Many times when you watch an anime and it ends at episode 12 or 13, don't you feel that it's not enough? How many times out of 10 did you feel that what you just watched was not quite there, nor did it feel satisfying enough? That's all really simple really, its all about character development. Most of the time when we watch an anime that is longer than 12 episodes, we feel more attached to the cast and crew, whilst in most anime that are only 12 episodes long, its easy to get the feel that we haven't seen much time for the characters to grow.
Take my recently reviewed "Galilei Donna" as an example. Its short, only 11 episodes long, yet it felt satisfying when the entire thing ended. Why? That's because the entire show only focused on developing the 3 sisters, and almost nothing else. Sure there were times where the spotlight shifted to other characters, but its not often, most of the time was spent on these 3 sisters, which made us attached to them, especially Hozuki, who had to time travel back to meet Galileo Galilei, we can sympathize with her the most when we found out that Galileo was actually in love with her.
Let's talk about something else. Let's move to an anime like "Hyakka Ryouran", or most harem/fan service animes for that matter. For one, people watch it for the fan service, nothing else, because let's be real her, all these shows manage to do well is let the sexy girls get all intimidate with the overly shy main character. Still, there is a reason why these aren't received well most of the time. The story is most of the time mediocre, and the fact that most harem animes like to populate their entire cast with an overabundance of airheaded females isn't a good thing.
For these kinds of anime, 12 episodes isn't nearly enough. Fan service can only go so far, and character development for these kinds of anime is weak, REALLY weak. Tell me remotely anything special about these characters, their past, their hardships? The only thing that they have in common is that they have to compete against the other girls for the right to love the protagonist, nothing more, nothing less, there is no time to develop character. Look at "Infinite Stratos 2", all we got is Tatenashi, Kanzashi, Charlotte, Houki, and a little bit of Laura. They mostly developed Tatenashi as a character (even though she didn't have much to her) and completely left the likes of Cecilia and Ling to dry out.
This is a simple case of having too many characters and too little episodes.
Another example is the anime adaptation of "Devil Survivor 2", that thing was a disaster for fans of the game. It may have been an okay experience for those who didn't play the game, but for everyone else, watching through the series just invoked more and more question marks in my head. Why did they opt to take this path? Everything could have been better with more than 12 episodes, they didn't have to kill off characters just for the sake of not wanting to develop them.
Killing off the characters in the anime was just a convenient way to say "Hey, if we kill them, we don't actually have to do character development! We're on a short schedule anyway so let's just do that!". If the characters didn't die, they'd have to develop over the course of the anime, they need screen time, they need to become more like Daichi, Io and Yamato. But because "Devil Survivor 2: The Animation" was only 12 episodes long, there was NO way in hell they could fill in the gaps to develop other characters like Jungo, Airi, Ronaldo, Otome, or hell, any of the characters, there was just too many. In the game, you could spend time with all these characters to know more about them, but in the anime, we don't have to luxury for Hibiki to bond with these guys because its only 12 episodes!
Just think, they could have actually fit the events with all the characters in the game into the anime with 24 episodes, and they could have still done battles with the Septentriones. Hell, they could have even made the battles better with 24 episodes! Everything just went to shit because well, it's 12 episodes, we don't have the time. F**k character development, f**k these guys.
Why 24 episodes is a good thing
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I loved "Toradora", and that's not just me saying it. "Toradora" was long, longer than most. Its 25 episodes, which is pretty much a rarity nowadays, and it does it job very f**king well. It has a grand total of 5 important characters, which seems like a decent amount for most 12-13 episode animes, but because "Toradora" is 25 episodes long, these characters get to develop a lot more than most. The end result is a an amazing romance anime with some really, really strong characters. Through the many different hardships of these characters, they grew to become something that we can sympathize with, we were attached to these guys, and seeing everyone get their happy ends (or sad ends) was something that we well waited for at the end of the 25 episodes. It was a wonderful experience.
Let's take another anime into account, one that I watched not too long ago, "The Pet Girl Of Sakurasou". This one was also pretty amazing (review coming soon, but you can already tell that it's going to score really high). It started off as a simple slice of life anime, but soon turned to become some pretty intense on the romance side of things. We have characters liking one another, and of course, when shit like this happens, we get drama, lots of it. Once again, the character cast isn't anything too huge (if we're talking main guys, I'd say that there are only 6 characters at most), and because we have 24 episodes for these guys to build bonds with one another, their hardships were all the more respected as a viewer. I loved the anime overall and it ended in a beautiful way. It was emotional, to say the least.
It's really hard not to like this one, isn't it? "Durarara" has a massive character cast, but it doesn't put the focus on the unimportant characters, which is a smart thing, and focuses on the ones that needed to be focused on. Hell, even for the most popular characters of the series, Izaya and Shizuo, the creators knew not to over bloat the anime with screen time for these two, because while they were f**king awesome, they weren't TOO important to the story, at least not as important as the likes of Kida, Ryuugamine and Anri. But because the anime has such a huge cast, its only natrual that 24 episodes is needed for us viewers to grow attached to the characters. The ending wasn't the most spectacular thing ever, but I'd say that "Durarara" did a wonderful job with character development.
"Psycho Pass" gets an easy nod here, because in an anime like this, its pretty much mandatory that we get to know all these characters like the back of our necks. Unfortunately, while the show is freaking epic, they didn't really touch too much on some of the characters (Yayoi and Shion specifically). However, they did touch on the ones that were really important, which was what that mattered, and its obviously Kougami and Makishima. Akane was sort of this "white canvas", she was the protagonist, but she didn't really bring much to the table other than being an honor student, Kougami and Makishima were the stars. These two were developed nicely, all leading up to their epic showdown at the end, which was well worth the wait. This one had 22 episodes, which I felt was well needed.
These are shows that manage to shine because they have 24 episodes (around there at least, but you know what I mean). 24 episodes means more time for necessary development, be it in the story or its characters...and that's always a good thing if you want the anime to shine. Not to say that all animes need to be 24 episodes, some manage to do it just fine in 12 episodes.
12 episode wonders
"Angel Beats" is only 12 episodes long, but it does a good job in making us shed a few tears. Sure the cast was huge, and sure that there wasn't much time to develop all of the characters, but as I said, having only a few main ones as a focus will always help out. Otonashi, Yurri, Kanade, Naoi, Yui, Hinata...all of these were important, and the anime made damn sure to give them the development that they needed. It was a truly emotional moment during the very end, and while it was only 12 episodes, the anime does a damn good job of creating strong characters.
Do I even need to say anything? "Anohana" is probably one of the most tear jerking experiences you can find in an anime, because of its center around these 6 very simple characters. That's right, the characters were very simple, and they didn't need much in terms of character development, but that's the beauty of it. THese guys were already somewhat fleshed out from the start, and its okay that they dumped all their focus into Jinta and Menma. Everything still worked out well in the end though, as I'm sure we all shed a tear or two during the ending sequence.
So, what can you say in conclusion? Should anime stay as it is, or should we push for more 24 episode animes? I'm certainly all for the latter, but at the end of the day, it all comes down to the budget of the animation studios, I'm sure not everyone has the money to make every anime 24 episodes long. 24 episodes allow for more character development, elaborate story telling, more in depth fight scenes...and just about everything else. The longer the better, but of course, don't make things too long, if not we'll have another "Bleach"/"Naruto" on our hands, which I damn hell do not want.
