by EmilLang1000 » Wed Jul 13, 2005 11:16 am
The problem is that the comic is so long and popular. They aren't trying to drag the show out, but when they make filer episodes, it's so the author has more time to develop the story more. What happens usually is that the anime comes out once a week, every week, and encompasses about 2 or 3 chapters of the original comic; in other words, a single weekly 30-minute-long episode can have as much story in it as three 20-page weekly comics. What eventually happens is that the anime catches up to the comic, and problems arise because they then have nothing to base the show on - Ranma 1/2, Kenshin, and Inu-Yasha are prime examples. Naruto will probably last for about 36 volumes; that's no where NEAR little enough for a 26 episode long series - without, of course, completely annihilating the story. Take, for example, Ah! My Goddess and Video Girl Ai: amazing comics, but the stories are shoved down into tiny little 5 or 6 episode OVAs; most of the character development is lost, major plot points in the story are omitted, and the story as a whole suffers. Admitadely, if they'd waited for Naruto to conclude, or at least have just STARTED the series now, after giving the comic a few years to advance, they could have stuck directly with the comic, and it could have been maybe 100 to 120 episodes long.
If you really believe that making a comic that long into a show that short, look at Love Hina: the comic was amazing, and by how Ken Akamatsu wrote it, could have been anywhere between 75 and 100 episodes long, omitting some of the worse stories, of course; yet they tried to shove it down into a 26-episode series, 32 episodes after the OVAs, and what happened? A tragedy to say the least.
Rule of thumb - when you have a story that lasts for longer than a year (3 to 4 years in Love Hina's case, 4 years + in Naruto's case) you CAN'T tell the story in 26 episodes... it just doesn't work, and screws the entire story up.
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