Genre Shift - Television Tropes & Idioms

The weird cousin of Executive Meddling, except planned in advance by the major writers.

Controversial or extremely different ideas are very hard to get past sponsors and audiences suspicious of anything new and unfamiliar -- even in Japan, where some pretty bizarre stuff gets on TV with almost no effort. An easy if sneaky way around this is merely to present your start of the series as something familiar. However, once the main plot kicks in, your audience is probably loyal enough not to notice the quick shift in tone and pacing you were planning from the start all along. In hindsight, they'll maybe notice the little hints you've been dropping. As a side effect, the series will probably also undergo Mood Whiplash.

Extremely common in more unusual anime, and a few shows which simply run very long. Studio Gainax has a particular reputation for presenting and advertising their programs initially as whatever they superfically resemble, then flagrantly satirizing or angsting it up, much to the fans' surprise.

Genre Shifts are sometimes used in followup series after an Ink Stain Adaptation ends.

Genre Shifts sometimes occur at the ends of series when the writers finally get around to soapboxing their opinions. Many fluffy over-the-top bishoujo comedies are (unnecessarily) burdened down with a last episode by making an attempt at drama. On the other hand, some cutesy or romance-based stories can experience Genre Shift simply because they start running so long the writer figured if they have to derail the original plot, they might as well do it with something creative.

In video games, Genre Shifts extend beyond this to actual shifts in gaming genre; a fighting game may have one installment Genre Shift into an action/adventure or RPG. Usually, these don't turn out that well, and excessive use of this trope can lead to Genre Roulette. A game can also experience a Genre Shift due to Adaptation Decay, specifically from 2-D to 3-D gaming.

It is possible for this to work, as long as the creators know what they're doing, and it can pay off quite well at times. Usually, however, this requires planning it from the start, and Genre Shifts motivated by Executive Meddling are likely doomed.

Not to be confused with Art Shift.

Examples:

Live Action TV

Lost was initially presented as just a drama about people stranded on a desert island, but increasingly seems to have become a sci-fi/fantasy show in disguise.
- In its defense, though, some bizarre elements such as the (for the better part of the first season unseen) "Monster" and the polar bears (on a tropical island!) were there from the start, so it's not like the show initially pretended to be a different genre altogether. For that matter, the 4th episode, "Walkabout", revealed that John Locke couldn't walk until after the plane crash.
- Also, the show was originally conceived as a drama called Nowhere, with none of the supernatural elements. The script was pretty much universally loathed at ABC, where it was thought to be boring and uninspired. J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof were brought in to Re Tool, came up with the idea that the island is a character in itself, and the rest is history. However, the guy who wrote the boring script still gets 60% of the creator credit.
M*A*S*H famously began drifting away from being a Black Comedy after the departure of Colonel Blake and Trapper John, and by the time Radar left in the 8th season, it had lost most of its dark humorous edge and has rebranded itself a "Dramedy."
Passions started out as a typical soap opera and quickly mutated into a supernatural weird-fest. Ditto for Dark Shadows.
The early episodes of lonelygirl15 were in the style of a realistic video blog. Over time, it turned into a sort of soap opera/drama/thriller hybrid with evil cults, conspiracies, guns and laser beams. For an example of just how different the show has become, compare classic episode "Proving Science Wrong!"[1] to one of the early season 2 episodes, "Home Invasion"[2].
House was pitched to Fox as a show somewhat along the lines of Diagnosis Murder, where the doctors use their medical skills to solve crimes. It quickly moved away from this and became a drama centered on the fact that "everybody lies", from the patients to House himself.
Star Trek Deep Space Nine is a slightly odd example since, in hindsight, the static setting seems an obvious way to do more arc-based storylines and use lots of recurring characters but, in the beginning, it was just normal Star Trek with a gimmick - the only important difference was that the alien of the week from the Planet Of Hats came to them instead of the other way 'round thanks to the wormhole discovered in the first episode. The first season is almost indistinguishable from other Treks, and only when the characters are established do the writers start doing different things.
For much of its long life, The Bill was a Police Procedural, but when a new executive producer took over in 2002 it rapidly shifted into a Crime Time Soap, alienating many long-term fans.
Baywatch Nights. Goes from action to sci-fi in season two.
Look Around You is one of the biggest users of this trope - the first and second seasons are, for all intents and purposes, different shows. The first series is a series of 10 minute spoofs of educational videos from the 1970s, while the second is a 30 minute studio-comedy parody of shows such as Tomorrows World. Apart from a couple of shared Running Gags and a brief mention of shared minor characters, the two series are connected only by having the same writers.
As lampshaded by the announcer, following the move from TechTV to G4, the video game review show X-Play became less about reviewing games and more about employing successive "lame vaudeville gags". At one point, the show was able to provide thorough reviews of at least five games in one single airing, but thanks to the space the gags took up, they were barely able to get through three. They have become less frequent recently, and X-Play now only has one or two sketches a week.
- Really it can be argued that the opposite then happened. It use to be a sketch comedy/video game review show, but now it's just about the reviews and video game news (that are significantly less comical) as it's the only thing on G4 still about video games.

Anime

There's a certain amount of truth to the cynical idea that an anime based on a story from Shonen Jump magazine will Genre Shift into a Tournament Arc series, regardless of its origin (for example, Yu Yu Hakusho, Shaman King, and even the ancient-board-game-based series Hikaru No Go).
A strange example occurs in the last Steel Angel Kurumi OAV, a far-future prequel done in the format of a fairly serious drama instead of the show's usual bubblegum cuteness.
Naturally, Neon Genesis Evangelion also surprised many fans (and parents) at its increasingly dark tone as the show went on.
- Ditto Haibane Renmei. Though there were some definite hints early on. Any show comfortable with showing the scene where Rakka's wings burst through is obviously not going to be all sunshine and kittens.
Mai-HiME starts out looking like a postmodern take on Magical Girls, then turns into something disturbingly like Highlander.
Mahou Sensei Negima looks like a harem comedy when it starts, but takes a sudden left turn about three-quarters of the way through the first anime and becomes something of an occult Time Travel thriller. The manga goes even further, inserting a Tournament Arc, and the nature of the Time Travel story is much different. By the School Festival arc, the entire manga has only the occasional harem antics of the first two volumes and is mainly about Negi's quest to find his father who mysteriously dissapeared before he was born. In other words its Hunter X Hunter meets Harry Potter meets Love Hina. Of course this is due to the fact Ken Akamatsu never wanted to do a harem series in the first place.
- Given recent events, it's safe to add Dragon Ball Z to that mix.
Similarly, Love Hina originally delayed its romantic resolution with Road Trip arcs. By the end of the story these tended to be the most enjoyable bits for the author to do, and a major influence to similar plots in Negima.
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha combines an initial genre subversion (a magical girl show pitched specifically at a male audience) with a genre shift halfway through the series.
Parodied in Excel Saga, which changed to a new genre in nearly every episode (sci-fi, war drama, romantic comedy, horror, etc.), which it also parodied.
Kannazuki No Miko underwent a Genre Shift halfway through the first episode, when it suddenly changed from slow-paced, romantic Shojo to Humongous Mecha. It continues to shift in each episode, flip-flopping between Schoolgirl Lesbians and Humongous Mecha. It has been described as Marimite X Gundam after the series Maria-sama ga Miteru and, of course, Mobile Suit Gundam.
Gunbuster and its sequel Diebuster were masters of this. They both had a fairly cheerful if a bit dramatic character drama going up until the magic episode, when everything started going to hell.
Soukou No Strain had a first episode much like a shojo series, and though its marketing in the bishoujo Megami Magazine could predict that that would change, no one predicted its quick shift to angst and its new motto in Anyone Can Die.
Genre shift is pretty much the entire point behind Abenobashi Mahou Shoutengai.
Ouran High School Host Club went through most of the anime as an over-the-top parody of Shojo drama, but in the last few episodes became more of a shojo drama with jokes added.
One may be excused for thinking that Guyver is a typical school-based shonen anime after the first few issues/episodes. But this changes pretty rapidly when the school is blown up by either Zoanoids or Guyver 2, depending on what medium you prefer and Sho is almost never seen in school again.
The Rockman.EXE anime (okay, Mega Man NT Warrior, if you must) shifted from computer-based Mons to some kind of weird Sentai variant right around the third season, and completely gave up on its computer origins in the fourth, with the advent of Cross Fusion. Basically, it forced the human protagonists to merge with their partners and fight themselves, at which point the Mons were rarely seen again. This is one of the reasons the fourth season is disliked among the fanbase. Then, in the fifth season, it switched from computer Mons to normal Mons when an Alternate Universe setting made it impossible to Cross Fusion but forced Navis to be summoned into material space instead.
- So you're saying that "Rockman.EXE" is a gigantic "Digimon" rip-off? I KNEW IT!
In the first few episodes (both in the Anime and Manga) of Bleach, a reluctant teen fights ghosts (Hollows) in a series of unconnected locations. However, once Ichigo travels to the Shinigami world, the series completely abandons ghostbusting in favor of high-power duels between progressively more powerful rivals. Additionally, the series replaces its largely simplistic good spirit/bad spirit dichotomy with increasingly complicated plots, intrigue, and a much larger cast.
The OVA Moldiver spends three episodes as a gender-bending superhero send-up before abruptly switching into a serious drama in the final two episodes.
Berserk, though it does show a number of demons at the beginning of the anime and a fight with demonic Blood Knight Nosferatu Zodd early on in the anime, goes from grim and gritty medieval fantasy into straight up horror in the final episodes when Griffith makes his Deal With The Devil and becomes Dark Messiah Femto, and the demons start coming en masse to rip apart the members of the Band of the Hawks who Griffith has marked out for sacrifice. Since both Guts and Casca are marked with the Godhand's Brand of Sacrifice as a result of Griffith's betrayal, both of them have to deal with the monsters from that point forward, and they soon become Guts's primary enemies.
The Haruhi Suzumiya series (both the original light novels and the anime) begins as a comedy series that, while featuring a very eccentric protagonist in Genki Girl Haruhi, was still a fairly realistic Slice Of Life comedy. Then the aliens, time travelers, and psychics start turning up, and we get the big reveal that Haruhi is God (or at least the next best thing), and her subconscious desires can warp reality, or even destroy the universe if she becomes bored enough. It actually remains a Slice Of Life comedy for the most part, but it's slices of much weirder lives than we originally thought.

Film

Audition does this. The first half of the film is set up to be a romantic comedy, with the protagonist hosting a mock audition to find the perfect woman. Only it's really boring. Then just as you're about to fall asleep through boredom, the horror begins. Although this editor feels that this trick would be much better if there weren't the big 18 Certificate labels all over the place, and the front cover of the DVD being very menacing. The overall idea is lost in this case and just becomes the most uneventful opening act imaginable.
Wild Things starts out as a formulaic Wrongly Accused plot, complete with Bill Murray as a sleazy lawyer trying The Perry Mason Method... except that it's over an hour in. That's when it's revealed that the defendant was working with his accusers for a damages settlement, but they all have their own plans, which quickly create a Jigsaw Puzzle Plot.
Legally Blonde should end about 2/3 through, as technically Elle has accomplished her revised goal (instead of chasing Warner, she has become a serious person). Instead, she gets applied to a legal case. It's still a fun movie, and the musical revises this by making Emmitt a legitimate romantic lead that you want Elle to be with at the end.
The original Alien was a haunted house movie in space. Aliens is straight out sci-fi action... and it works perfectly, one of the few sequels that is equal to (or better) than the original, mostly because it's so different.
The Oscar-winning film La Vita è bella (In English, Life is Beautiful) begins as a very charming, but rather generic romantic comedy, except that it happens to be set in Mussolini's Italy, and the characters are Jewish. Now, flash forward three years. The male and female leads are now married, have a son, and the Holocaust is about to start. Amazingly, it remains a comedy, only with an entirely different premise: the father starts telling his three-year-old son wild stories to protect him from the truth of what is happening.
One of the classic examples is, of course, From Dusk Till Dawn where a drama about crooks on the run kidnapping a dysfunctional family abruptly turns into a vampire/action movie over the course of one striptease.
The 4th Indiana Jones movies starts out like the rest of them and becomes increasingly scifi near the end. It still works though.
The movie Miracle Mile starts out as an indie romantic comedy. It sure doesn't end that way.
The 2007 film Sunshine starts out as a pretty decent sci fi epic, sort of like a poorly-researched version of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Then, at almost exactly the three-quarters mark, it suddenly and without warning turned into Friday The Thirteenth in space.

Literature

Something similar to this couching of ideas or stories that may be disturbing and/or controversial within a more conventional, non-threatening story has happened throughout the history of art and literature; witness Hamlet turning the standard bloodthirsty revenge plot into a more philosophical meditation on the human condition, thus making a form of this one of The Oldest Ones In The Book.
The Hedge Knight, the prequel for A Song Of Ice And Fire, reads first as an romantic tale about an up-and-coming knight, but anyone familiar with the author knows it'll turn into tragedy.
In Jeff Lindsay's Dexter series, about a serial killer who only kills bad guys (on which the TV show of the same name was based), the first two books (Darkly Dreaming Dexter and Dearly Devoted Dexter) are mainstream crime thrillers aside from the unusual protagonist, but the third (Dexter in the Dark) takes a sharp left turn into dark fantasy territory, pitting Dexter against supernatural forces, ancient conspiracies, and Cosmic Horror.
Rant by Chuck Palahniuk is a fictional oral biography of...well, that's just it. He's an interesting character, but what we're supposed to think is significant about Buster Casey changes rapidly. There's a brief mention early on of a rabies epidemic, but by the end it's revealed that he is his own adopted father, and biological father, and grandfather, and great-grandfather, and the villain, via car accident induced time travel. That being said, it's this troper's favorite book, so it's not a bad thing.
The Discworld series started off as fairly straightforward parodies of Heroic Fantasy. Later novels have been much more heavily focused on social satire, with heavy emphasis on philosophy and topics such as morality, class warfare, religion, theoretical physics, and modern city life. It works mostly because they're still bloody hilarious.

Video Games

Max Payne likes to tease the player with hints and suggestions of genre shift. For example, the first portion of the game seems to be a shooter set in a "normal" world with normal enemies, specifically a mafia group that the titular Payne had infiltrated, but then was exposed after being framed for murdering his partner. Following the connections up the hierarchy leads to a Hellfire Club-like nightclub called Ragnarok, where multiple references to The End of the World are brought up, and it seems the mafia heavy who uses it as a front is worshiping demons and practicing dark magic. However, it turns out that he's just a little insane and full of crap, even if he was killing people in his demented worship - no dark magic, just lots of creepy atmosphere, and then it goes back to what it was. Well, with a few bizarre dream sequences that seem to have installed a door in the Fourth Wall.
Drakengard starts off as Heroic Fantasy, but slowly and surely turns into a Hack And Slash version of Survival Horror, the horror aspect being the emphasis here. When things start to really get weird, they hang a lampshade on it when one of the mission descriptions is "Time and space fall apart, and the fantasy begins."
The Monster Rancher series started life as a Nintendo Hard Mons series that blended elements of a management simulation with action-based RPG combat. Monster Rancher EVO, however, threw it all out the window and was an ordinary RPG with weird, half-and-half combat (Half "classic Monster Rancher" style and half standard RPG, I mean) and a stats system based on playing a rhythm mini-game. No, really. It also added towns, missions, almost completely axed tournaments, and it had a bizarre circus theme that this troper still can't figure out.
Halo: Combat Evolved: Two words: The Flood.
- And the Trigens in Far Cry.
- And the cannibal mutants in Uncharted: Drake's Fortune.
In Medal of Honor: Airborne, after 5 missions of largely realistic gameplay based on actual historic WWII campaigns, the final mission throws bulletproof, heavy-machinegun-wielding Nazi Super Soldiers at you, and takes place in, as Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw put it, "a giant concrete tower that can only be described as a Doom Fortress."
Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath starts out as the Oddworld equivalent of a western. Mysterious Bounty Hunter? Check. Gun toting outlaws? Check. Hick Towns populated by chicken men? ...Um, Check.

But then in the final third of the game, after stumbling into an ambush set up by the Big Bad, and getting hit with a Tomato Surprise, the game shifts to a more traditional Oddworld setting as you help the native Grubbs overcome the Big Bad. This change completely overhauls the game. Stranger's costume changes, the concept of Moolah (and therefore the concept of enemy bounties) is removed (enemies are turned into ammo instead. Don't ask), the soundtrack changes from spaghetti western music to epic orchestrated pieces, the enemies change from gruff outlaws to military Mooks, new gameplay mechanics are added, and the scenery colors shift from browns and reds to blues and greys.

The Chzo Mythos goes from fairly conventional (but good) horror, to SPACE horror, to Cosmic Horror.

Web Comics

El Goonish Shive's change from comedy to dramedy was apparently planned from the very beginning.
College Roomies From Hell is looking like it might be doing this. The strip started out as the standard light college campus humor, but little hints and bits have added up so that it looks like it might have always been intended to end up with an apocalyptic ending. If the author has stated for sure one way or another, I haven't heard. Also listed as an example of Cerebus Syndrome, if there's any difference between these two.
Wapsi Square started out as a lightweight and slightly surreal urban Sit Com, but gradually began adding elements of Science Fiction and/or Fantasy with the introduction of characters who might be gods, immortals or aliens, the concept of humans possessing (or being possessed by) inner demons, and a 12,000 year old mystery. In spite of all this, the sitcom elements are still present, and often just as strong as ever.

Western Animation

Futurama is a comedy series that manages to seamlessly integrate action, romance and drama in many episodes, and even (gasp and alarm) an overarching plot that spanned multiple episodes, not to mention "Jurassic Bark" and its famous Tear Jerker Mood Whiplash Downer Ending. Possibly the reason it was Too Good To Last.

Fan Fiction

Gaijin started as a darkly comic Self Insert Fic in which the SI character was essentially Murphy's Law incarnate (despite being more powerful than he had any right to be). Then he started disguising himself as Spider-Man. Then more analogues of Marvel characters started appearing, the most recent as of this writing being the Fantastic Four and "Tako-sama" (Doctor Octopus)...

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