This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Air Of Mystery: I don't get what Sakura's complaining about here; she never does anything anyway.
That Other 1 Dude: Those things about Family Guy and The Simpsons would fall under Padding if using up time was the only purpose, but both were Overly Long Gag.
EDIT: Actually parts of this article need to be dumped as they fall under Padding/
Danel: It really seems unclear to me what Filler is. At the one end of it, there's the pointless, time-filling nonsense which can't and won't be referenced again (as in Anime) and which won't even see any Character Development. But I'm increasingly seeing it used to refer to any episode which doesn't advance the Myth Arc... an increasingly pervasive use which seems to me to note a general trend away from the idea of Episodic Shows. It troubles me. People used to like a nice run-around with a nice bit of character development, etc, everything you come to the show for... but I'm increasingly seeing fans acting like hot-housed students panicking about whether this'll be important in the Finale. You don't watch a mid-season episode because it'll be fun, but because it'll provide vital clues and set things up for the dramatic Season Finale. In Avatar, "The Puppetmaster" can't have just been a creepy tale giving the audience background about the raids on the Southern Water Tribes and showing Katara under pressure - it has to introduce us to Bloodbending so it can play a Vital Role later on. It seems to me to be a fundamentally wrong-headed way of looking at things.
puritybrown: It makes sense to talk about filler in the context of ongoing anime series adapted from ongoing manga, because where the main purpose of the anime is to follow the manga storyline, any story that's created to fill time because the series Overtook the Manga literally cannot have any significance. Ultimately the anime is going to snap back into following the manga, so the filler arcs — even if they're enjoyable in their own right — are never going to contribute anything of substance to the story. They might as well be Fan Fic.
In other contexts, the applicability of the concept is less clear.
Count Dorku: I've made $45 so far selling a series of joke articles on
Ethereal Mutation: Azxc, blindly deleting the Sailor Moon entry doesn't change the fact that the show is infamous for both its filler and the Adaptation Decay that made it possible. Even the fanbase won't deny it. If there is something wrong about a particular detail (I did more research the first time you deleted the entry, so I'm pretty sure it's accurate), fix it. Don't delete the whole thing just because it's a trope that isn't very flattering (which I am forced to assume due to a lack of any given rationale).
puritybrown: I don't get how the Lost-related quote has anything to do with filler. Does it make sense if you watch the show? Because, never having seen an episode of it, it just seems irrelevant (and hard to understand).
Butterscotch:Considering there isn't even an ENTRY for Lost, and since the quote makes no sense to anyone who hasn't seen the show, I'm gonna delete it.
