If you need filler badly enough, clips of previous episodes can be hacked together into a Recap Episode. When the filler is just flat-out bizarre, it's a Bizarro Episode. A Lower-Deck Episode can end up as filler if badly done. When the show splits to follow two or more characters, and one of them is engaged in filler-type activities while the others are doing important things, it's Trapped by Mountain Lions. The Wacky Wayside Tribe is a common form of filler in quest narratives. But at their most extreme, absolutely nothing that happens in a filler episode will affect things going forward, even if it seems like a character developed or grew in some manner. These are referred to in anime fandoms as 'single upgrade filler', as only purpose of the episode is to give a character an upgrade and nothing else. And if there is any pertinent new info, it tends to be a single plot point that can be adequately summed up in a short sentence with zero elaboration (e.g., 'Alice got a new power' or 'Bob got a new costume' or 'Charlie's first appearance') because the details are inconsequential. The practice is no longer especially common due to the rise of the 12-Episode Anime and other factors.įiller has a few defining aspects, but the biggest is lack of series momentum, meaning the episode can be safely ignored without the audience missing out on any important information to the series. See Overtook the Manga or Adaptation Expansion for examples specifically relating to that. This can and has included dozens of episodes of filler storylines that will never be referenced or discussed ever again.

Combine this with the fact that season breaks used to be - and still are - uncommon for Japanese children's programming, and you have a recipe for many popular shows (especially Shōnen anime) needing to create filler content just so they won't have to deal with overtaking the manga. The term is most widely used in anime fandoms, where filler more precisely refers to anything that isn't in the original source material, as the vast majority of anime aren't wholly original works but rather adaptations of existing material. This could be considered Padding (the addition of scenes to lengthen a story) applied to a whole franchise by creating brand new episodes. Filler episodes are entries in a generally continuous serial that are unrelated to the main plot, don't significantly alter the relations between the characters, and generally serve only to take up space.

Original naruto episode no fillers