pokemon since it wasn’t like they had plots that NEEDED to get solved. Inuyasha was crap, though…even though it did have an ending, it was more spiral than anything else, IMO.

By: Kidan

Kidan — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 20:24:00 +0000

@David – Oh most definitely. I’m real big into Star Wars EU and there’s no stopping those books anymore. Of course the spiral anime do make for mindless fun, because you don’t have to keep track of the storyline like you do in linear animes. Any episode you happen to drop in and watch, you can pretty much catch on what’s happening.

Also, I just noticed a typo. In the paragraph beneath the spiral, the last sentence reads: “Thatâ€™s radial style.” When it should read: “Thatâ€™s spiral style.”

By: Rachel

Rachel — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 18:45:39 +0000

@Kidan, I loathe never ending anime. Since I’m a sci-fi fan, I’m no stranger to book series that never seem to end (Damn you Piers Anthony and Robert Jordan!!!!) It seems like every time I think a series of anime or books will end and my pocketbook will finally get a breather, in come another round of episodes/ books. I can almost smell when an anime series will spiral on forever and have learned to avoid them.

@tj han. Good point about the scope and magnitude. Think of Inuyasha; that did seem to get a bit grander as it went on…same as Bleach and the like. Thanks for pointing that out!