Movies & TV

idk what is wrong with showrunners, it is like they have never enjoyed a TV series in their life, you don't have to race towards the finish line in only 8 episodes, you can pace yourselves

I've gotten really into a niche Japanese media genre called Iyashikei, wherein there's barely, if any plot. The plot that's there has almost no tension. And the tension that is there is resolved immediately with minimal friction.

My favorite is Non Non Biyori, which is about a group of kids who live in the Japanese countryside. And they kinda just... Hang out. There's no overarching narrative, no lessons to learn. It's a gag comedy in some respects, but the humor is more sensible chuckle then gut-bustingly hilarious.

The entire point of this stuff is to slow down and chill out.

I Wanna see western show runners heads fucking explode, that there's media out here doing the exact opposite of what they think is "good writing.

Can't race towards the finish line, when there's no finish line to race to

Mass financialization of studios and a need for high returns on investment to shareholders. That's it. You're not allowed to take risks as a showrunner or writer, because that might not pan out for the investors, which means you can't really make art because you're trapped in a formula that's been done so many times that there's legitimately no way to do anything new or interesting. And you can't do anything original because there's no existing market for it, so you've got to adapt something that already exists.

They won't finance more than 8 episodes (looking at you, Amazon), so you have to condense a storyline that won't fit into 8 episodes somehow, and you do that by hacking away at the source material until it's barely recognizable. In the process, every writer working for you is desperately trying to leave their mark on the final product so they can get some amount of creativity out of their systems, so now you've got 80 new subplots that they're practically demanding get in the show when you already don't have time to tell the story that already exists.

The end result is a mishmash of nonsensical plot elements, characters with no arcs (because there's no time to have them resolve their flaws, and focus groups show that viewers prefer characters once they've resolved their flaws so we'll just remove that element entirely!), abysmal pacing, and a final product that costs $300 million and looks like utter shit. Rinse and repeat until even the most treat-brained of viewers decides that this is a road too far and stop paying for the streaming services, at which point the whole industry will collapse under its own rotten weight and new TV content will be exclusively reality TV or gameshows.

Basically the challenge that is running a series when yoiu don't know if you'll be greenlit for more than 1 or 2 seasons. That forces showrunners to tell compact and poorly paced story arcs.

These shows are basically competing with tiktok and other entertainment algorithms, so they have to put something on the screen, and make you stick to it. And it if fails to get your attention, the data metrics will show.

I had trouble starting My Jobless Reincarnation and Freiren beyond Journey's End; but these are some of the only shows that I feel are both chockfull of character and plot moments, while giving fantastic breathing room for all of their character arcs. It shows a degree of confidence in the material that a lot of people do not have nowadays.