So I’m Watching Some Shorts…

Hello wonderful people. I hope you’re all doing well.

This season has been one that, for the most part, I’ve enjoyed. I’ve been keeping up with a decent amount of shows (at least for myself) and continually look forward to the next week. Bungou Stray Dogs continues to impress me with how rich the characters are, how fleshed out the story has become, and how we’re able to enjoy more and more of the happenings in Yokohama. Shield Hero is another show that I look forward to every week, and I think that it’s grown into its story and has fleshed out the characters we’ve come to know well enough. Of course, Attack on Titan is also in the mix again, and with where that story has been going, I’m excited to know what’s going to happen (no, I don’t read the manga, sorry)…

I have, however, been watching a few shorts this season. Notably: “Ao-chan Can’t Study!”; “Why The Hell Are You Here, Teacher?”; and “Nobunaga teacher’s young bride” and I’m not sure why I’ve continued watching them.

Here’s my problem: shorts give me the opportunity to watch something quickly, which I enjoy, because I can go through an episode or two if I’m in a time-crunch and still get that  sought-after “I watched anime today, I did something I enjoy” experience I crave. However, because they’re shorts, I’m left feeling a bit displeased. Something always feels empty in me when I finish an episode and it felt like half the screen time was used up on the OP and ED (if they’re used).

Don’t get me wrong, though, I actually enjoyed the last few episodes of “Ao-chan Can’t Study!” that I’ve seen (I’m a bit behind), but I’m still a bit confused about how to feel when I look at the clock it’s only been fifteen minutes and I’ve already gone through an entire episode. It messes with my sense of time, I guess. I think my main issue is that I’m so used to the more normal 25 minutes of one episode with OP and ED, and the intensity of the shows I have been watching recently, and if it’s not anime, then the episode lengths of shows I watch are anywhere from 45 minutes to 60 minutes.

Perhaps this is strictly a personal preference, as I’m sure there are plenty of people who enjoy watching shorts and get just as much out of that enjoyment as they would watching a full-length episode, but that’s just not me. Sure, I could binge-watch these shows in about as much time as it would take me to watch half a season of a normal length show, but part of me doesn’t feel fulfilled. Perhaps I’m so conditioned to the 25 minute episodes that anime usually puts out that I feel a void when I have to sit and wait for another episode to start when on most occasions an episode would still be running.

Perhaps it’s also because the shows don’t seem do run as deep in character development…?? (Which seems obvious now that I say it…)

 

I don’t know. This is sort of just a rant, and I’m curious if anyone has been watching shorts this season, or they enjoy watching shorts in general. Why do you enjoy them? Is it a time constraint thing? Is there something about the seemingly surface-level character development, or the format of the episodes in general that you enjoy? Anyway, that’s all I have to say about that…

 

 

Thanks for reading!

Alexie 🙂