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alt title(s): Filler Arc We'll be there in a year or so. Depending on filler of course.
But more importantly, if "Stranger in a Strange Land" — which, universally, is (considered) the worst episode we ever produced — had not been produced, we would not have been able to convince the network that, "This is the future of the show: how Jack got his tattoos. Everything we've been saying for two years about what's to come, is now all here on the screen. You argued that an hour of Matthew Fox in emotionally-based conflicts, it doesn't matter what the flashback story is, it'll be fine. But now that we're doing his ninth flashback story, you just don't care." — Damon Lindelof on Lost
Entries in a continuity based serial that have no bearing on the main plot, doesn't significantly alter the dynamic, and generally serves to knock off another entry. Could be considered Padding applied to a whole franchise.
Extremely common in anime, where nearly every show with 26 or more episodes per season will end up employing it to meet contractual demands. Filler is usually something entirely original for the anime, but it isn't always the case; many manga employ filler just as ruthlessly. Sometimes entire filler Arcs are created, most often because the series Overtook The Manga. Filler is often misused to mean "any episode not in the original work", even if it's genuine Adaptation Expansion or is an already episodic series to begin with. In some circles, the term gets thrown around so much it seems to more or less mean "the parts I didn't like".
In most casts, the defining aspect of filler is the total lack of series momentum. Filler can be safely ignored without any loss of important information. However, there is also a style of filler called the "single upgrade filler". Basically, it uses a filler episode to introduce a new power, machine, costume, minor character, etc. without having to work it into the greater narrative. In these cases, the episode can be ignored outside of "something got an upgrade".
For filler in Web Comics, see Filler Strip.
Specific Filler tropes include:
Compare Sidequest, Level Grinding and Backtracking which sometimes turn into the video game equivalent.
Compare Breather Episode. When the news media is forced to resort to this, it's Silly Season. Or Sweeps. You decide.
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Examples
Anime and Manga
- Almost any long-running manga-based anime action series will tend to have gargantuan amounts of filler, because the Japanese networks, unlike western ones, pretty much don't do reruns or season breaks at all. This especially gets compounded when they go beyond the 26 episode mark, with many series getting over 40 episodes a season when they would struggle to even make half o them related to the main stories. Some of the best known examples include Sailor Moon, Naruto, Bleach, and Dragon Ball Z, all of which have at one time or another been criticized for their overuse of filler, and, generally, the lack of quality in the filler episodes.
- Dragon Ball's filler in particular ends up being contradicted by canon events in several places, such as an early one where Master Roshi explains the Dragon Balls to Lunch, giving a completely bogus origin story in the process, another where they go visit Android 8's creator an in attempt to have the self-destruct mechanism within him removed, only for it to be revealed in Z that the previously unseen Dr. Gero was the one who built Android 8. And in Z, there's an episode where Gohan's tail grows back, and so he can transform, Goku's old space pod happens to be nearby and happens to project an image of the full moon onto the night sky, forcing Piccolo to completely destroy it, and then it's revealed that Dr. Brief used Goku's spaceship to create another space pod to be used to go to Namek. Oops.
- Naruto's filler famously went for over a year (80 weeks to be precise) after it Overtook The Manga, and by the end it was being described by fans as a form of torture. The producers of sequel Shippuuden seem to be taking careful steps not to have that many at once again: even though the manga is three or four entire arcs ahead of the anime, they've cautiously gone back to filler after the second arc, and again after the third one, which precedes two arcs with no opportunities for filler.
- Also notable about the Shippuuden fillers is that they are a remarkable step up in quality compared to the pre-Time Skip versions. Rather than a long series of Monster Of The Week episodes evenly mixed with random variations of Defeat Means Friendship, the Ninja Guardians arc actually details a full-on storyline with an interesting backstory. True, this troper thinks they could have been a bit braver and made Sora an actual jinchuuriki instead of... whatever the hell he was supposed to be. There were plenty of off-screen candidates to make that happen. But at least they gave Asuma a story to call his very own; which is a good thing, too, since he probably isn't gonna get another chance.
- The current arc seems to be giving one last chance for screentime to many of the characters. Out of the recurring characters featured in the arc, 3 will be dead, 2 will undergo a major shift in personality, 1 suffers a significant loss in power, and 1 will, hell, just read.
- Bleach seems to avoid the "quality of fillers" bit; the general complaint on the Bount filler arc has usually been "the filler exists". When asked to elaborate, a fan will usually say "it's not that the filler arc was bad, it's just that the original story is better." The current filler arc, meanwhile, started pretty randomly in the middle of an established story arc. "Orihime was kidnapped by Aizen's group, but let's take a break and look at something else." It addresses issues that will eventually need to be looked at (i.e. the lack of captains for squads three, five, and nine) but it's just so random.
- Well, there is a bit of a problem. If you accept the current filler as canon, then none of the main characters can die until the next arc.
- They even acknowledged the worthlessness of the filler arc in The Stinger of its final episode. Ichigo trots back to Hueco Mundo like nothing happened (and nothing did), and Orihime shows him the point in the manga where they left off when he arrives.
- During the Soul Society Arc, there was a stretch in the middle of a tense part of the storyline that they had a Whole Episode Flashback for another character, followed by a Day In The Limelight episode for characters still on Earth, and then another Whole Episode Flashback episode directly afterwards. Although there were plot in the flashbacks, the actual story didn't move forward more than a few minutes over the course of three episodes. If you're watching to see what's going to happen it can get rather frustrating.
- Even if the story quality is better than average for filler, the Bount Arc still creates continuity problems: There's no reason why Rukia's powers don't return immediately after the Soul Society arc (like they do in the manga) and, in the anime, Hinamori takes an improbable amount of time to recover from her injuries from Aizen (she is a Lieutenant). There's the oddness with Ishida's powers too. Not to mention it's a major plot point in the Arrancar arc that Orihime didn't do much in the Soul Society Arc. In order for this to still work in the anime she had to be useless in the Bount Arc too.
- The latest set of filler material, around episode 213, indicates that the writers have given up on trying to do anything remotely dramatic, veering into the realm of self-parody. It's also one of the best filler episodes in a long time. Certainly better than the eternal tag filler imported from the manga.
- To show where Filler can go dangerously wrong, Rurouni Kenshin was actually cancelled due to the extremely low quality of its Filler Arc, and given a movie with a Gecko Ending.
- By contrast, short Anime First series like Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo and Darker Than Black, were highly episodic, and, being limited to 26 episodes from the start, had said "filler" as part of its overall story.
- Going against the grain, Nadia And The Secret Of Blue Water, despite being only 39 episodes, wound up having a filler arc added in the middle of production. These were the dreaded "island/Africa episodes" (episodes 23-34) in which the entire quality of the production, from the animation to the storyline, sank like a stone. They were commissioned only because the ratings were very high and imposed on the production team against their will. Hideaki Anno actually had nothing to do with their production because he was so taxed with just fulfilling his original duties and in later interviews expressed that of the episodes, he would only keep parts of two of them at most because they were so unimportant to the story.
- Any "Chii and [insert name here] Talk" episode in Chobits. They were considered so pointless and unnecessary to the plot that they were completely excised from the first North American DVD release, and only released as a bonus disc after fans complained.
- Saint Seiya managed to have, as a result of Overtook The Manga, an entire filler arc (the Asgard arc) that was as good as (if not better than) the other arcs.
- Hayate No Gotoku's first season of 52 episodes contained almost as much anime-original filler as manga-based episodes. Given the nature of the show, many fans who hadn't read the manga (this troper included) often couldn't tell which was which.
- Ditto Gintama. However, the very first episode of the anime was completely filler, and managed to initially put this troper off when she couldn't understand what the hell was going on.
- The Pokémon anime only starts a new game-based arc on the day the games in question are released, in Japan at least. This has led to both filler episodes and filler arcs. While the Orange Islands filler arc was considered to be well executed by the fandom, the Johto arc is considered terrible due to the many bad filler episodes and poor pacing. The Hoenn arc however was considered an improvement, as May's quest was given same the importance as Ash's and thus reduced the fillers between plot advancing episodes. The Battle Frontier arc was a mixed bag, due to uneven placement of the filler episodes. Time will tell however whether the Sinnoh arc will be done well, as it looks to be even longer then the Johto arc.
- The Slayers TRY season, while still helmed by the original creators, has a storyline not adapted from the original Light Novels. It dealt with a threat of Lina's world being destroyed by a Mazoku Lord from another universe, when said Dark Lord only had a small appearance in the original novels as the creator of Gourry's Sword of Light. The new season Slayers REVOLUTION returns to adapting events and characters from the novels that have not yet appeared.
- This troper actually prefers the filler episodes of the various seasons of Slayers.
- Slayers does have at least three or four per season, and they are usually the funniest parts.
- The third season of the Ikki Tousen anime, Great Guardians, has no basis in the original manga and has little bearing on the overall plot. The slightly slower pace and bigger emphasis on character interaction still make it a fairly enjoyable watch though.
- A large part of Rockman.EXE Stream was like this. In fact, this troper remembers being surprised when the series put forth actual plot.
- Of the the twenty stories found in volumes III, V and VI of the Suzumiya Haruhi series, only three have any relevance to the overarching story. To be fair, they're still well written and entertaining, but one can only read about Kyon snarking about Haruhi's latest antics so many times before wanting to get back to the aliens and time-travelers.
- This Troper disagrees as the other stories provides lots of character development, especially in regards to Haruhi.
- Magic Knight Rayearth anime in the first season has a lot of filler episodes. This, however, proves to be very important when it comes to Character Development. It also borrows several elements used in the manga too.
- The Oddly Named Sequel of Shugo Chara, Shugo Chara Doki, is yet only consisting of those. After the original series started getting DAMN close to Overtook The Manga, they started Doki with a pretty pointless filler arc about a french girl, who turns Shugo eggs into Question-mark-eggs. It has yet to end.
- Altough not as much as Naruto, Yu-Gi-Oh! has a LOT of filler (about 80 episodes out of 224). Noah's Filler Arc commited the sin of showing up in the middle of a bigger arc (and leaving some plot holes, such as — if Evil Marik had all this time alone in the Battle Ship, why didn't he search and kill Rishid?). The other two Filler Arcs though, the Oreichalcos one and the KC Grand Prix one, are very disposable and are sillier than the show usually is. Besides, the Oreichalcos arc denied all of Mai's Character Development, and that's no good.
- Soul Eater had a few hilarious fillers involving the character Excalibur, who's pretty much a filler-character, although he does come in on the last arc.
- Sailor Moon has a fan guide called "Sailor Moon Essential Episodes" that roughly pinpoints 53 episodes as completely irrelevant filler, with an additional 51 being single plot point/power upgrade curiosities (along with five vital episodes of the Doom Tree arc still considered filler). The show only had 200 episodes total. That's pretty impressive in and of itself, but the show went even further and changed many plot points from the manga in order to extend the series further. The Seven Great Yoma and the final season Big Bad attacking civilians with full knowledge of her real targets were constructs designed just for filler.
Comics
- For the first period of time that Magneto was Put On A Bus in the X Men comics, the X-Men faced off against such "notable foes" as the Locust, the Porcupine, and the Scarecrow (no, not that Scarecrow — this one has about 12 trained attack crows). And they added a new member to the team. For two whole issues.
- Filler issues in comic books often exist because of plans changing at the last minute. Teen Titans had a crossover with Outsiders with another crossover planned soon after. DC decided to just make the second crossover a separate miniseries, resulting in a two-issue filler arc in each book.
Live Action TV
- Somewhat justified in certain live action SF and fantasy series like Doctor Who and Buffy The Vampire Slayer, because the series or season arc would generally unfold slowly over the course of many episodes. This is true even of long-running series like Stargate, in which each season has its own Story Arc, and most episodes at least address the main arc at some point — and even then some of the episodes that have very little effect on the arc have proven to be popular with fans due to being humorous Breather Episodes, such as the Groundhog Day Loop episode "Window of Opportunity", or the self-parodying episodes "Wormhole X-Treme!" or "200" (all from Stargate SG-1), or the Halloween episodes of Buffy.
- Related example: Super Sentai and Power Rangers mostly follow the "half arc, half filler" formula, but each Sentai series has to run for a whole year's 48-52 episodes, whereas Power Rangers are usually much shorter. Some fans feel that the short seasons are sometimes an improvement, since 32-episode PR season is much more story intense and less filler-ridden than a 50-episode Sentai.
- Others argue that the PR seasons are too story intensive, as the writers try to condense as much of the original material- both story and filler- as possible into a smaller number of episodes. At best it spoils the pace of the story (e.g. fitting a two-episode storyline into one twenty-two minute episodes) and at worst it results in something barely watchable.
- Less justifiable in the original series of Doctor Who, however. Serials running for five to seven episodes or more usually have so much padding, contrivances and irrelevant storylines they can get hard to watch. This was reduced in later series (starting around the Third Doctor), with a more manageable four episodes per serial and rarer six-part episodes. Even in the Sixth Doctor season 22, where the runtime was temporarily switched to 1 hour instead of the usual half, the serials go over the two parts only once.
- In particular, the First Doctor serial The Dalek's Master Plan, a massive 12-parter (plus a prologue episode broadcast weeks earlier and notable for not featuring any of the main cast), had a Christmas Episode intentionally meant as filler.
- A few seasons into The X Files, the show settled into a mixture of "mythology" episodes and "Monster of the Week" episodes. If you were watching for the myth arc, the Monster of the Week episodes were filler. Towards the end, though, this troper preferred them to the impenetrable, contradictory mythology episodes....
- The Prisoner was originally intended to be a seven episode miniseries. The network wanted more, and so ten standalone episodes were created and intermixed with the main Story Arc. Less noticeable than in other series with a high filler percentage, as most of the filler episodes are still good.
- American game shows are terrible about this, especially recent ones on FOX. These shows like to stretch out the time between a contestant's answering the question and the reveal of the actual answer. One example in particular, Don't Forget the Lyrics (which could be described as karaoke, but with more Wayne Brady) will sometimes pad this period out for as much as one or two minutes at a time (not including the commercial break in-between) by revealing only one correct word at a time and allowing 10-20 second pauses between reveals. Most execs would probably argue that this is to "heighten the suspense" but the viewing audience pretty quickly realizes that each of these hour-long shows could be half an hour if not for filler.
Western Animation
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