An interesting thought occurred to me recently in terms of how anime series are structured. It seems that most anime series focus on “building” one out of three narrative aspects – either building the story, building the characters, or building the world. Some focus on two out of three, a few manage to focus equally on all three – but it’s intriguing to think about which of the three each series is most concerned with…
For the sake of clarity, I’ll discuss each of these three “building” categories and provide a few examples.
Anime that are focused on building a story don’t spend a lot of time showcasing the setting or delving too much into the characters. That doesn’t mean that the setting and characters are bad; they’re just not what the series is focused on conveying as much as the story. The settings tend to take place in the real world, so there’s no need to explain them, and if they do take place in a fictional world, it’s usually kept simple. The characters could be well written and all, but they’re not focused on independent of the plot and often aren’t given the marketable anime archetype personalities that would make otaku focus on them. Just about everything in story building anime is about moving the plot and subplots forward.
Examples: Death Note would be a good example of a story building anime. Little to nothing about the setting is dealt with (it’s just modern Japan) and even the secondary fantasy setting, the world of the shinigami that has the potential to be delved into, is vaguely defined. The majority of what we see of the characters relates back to the plot rather than any “filler” situations. We don’t get any episodes that are all about a characters’ backstory or all about the relationship between specific characters. Death Note is driven by the suspense of its plot, a plot that’s constantly progressing.
Fate/Zero would be another good example. Even though it does delve into the characters more than Death Note, everything that happens relates back to the main plot of the Holy Grail War. We get some but not a ton of exposition about the many fantasy elements in the series. So while the series can emphasize the characters and fantasy-rich world at times, it’s brief compared to the focus on advancing the plot.
Additional examples: Bakuman, Index, Code Geass, Eden of the East
Character building anime are driven by their characters more than their plot – sometimes they won’t even have a plot to begin with, or if there is one, it’s simple and isn’t the central focus of most of the episodes. Whether we find these anime appealing or not comes from how much we find the characters entertaining and whether they’re able to move us, i.e, did they make us laugh? Did they make us cry? These anime could still have a decent plot if there is one, but again, the main drive comes from character interactions and themes involving their relationships. Like the story building anime, there’s little need to flesh out the world that these anime are set in, but unlike the story building anime, the character building ones typically have a lot of popular anime character archetypes to enhance the show’s marketability through the characters.
Examples: All of the slice-of-life “cute girls doing cute things” anime, from Lucky Star and K-ON to Azumanga Daioh and the currently airing Acchi Kocchi, would fall into this category. They’re virtually story-less and there’s little to say about their setting either. They’re all about building the appeal and entertainment value of the characters in every episode with either no overarching plot or a dismissible one. But character building anime aren’t limited to this type of anime. I would place something like Mawaru Penguindrum in this category. As I mentioned in my post about it, little explanation is given to its world’s fantasy elements and its plot is rather convoluted with no easily definable progressing storyline. In its symbol-filled way, it’s about the characters coming to grips with inner demons and realizing things about their relationships. Bakemonogatari would also be character building. Its “plot” is a simple one about Koyomi helping girls overcome demon possession…and other than that it’s all about the characters conversing and building relationships with each other, however odd they may be.
Additional examples: Ano Hana, OreImo, Clannad, Fruits Basket
World building anime are unique. Rather than focusing on the expected story elements – story and/or characters – these series are more into building the setting, or rather, the “world” that the anime takes place in. These anime take place in detailed and often fleshed out fictional worlds, sometimes going so far as to give the world its own set of politics, history, and a dictionary’s worth of fictional terminology. A lot of story building anime could have detailed settings like this too, but what sets the world building anime apart is that they’re not that focused on a progressive story nor is character development a big point. There could still be a plot and developed characters, but they’re mostly about immersing us in that fantasy world, making it believable and appealing to us.
Examples: Aria (the first season as I haven’t seen the others) is a prime example of a world building anime. So much depth is poured into developing the setting of Neo Venezia, from history and architecture to the lifestyles of the citizens – even the DVD box set came with a booklet all about Neo Venezia as a detailed world. But as for story and characters? It’s pretty much an episodic slice-of-life series with no specific plot and the characters are standard; nothing about them really hooks us in other than making them pleasant to be with as they take us through their world. I would even say Pokemon is a world building anime. It’s really all about being immersed in the “Pokemon world” as the characters aren’t particularly well developed or dynamic, and the majority of episodes are episodic fillers. And for a last example, I’d put Mushishi in this category. The series has only one main character and is totally episodic with no continuing plot. The main emphasis is on the mysteriously fascinating world of the mushi and how they affect the human world.
Additional examples: Moretsu Pirates…having trouble thinking of more =O
Of course, a lot of anime don’t fall into just one of the building categories. There are plenty that utilize two. Cowboy Bebop is one example as I would say it focuses on building both its characters and world. I feel that we really get to know the Bebop crew in terms of personality and background history. And the futuristic world of the series is amazingly defined visually without the need for much exposition through dialogue. It’s lacking in the way of story though as the majority of episodes are stand-alone and the only reoccurring plot isn’t emphasized until the end. So I wouldn’t categorize Bebop as story building, but definitely the other two.
There are some cases where an anime manages to focus pretty equally on all three building methods. I’ve noticed this most often in longer series that have ample number of episodes to flesh out all three narrative elements. Naruto and One Piece have used their 400+ episode length to build major and minor plots, a large cast of well developed characters, and very detailed fictional worlds. Some shorter series do occasionally manage to give focus to all three too. Arguably Evangelion could be one such series as it has story progression, I felt that the characters got development and attention, and that the post apocalyptic world was pretty well defined.
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There are still a lot of example I could give in all the categories but I’ll stop here. Actually, there are quite a few series whose building categories I’m in doubt about. Is Steins;Gate just story building or is it story and character? Is Toradora just character building or does it have enough of a storyline too? And I’m not sure where Madoka would fall in all this.
If you feel that these three building categories for anime are solid or if more should be added, let me know. I’d also love to hear how you’d place different anime series within these categories =)
Reminds me of the MICE quotient, as presented by Orson Scott Card in his book “How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy.” He states that there are generally 4 different types of stories: Milieu, Idea, Character, Event. Milieu emphasizes setting, idea answers a question through the story (i.e., theme), Character puts importance on a character’s change in his or her role in society, and Event covers the movement of a universe from order to chaos and back.
I would say that your three types covers M, C, and E of the MICE quotient, which is pretty neat considering.
Thanks for telling me about MICE…I’ve never heard of it before (was never really into science fiction/fantasy outside of anime). Actually, while writing this post I was contemplating adding a fourth category for something along the lines of Idea (“building an emotion” or “building a theme”) but decided against it in the end. Maybe I should have went with it after all =P
I read this piece waiting for the “and then there are the really good anime that do all three, like Evangelion” and was not disappointed. What’s great about Evangelion 2.0 is that it does all three of these convincingly in a way different from the series.
A lot of series that grapple with three tend to lose focus on one, I’ve noticed. Gurren Lagann has character relationships that evolve and form the human component of the drama the whole way through, as well as a gloriously ridiculous plot, but most of the focus on world or milieu is restricted to technobabble in the later arcs and framing the characters in the first: “This is a man’s world”; “Up there on the surface, there ain’t no ceiling!”; “We are in a Super Spiral Universe where thought is given form”.
Strike Witches has a lot of focus on world-building (far more than your average high-concept ecchi show, which is probably due to the anime’s background in written media) as well as most episodes focusing on Yoshika and/or one or a pair of other characters, but largely abandons plot development once introduced to the last couple of episodes.
With Madoka, I’d have no problems saying it covers all of these categories. It doesn’t rake through its characters’ psyches the way some other dark genre deconstructions I
could mention do (though Eva had more than twice the number of episodes) but it’s still a fully realised character drama with several interlocking character people thingies (Madoka and Homura, Sayaka and Kyoko, as well as those characters individually) and its world-building is strong throughout, mainly with Kyubey’s talking about the Universe, Mami talking about magical girls and Kyubey revealing further, more disturbing details about magical girls and the reality of their new existence (DO NOT THROW SOULS). Plot development is also strong, with several distinct arcs in the series’ twelve episodes.
Like krizzlybear, I’d refer you to to Orson Scott Card’s MICE quotient from his writings. Adding “idea” gives things like Angel’s Egg – a personal favourite – a category at all, as it’s basically a heavily atmospheric allegory with little dialogue. (It also adds yet another totally realised and legitimate category for Evangelion.)
Yeah, it’s hard to convincingly build all three categories in just a one or two cour anime, like your example with Gurren Lagann. But Eva is one of the few I would say manages to do it. And I was actually gonna say Madoka has all three but I thought it might have been presumptuous of me as I thought it was lacking in the story building (it’s just about the tragedy of being a magical girl, which goes back to world building). But now that you mention the story arcs and such, it does seem to have a good narrative too.
I’ll keep the MICE quotient in mind for future reference =D
Just an additional note, the MICE quotient is not an idea used purely when talking about science fiction and fantasy, Card uses it to describe in relation to this quotient the appropriate amount of characterisation in “Characters and Viewpoint” (eg the characters in LotR are very archetypal as the trilogy is very much about Milieu).
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. In creative writing, they are known as character, plot and setting. Which is very similar to what you describe. And yeah, they can be included up to different degrees. Some may focus more on one, or two aspects, and few can focus on all 3. Depends on the time you have I guess. Books like Harry Potter is a great example of great focus on all 3.
I would say a series like Code Geass fits fine on all 3. Character development is the most important, followed by a good story, and a decent world description. It is centered around Japan (area 11), and they described pretty well what happened there. The rest of the world is secondary for the story, so I think it described enough. Same with Gundam 00, very good development on all 3 parts. Gundam seed was more centered around character development, but it still had a good story, and decent world description. Wolfs Rain had very strong character development, with a bit weaker world, and even weaker story.
But we have to keep in mind, that even if they focus on one aspect, the other aspects are present. If the story is developed in present Japan, then that is the world setting given. We may not get a description, but it is there. And even if it is episodic, like K-on, there is still an over-arching story (forming the music club, preparing for concerts, having fun). I don’t think there can be a story with any of the parts missing. They are just given more or less emphasis I guess.
I agree that outside of anime, Harry Potter does great in all three categories. I’m still partial to the idea that Code Geass is mostly about building its story as it’s very fast paced and pretty much everything that happens is plot advancing. There are a lot of instances of characters conversing and sharing moments and such, but it always seems kind of rushed to me. But even so, it does focus more on character and world than most story building anime. I agree that Wolf’s Rain is mostly about the characters as the story is sort of in the background, but I think the world is fairly well defined too. At least that’s the sense I’ve gotten from having watched it several times =)
I don’t believe that any series is completely lacking one or more of the categories, only that they tend to focus on one. Like you said with K-ON, although it’s mainly about the characters there’s still a story and a world it takes place in; it’s just that the central focus is the characters.
In an interview on this very topic, though considering only the duality between plot-or-characters driven stories, Urobuchi said that his style always prioritizes plot, developing the characters through the whirlwind of events around them. He cited Madoka as one example.
I’d agree with some of the other comments that all three are always present, if in varying degree. I could imagine a story without characters, but not without a (loosely defined) world or plot.
And of course, you have people claiming that their favorite title always develops all three to a high degree :D. I’m not stepping on that landmine, so no titles from me.
Thanks for the interesting tidbit about Urobuchi. Now that I think about his series, I see what he’s talking about.
Yeah, like I said to Kal right above, I’m not saying that anime series only have either story, worlds, or characters; only that they tend to prioritize one over the others. So a story building series will have characters and take place in some world, but the focus is on advancing the story.
LOL, yeah, I’m sure people will argue that their favorite titles develop all three. It’s all pretty debatable as long as they can cite examples like I did, or at least tried to do, in my post =P
It’s closely related to the three forms of narrative; character-based, plot-based and theme-based. Obviously, story-building would be associated with plot-based narrative, and character building with character-based narrative, and then there’s the extra ‘idea building’ already discussed to associate with theme-based narrative. (It’s rare in anime though, apart from Angel’s Egg, the only examples which come to mind are Haibane Renmei (subtly), Utena, and I think this is where Penguindrum primarily belongs.)
World building is a little different, in that it isn’t really associated with narrative at all. So you either get a secondary narrative, as in “the story of Marika” in space pirates, or you get lots of small narratives, probably in an episodic form, because you need at least something of that nature around.
I think there are a few additional forms which “MICE” misses, mostly because they’re not likely to be found in science fiction literature:
Pure Humour: Rare in anime, but sometimes you can get away with not doing any of these things, so long as you’re funny. Excel Saga would be an example.
Mood Building: I think this can sometimes be a substitute for any real sort of substantial-thing-building or dense narrative. Horror is the traditional home of mood-invoking productions, but slice-of-life can often go here heavily too, a pair of strange bedfellows! I think this is where the primary interest of Madoka lies, even though it’s everything-building attributes are very strong, I’m not convinced that building anything is the point of it all. Can you really say it’s about its characters, or about its story, its world, its ideas. I think it’s really about things like making Kyubey get creepier every time you see him, making the depths of Sayaka’s despair palpable and so forth. It only concentrates on making its contents of high quality because high-quality contents are more powerful.
Set Piece Productions: Mercifully, anime seems pretty free of this sort of thing, (perhaps it’s just difficult to stretch it out over a season), but it’s a problematic structure you often see in Hollywood blockbusters, just a collection of scenes audiences are expected to like, with not a lot in-between.
Of course, you could just say that you get to build a variable number of things, including zero…
I’m not as eager as some might be to claim that my favourites do really well at all of these simultaneously. Because narrative really can only do one (out of plot, character, theme) effectively, they can’t go together since you’re talking about the mode of logic used to determine how one event follows another, and it’s not a great place for inconsistency. Which means that any show with a strong narrative should be stronger in one of those areas than the other two. (Even if it can still do some stuff in other areas, its focus should be identifiable.) World-building, mood and humour I suppose are all things you can do at the same time… I think whether you do them can be a matter of appropriateness so much as anything else. To make a foody analogy, you get a mix of feelings and fascinations from your narrative, and you can then add on carefully chosen extra ingredients to get a nice balance.
So to look at Evangelion along with everyone else, I think you can definitely identify it as a primarily character-based show. It does well in numerous areas, because, well, it’s really good, but while the story starts off looking impressive and won it a lot of fans, by the time we see the last two episodes, we discover that they never really cared about it. The only themes which end up important are the ones about character, hedgehog’s dilemmas and so forth, the religious stuff was just there to look cool. And the world-building is used as garnish, they get the world to make sense and have nice details because it gives the whole thing a sense of believability which enhances its power, but it doesn’t really take time off to develop its world, it just gives you the details while it’s doing other things. It makes good use of mood, but as a means to an end, to help us feel what’s going through the minds of the characters rather than an end in itself. And it uses humour… well, I don’t think we Westerners actually get quite a bit of the satire part. But that doesn’t seem to matter too much. So Eva does lots of things well, but it knows what it’s really focussing on. Which I think is a good thing.
Thanks for expanding on the idea building/theme-based narrative and the additional MICE forms. I replied to jimmy above about where Madoka belongs, but reading what you said, perhaps it best belongs in this mood building category after all. Maybe “iyashii-kei” anime like Aria and Ikoku Meiro would belong in mood building too as they often have less story and character focus than slice-of-life and are mostly about creating a soothing mood.
The Pure Humor category reminds me that while I was writing this post, I thought about gag anime like Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou and wondered which of my three categories it would fit into (the closest I could get was character building). But Pure Humor sounds like the right place XD Definitely for Excel Saga too.
Good observations about Evangelion. It really is all about the characters in the end, though like you said, this isn’t made obvious in the early episodes. That’s probably what threw me off in terms of wanting to give it all three categories instead of just the character one.
Venizia, not Verona. ;)
Oh yeah…it’s been a while since I watched it ^^a MAL spells it “Venezia” actually. I shall correct it now.
I’d say those 3 broad classifications fit with sub categories under it, but those would cover most everything. I find I appreciate a premium blend between character and story development that compliments the other while not over shadowing either.
One formula is Evangelion’s just happens to pretty much be my favorite, I just LOVE it. Cowboy Bebop’s, Samurai Champloo, 5 cm per second, rain town, Haruhi Suzumiya, Spice and Wolf, Perfect Blue, Voices of a distant Star, ALL of those are done well and are the pinnacle of what anime can do. But each one also kind of tosses you in the world and describes WHO the characters are, not to mention in a very human and relatable way, effectively through how the story develops. They’re just done…. RIGHT. There’s not much back story, and when it is there it comes in snippets, but that’s fine. We contrive the personality and essence of the characters as the show goes on. Then again, REALLY, even the universe the shows are set in tend to envelop the viewer. These shows bring everything to the table in perfect harmony.
Rather than find it’s self too far on the spectrum either way, these anime just weave everything together brilliantly and most of these are created by the best anime minds in the business. It’s this jack of all trades nature, that covers every aspect of story telling, that make these anime a cut above the rest, and truly stand out.
I too like when the characters are given to us in “snippets” – we don’t learn everything about a character all at once nor do we fail to learn anything about them at all; we learn things gradually and can infer things about them throughout. Unfortunately this is best done with longer series because you have more time to flesh them out. For example, we only just learned the backstory of Naruto’s parents in the anime even though Naruto himself has been the main character this whole time. But some shorter series, like Cowboy Bebop, manage to do it with limited episodes. For example, the pasts of Faye, Spike, and other characters are glimpsed at in various episodes rather than spoon-fed to us all at once.
For your Steins;Gate quandary, I’d probably put it into both the story and character categories … but not at the same time. The first part of the series focused pretty much entirely on the characters, with no major story developments, while the second half was pretty much all story, with little character development. That abrupt shift is what made the show so interesting to some people, and so bewildering to others.
That’s an excellent way of looking at Steins;Gate, and like you said, that shift from character building to story building is probably what made people so hooked.
You forgot Shakugan no Shana, it fits into all three, sometimes too much so. For more world anime, there’s also Last Exile and Last Exile Fam.
I think you got most of the three types covered. I would’ve had a “parody” category, but you could argue that’s a part of character instead of its own category.
Yeah, I thought about Shana having all three but I wasn’t totally sure. Glad to know someone else thinks so =) I thought Last Exile was more world building myself, but it’s been years since I watched it so I don’t remember very well.
Like I said to Logopolis above, a parody category might be a good subcategory for character building. It would cover gag anime and other series that are purely about laughs.