I think that show to show. great example in OP pic. Spongebob would not work as well as serialized
I think i prefer serialized in general but one of the bigger cons of that format is that you cant reallt have good and bad episodes. If you frick up halway its kinda over and people will always remember that the show "was good up until episode 5" but if you do an episodic show i feel like you kinda have more chances after a streak of mid/bad episodes since there is no big butterfly effect to mess up future episodes
Serialized implies that a series is a single story broken up into parts while episodic with a overarching plot involves mostly disconnected stories with some kind of thoughline.
No, serialized is something like Game of Thrones, where every episode follows a direct continuity from the previous one and you can't watch them in any order. Episodic with overarching plot usually means only the season opener and the season finale have to be watched in the appropriate order, but the episodes in the middle don't follow a super strict continuity.
There's episodic shows (themselves of varying amounts of continuity, such as 100%episodic stuff like Loony Tunes, or episodic shows that do call backs and have longterm continuity)
Then there's "lore shows" which I read as being "episodic with overarching plots" like is common nowadays, or like Teen Titans or Batman:TAS
Then there's serialized shows, like what you'd see in anime or ATLA.
Most writers and production cycles can't make a convincing or satisfying serial arc so they should probably stick to episodic. Not a matter of "what's better" but more like what's possible.
Serialized shows are often more fulfilling and get larger audiences, however they run the risk of not being able to actually finish their story properly if they suddenly get cancelled by the network.
Case in point just look at the rushed bullshit endings that was Steven Universe and Owl House. SU was lucky to get a movie + short sequel season to act as a sort of epilogue/finality, but Owl House got screwed over hard.
"Animation" isn't a genre, it's a medium used to tell stories. Neither is better for the medium broadly, it just depends on the kind of stories being told.
I like it when a series starts out episodic but has a metaplot in the background. Then as time goes it becomes less episodic and more connected with each episode. Scooby Doo and Mystery Inc. did this. It originally started out episodic and then the episodes started to become more connected as time passed.
SpongeBob is objectively better than the Owlhouse, but to answer your stupid question it depends on the writing and in this case SpongeBob is objectively better.
Episodic with mild continuity in regards to character development and major events, not really building to anything but characters occasionally acknowledge past events happened.
breaking bad is a really good example of both serialized and episodic, with each episode being almost its own contained conflict while also progressing the story
Breaking Bad works as serialized storytelling because each episode has strict continuity with the previous one, but at the same time it has an episodic feel because of the way episodes are padded with content that doesn't directly tie into the main story.
Serialized plots are one of those hypothetical things that could be amazing but typically isn't. They sell you on the idea that this will be some well devised grand story that is so amazing that it takes all season to tell, but the truth is that they have some short little story and and will be filling all the empty space with bullshit time wasting while nothing that matters gets done. Then they push for another season, which they have zero inspiration for, and will just riff and pull shit out of their ass. It becomes a test of the audiences willingness to wait for something anything to happen.
>but the truth is that they have some short little story and and will be filling all the empty space with bullshit time wasting while nothing that matters gets done
This isn't a feature of serialized storytelling, it's a result of networks refusing to commit solidly to it, and thus "compromising" by allowing the showrunner to have a few episodes out of the season for their big over-arching story, but most of the episodes have to be stand-alone filler that can be aired in essentially every order.
>Then they push for another season
No they don't, most of the time 2 seasons are green lit from the get-go, and are produced more or less back to back. It's the third season that hangs in the balance which is why it doesn't happen half the time. This is why most of these half-assed sorta-serialized cartoons go big in the second season because at the time they're writing and animating it they assume it's their last hurrah.
Pretty sure live-action TV series still pad out time with uninspired subplots most people don't care about just to fill the runtime or get to a specific episode count. So it's effectively a feature of serialized storytelling under capitalism.
>Pretty sure live-action TV series still pad out time with uninspired subplots
And live action TV is also mostly episodic or at most episodic with overarching plot, because, again, TV networks don't have faith in serialized storytelling. >under capitalism
Somehow I knew you were a moron just from the way you attribute these things to serialized storytelling despite them not being inherent to it at all.
TOH is not completely serialized. I was comparing it to RWBY because they have similar protagonists (and some themes) and I realized that Luz goes on more adventures and gets more chances to show off her character strengths in half a season than Ruby does in several seasons. Though that's mostly due to RWBY's writing issues, but it is a very serialized show, and if a character is in a story arc where they're not meant to do much, they're gonna be stuck like this for the entire arc and have to wait until the next season or arc where they get to do something. So when serialized shows frick up, it's way more damaging than episodic. But I'll still say episodic shows can be more annoying when they pretend like something may actually change only to stick to the formula and status quo.
The best shows I've watched happen to do both. Supporting characters or soon to be very key players tend to cliffhanger the overarching story while the main characters resolve issues / overcome hurdles within each individual runtime. I value world building and clever character-focused writing more than I do the format.
Nobody but autists cares about how "good" the animation is. People only care about animated shows and movies as vehicles for narrative. The animation doesn't need to be technically impressive to succeed in this.
Episodic because you can just watch it anytime without following a story.
Serialized requires you to to know the situation and watch it in a specific order and if you forget to watch from finished to end you have to rewatch it all over.
Plus spoilers too.
serial's better for getting a fandom, episodic is better for getting repeat views
it's why narcissistic creators want everything the be serialized and profit-concerned producers want everything to be episodic
>serial's better for getting a fandom
Not really. Stuff like Spongebob has a fandom that dwarfs most serialized shows. That's because repeat views are actually the key to building fandom. People are more likely to watch your show if it's constantly reran on TV, not everybody is watching at the same time, so re-airing maximizes exposure. Also, the more time people spend watching your show, the more familiar it becomes to them. This is the key to building a long-lasting fandom rather than a flash in the pan fandom that fizzles out in a few weeks or months. This is why Netflix can't seem to create a big fandom for anything, because they don't air shows weekly, they dump they all at once for their binge watchers. A weekly release schedule keeps people invested over a period of months, they come back every week to get the new episode, then talk with people on social media about the episode, and get excited trying to anticipate what will happen next episode. And you do this over and over with several seasons, it adds up to months of a person's life invested in this show. It stays with them longer, they don't forget it easily, and the familiarity of it makes them want to come back to it later.
Serialized, if executed by people who can write (or, failing that, at least grew up on a wider variety of influences than "AtLA" and "the AtLA TVTropes page").
i feel nostalgic for them but they are ass compared to stories told in serialized format. this is why the last airbender is easily the greatest cartoon ever made and it's not close.
i will rewatch airbender many times throughout my life with friends and family. i will not be watching dexter's lab with them.
Sure, great stories such as Roku fighting a volcano and dying
7 months ago
Anonymous
>serialized with some episodic sprinkled in is the best.
self-contained stories within airbender are only good because of the context. they take place within a longer overarching story.
7 months ago
Anonymous
I prefer episodic ones because when serialized ones frick up, they irreversably damage the rest of the show
soft-serialized, ala Invader Zim, Adventure Time, Futurama, etc. >the show starts with a dead simple premise that the audience is either dropped into apropos of nothing, or that has everything set up in a single episode of indeterminate length comparative to the rest of the series (ie a 15 minute show would have a 15-45 minute pilot episode, or no pilot at all) >we spend a decent chunk of time setting up the default Status Quo, maybe a majority of the first season, maybe halfway through the second season. >the only changes to the Status Quo would either be small things like the weapon a character uses (Scarlet getting destroyed in The Real You [AT]), gradual changes in character dynamics (Brett wearing down Reagan's resistance to making a friend [IJ]), or these enormous events that completely upend everything (loathe as I am to admit it, that part in SVtFoE where Marco moves to Mewni with Star) >After these huge Status Shaker episodes, the new Status Quo should actually be MAINTAINED for a period of time to allow for the exploration of story concepts within it. (In the alternate universe where Nickelodeon isn't complete shit, maybe Tak could've been introduced as a new Normal Human Student and be involved in more stupid episodic nonsense leading up to her Big Reveal as a rival rogue Invader, and then her plan being foiled would lead to her crashing back on Earth instead of flying out into the cosmos.)
People are so afraid of The Chris Carter Effect & Executive Meddling that they never bother doing anything other than Full Episodic or Full Serialized anymore. As much as the later seasons of Infinity Train after the first one are COMPLETELY uninteresting to me, at least they embody that spirit more than any other show made since the turn of the millennium. They turn their premise on its head so many times, it could be a breakdancer.
TOH is episodic for more than half the show
why not both? why is this a question?
I was gonna say "which do you prefer" but I realized this generates more replies.
Based
I think that show to show. great example in OP pic. Spongebob would not work as well as serialized
I think i prefer serialized in general but one of the bigger cons of that format is that you cant reallt have good and bad episodes. If you frick up halway its kinda over and people will always remember that the show "was good up until episode 5" but if you do an episodic show i feel like you kinda have more chances after a streak of mid/bad episodes since there is no big butterfly effect to mess up future episodes
>spongebob serialized
imagine
It kinda is, skin theory :^)
>skin theory :^
phoneposting zoomie gonna zoom
What are you gonna do about it im fast as frick
True, it has some fun parts but it could easily have been like 15 minutes instead
>Skin theory
>Doesn't get to the actual theory until an hour in
>Actual "theories" presented are half baked at best
I hate this video
This.
Fair enough. You're still a homosexual though.
Depends on the show. Avatar the Last Airbender is better off being serialized and Ed Edd n Eddy is better off being episodic.
they can coexist
Neither is strictly better, both have the potential for excellent animation and storytelling in general
neither
good writing is better for animation
storyboarding*
ATHF had poor animation but it was hilarious
Owl House isn't really serialized, it's just episodic with a over arching plot.
That’s what a serial is
Serialized implies that a series is a single story broken up into parts while episodic with a overarching plot involves mostly disconnected stories with some kind of thoughline.
moron
No, serialized is something like Game of Thrones, where every episode follows a direct continuity from the previous one and you can't watch them in any order. Episodic with overarching plot usually means only the season opener and the season finale have to be watched in the appropriate order, but the episodes in the middle don't follow a super strict continuity.
This.
In 2023 real serialized shows can be counted on the fingers of a hand.
There's episodic shows (themselves of varying amounts of continuity, such as 100%episodic stuff like Loony Tunes, or episodic shows that do call backs and have longterm continuity)
Then there's "lore shows" which I read as being "episodic with overarching plots" like is common nowadays, or like Teen Titans or Batman:TAS
Then there's serialized shows, like what you'd see in anime or ATLA.
Each serves its own niche.
not Cinemaphile but I liked Gintama because it was both
as theatrical shorts
Most writers and production cycles can't make a convincing or satisfying serial arc so they should probably stick to episodic. Not a matter of "what's better" but more like what's possible.
Serialized shows are often more fulfilling and get larger audiences, however they run the risk of not being able to actually finish their story properly if they suddenly get cancelled by the network.
Case in point just look at the rushed bullshit endings that was Steven Universe and Owl House. SU was lucky to get a movie + short sequel season to act as a sort of epilogue/finality, but Owl House got screwed over hard.
"Animation" isn't a genre, it's a medium used to tell stories. Neither is better for the medium broadly, it just depends on the kind of stories being told.
>"Animation" isn't a genre
Most of the time, it is.
In America, animation has at least 3 distinct genres, which is a lot fewer than exist abroad, but still better than being monolithic.
I like it when a series starts out episodic but has a metaplot in the background. Then as time goes it becomes less episodic and more connected with each episode. Scooby Doo and Mystery Inc. did this. It originally started out episodic and then the episodes started to become more connected as time passed.
better writers and animators
SpongeBob is objectively better than the Owlhouse, but to answer your stupid question it depends on the writing and in this case SpongeBob is objectively better.
Episodic. Western chuds don't make good writers, it always devolves into shipping.
Serial episodic. Give characters long term goals and development. But each chapter needs to stand on it's own as a piece of entertainment.
>for animation
it has nothing to do with animation
Episodic with mild continuity in regards to character development and major events, not really building to anything but characters occasionally acknowledge past events happened.
Both.
Stupid.
both
breaking bad is a really good example of both serialized and episodic, with each episode being almost its own contained conflict while also progressing the story
Breaking Bad works as serialized storytelling because each episode has strict continuity with the previous one, but at the same time it has an episodic feel because of the way episodes are padded with content that doesn't directly tie into the main story.
Serialized plots are one of those hypothetical things that could be amazing but typically isn't. They sell you on the idea that this will be some well devised grand story that is so amazing that it takes all season to tell, but the truth is that they have some short little story and and will be filling all the empty space with bullshit time wasting while nothing that matters gets done. Then they push for another season, which they have zero inspiration for, and will just riff and pull shit out of their ass. It becomes a test of the audiences willingness to wait for something anything to happen.
>t. Has never seen the Mysterious cities of gold.
>but the truth is that they have some short little story and and will be filling all the empty space with bullshit time wasting while nothing that matters gets done
This isn't a feature of serialized storytelling, it's a result of networks refusing to commit solidly to it, and thus "compromising" by allowing the showrunner to have a few episodes out of the season for their big over-arching story, but most of the episodes have to be stand-alone filler that can be aired in essentially every order.
>Then they push for another season
No they don't, most of the time 2 seasons are green lit from the get-go, and are produced more or less back to back. It's the third season that hangs in the balance which is why it doesn't happen half the time. This is why most of these half-assed sorta-serialized cartoons go big in the second season because at the time they're writing and animating it they assume it's their last hurrah.
Pretty sure live-action TV series still pad out time with uninspired subplots most people don't care about just to fill the runtime or get to a specific episode count. So it's effectively a feature of serialized storytelling under capitalism.
>Pretty sure live-action TV series still pad out time with uninspired subplots
And live action TV is also mostly episodic or at most episodic with overarching plot, because, again, TV networks don't have faith in serialized storytelling.
>under capitalism
Somehow I knew you were a moron just from the way you attribute these things to serialized storytelling despite them not being inherent to it at all.
TOH is not completely serialized. I was comparing it to RWBY because they have similar protagonists (and some themes) and I realized that Luz goes on more adventures and gets more chances to show off her character strengths in half a season than Ruby does in several seasons. Though that's mostly due to RWBY's writing issues, but it is a very serialized show, and if a character is in a story arc where they're not meant to do much, they're gonna be stuck like this for the entire arc and have to wait until the next season or arc where they get to do something. So when serialized shows frick up, it's way more damaging than episodic. But I'll still say episodic shows can be more annoying when they pretend like something may actually change only to stick to the formula and status quo.
The best shows I've watched happen to do both. Supporting characters or soon to be very key players tend to cliffhanger the overarching story while the main characters resolve issues / overcome hurdles within each individual runtime. I value world building and clever character-focused writing more than I do the format.
>The best shows I've watched happen to do both
Which ones?
Both, but the US sucks at writing actual stories and that has lead to anime being mainstream in the states again.
Serialised is good for Adventure shows.
Serialised comedies suck tho.
Depends of the genre
Comedy shows don't work well with serialization
Adventure shows with heavy lore would feel disjointed if they were episodic
>"serialized" show
>more than half the episodes are filler which don't contribute to the overarching plot
You can thank the boomers who run the network for that.
>What? A cartoon that can't be aired in whatever order I want? nuhhh! bad! scary!
Yes
It's irrelevant, story and animation are not the same thing, something can have amazing animation and still be shit.
Nobody but autists cares about how "good" the animation is. People only care about animated shows and movies as vehicles for narrative. The animation doesn't need to be technically impressive to succeed in this.
Episodic because you can just watch it anytime without following a story.
Serialized requires you to to know the situation and watch it in a specific order and if you forget to watch from finished to end you have to rewatch it all over.
Plus spoilers too.
serial's better for getting a fandom, episodic is better for getting repeat views
it's why narcissistic creators want everything the be serialized and profit-concerned producers want everything to be episodic
>serial's better for getting a fandom
Not really. Stuff like Spongebob has a fandom that dwarfs most serialized shows. That's because repeat views are actually the key to building fandom. People are more likely to watch your show if it's constantly reran on TV, not everybody is watching at the same time, so re-airing maximizes exposure. Also, the more time people spend watching your show, the more familiar it becomes to them. This is the key to building a long-lasting fandom rather than a flash in the pan fandom that fizzles out in a few weeks or months. This is why Netflix can't seem to create a big fandom for anything, because they don't air shows weekly, they dump they all at once for their binge watchers. A weekly release schedule keeps people invested over a period of months, they come back every week to get the new episode, then talk with people on social media about the episode, and get excited trying to anticipate what will happen next episode. And you do this over and over with several seasons, it adds up to months of a person's life invested in this show. It stays with them longer, they don't forget it easily, and the familiarity of it makes them want to come back to it later.
Serialized, if executed by people who can write (or, failing that, at least grew up on a wider variety of influences than "AtLA" and "the AtLA TVTropes page").
episodic is fricking ass and makes almost all shows with that format unwatchable.
serialized with some episodic sprinkled in is the best.
>episodic is fricking ass and makes almost all shows with that format unwatchable.
The frick are you talking about?
it takes many episodes to make a good story. if you're telling a story in one episode then i don't give a frick about that story.
You must really hate literally every cartoon from the golden age
i feel nostalgic for them but they are ass compared to stories told in serialized format. this is why the last airbender is easily the greatest cartoon ever made and it's not close.
i will rewatch airbender many times throughout my life with friends and family. i will not be watching dexter's lab with them.
Sure, great stories such as Roku fighting a volcano and dying
>serialized with some episodic sprinkled in is the best.
self-contained stories within airbender are only good because of the context. they take place within a longer overarching story.
I prefer episodic ones because when serialized ones frick up, they irreversably damage the rest of the show
soft-serialized, ala Invader Zim, Adventure Time, Futurama, etc.
>the show starts with a dead simple premise that the audience is either dropped into apropos of nothing, or that has everything set up in a single episode of indeterminate length comparative to the rest of the series (ie a 15 minute show would have a 15-45 minute pilot episode, or no pilot at all)
>we spend a decent chunk of time setting up the default Status Quo, maybe a majority of the first season, maybe halfway through the second season.
>the only changes to the Status Quo would either be small things like the weapon a character uses (Scarlet getting destroyed in The Real You [AT]), gradual changes in character dynamics (Brett wearing down Reagan's resistance to making a friend [IJ]), or these enormous events that completely upend everything (loathe as I am to admit it, that part in SVtFoE where Marco moves to Mewni with Star)
>After these huge Status Shaker episodes, the new Status Quo should actually be MAINTAINED for a period of time to allow for the exploration of story concepts within it. (In the alternate universe where Nickelodeon isn't complete shit, maybe Tak could've been introduced as a new Normal Human Student and be involved in more stupid episodic nonsense leading up to her Big Reveal as a rival rogue Invader, and then her plan being foiled would lead to her crashing back on Earth instead of flying out into the cosmos.)
People are so afraid of The Chris Carter Effect & Executive Meddling that they never bother doing anything other than Full Episodic or Full Serialized anymore. As much as the later seasons of Infinity Train after the first one are COMPLETELY uninteresting to me, at least they embody that spirit more than any other show made since the turn of the millennium. They turn their premise on its head so many times, it could be a breakdancer.
>*COMPLETELY uninteresting to me
on a personal level, i should've specified.