Discussion Main / Filler

What is a musical equivalent of Filler?

The anime also usually extends the length of the canon fights, often in the process turning what in the manga was a Curb-Stomp Battle into something much more evenly-matched.

• In addition to filler episodes and arcs, by the time of Z nearly every canonical scene ended up being interspersed with at least some filler content. This presented a bit of a dilemma when Kai being produced, as some filler simply couldn't be easily removed. While much of this consisted of obvious and easily-eliminated padding like longer "powering up" sequences and extended stare-downs in the middle of fights, other filler sequences were part of the action and the only way to seamlessly remove them would've been to also remove some of the canon content. As a result, Kai merely has less filler than the original rather than having none.

• The entire Orange Island arc (between Kanto and Johto) was based on a region that doesn't exist in the games, because the second generation of games hadn't been released yet

The description that the trope uses is "episode of padding", not "not in the original material". The own Dragon Ball example notes that the non-removed content is not mere padding. About the Orange Islands example, this is so close to filler when the area in "Attack of the Prehistoric Pokemon"(aka-introduction to Charizard and to Togepi's egg), considering the captures of the arc and that this concludes the "Charmander turned disobedient after evolution" arc. And the GS Ball is the excuse to the entry in Johto.

• 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 Inoue 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.

  • It also created leftover characters who became integrated into the canon arcs in the form of the three Mod Souls Ririn, Kurodo, and Nova

• 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.

Filler not means "not in the original work" but yes "episode of Padding

The anime/manga section incorrectly stated that the Pokemon episodes from The Flame Pokemon-Athon to The Breeding Center is filler aside from Togepi being introduced and Charmander's evolution. But that is pretty inaccurate, hence it's removal. All together (counting The Legend of Dratini, but not Electric Soldier Porygon due to it being banned from airing worldwide), there were 24 episodes between the Gym Match episodes. Here are all of the episodes I'm refering to:

1. The Legend of Dratini- The episode where Ash got his Tauros. And if you didn't have the knowledge of this episode, then you'd be confused where they all came from when they made their US debut.

2. March of the Exeggutor Squad- Charmander evolves into Charmeleon.

3. The Problem with Paras- Establishes Charmeleon's disobedience which would carry over into it's evolution and would play a major part in Charizard's appearances until Charizard Chills.

4. The Song of Jigglypuff- First appearance of Jigglypuff, who would appear in several plot related episodes like Attack of the Prehistoric Pokemon, Pokeball Peril and Snack Attack.

5. Attack of the Prehistoric Pokémon- Charmeleon evolves into Charizard, and the egg that will hatch into Togepi is found.

6. Princess Versus Princess- Jessie captures a Lickitung.

7. Who Gets to Keep Togepi?- Togepi hatches, and becomes Misty's Pokemon.

8. Pokémon Paparazzi

9. The Ultimate Test

10. The Breeding Center Secret- Okay, Todd's appearance might not have meant anything, but his departure episode sees the introduction of Butch & Cassidy, plus we find that James owns a Victreebel. So Pokemon Paparazzi and The Ultimate Test escape the filler status by association.

Now granted, of the 24 episodes, the majority is filler, but still not as much as it was claimed it to be.

• After loosely following the manga for the first six episodes, the Kuroshitsuji/Black Butler anime adaptation consisted almost entirely of this for the remaining episodes. It is also notable for changing several important plot points and character traits.

Filler not means "not in the original work" but yes "episode of Padding".

• Zatch Bell actually had quite little filler, especially if compared to other Toei productions. But then the anime almost Overtook the Manga, and the producers decided to make a completely anime-only arc, the Shion Arc. General consensus is that it's a very good arc, with interesting characters and a nice Tear Jerker.
  • The anime actually eliminated an important manga plot element, that the spellbooks told you how many demons were left, to incorporate filler. Raiku has acknowledged Wiseman (a movie-only demon) and Hyde (a demon who replaces Reycom as the first demon that Kiyomaro and Gash encounter), but no others.

• The Ranma One Half anime has a large amount of filler (including 3/5 of the seventh and final season), but in this case "filler" really means "original short story arcs unique to that canon". By the technical definition, the original manga was also full of filler... but neither version has a Myth Arc or, indeed, an overall storyline; Ranma 1/2 has its story arcs, but is pretty much episodic by definition. As in all cases, the quality of various filler stories ranges widely. For example, one technically filler episode manages to take Sasuke Sarugakure and not only make him interesting, but border-line tragic.
• 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 finally finished after 39 episodes.
  • To be fair, the plot does continue while this arc is going on, albeit in an extremely dragged out manner. The big problem with Doki is that Lulu was only created to produce Monster of the Week filler, so she sticks around for far too long and has a nasty habit of forgetting her Character Development when the episode only needs her as a plot device.

• 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 often couldn't tell which was which.
  • Fortunately, the second season focuses more on the manga plot... sadly, to the point of skipping manga episodes and scenes that aren't vital to the plot. Until later on the run, then they have padding instead.

Filler not means "anime-only", but yes episode of Padding.

• The Asgard Arc of Saint Seiya. Later arcs (Poseidon, Hades) pick up the manga again, though.

"Filler is often misused to mean "any episode not in the original work", even if it's genuine Adaptation Expansion." You needs the Asgard arc to understand the Poseidon arc in the anime. In the anime, Saori was catched in the ending of the Asgard arc, thanks the events in the Asgard arc and the entry in the Poseidon Kingdom also is Asgard-dependent in the anime . In other words, not filler.

Removed some...less than objective statements about Railgun. Original text preserved below:

Taken to silly levels in the To Aru Kagaku No Railgun anime, where more than half the run is filler. To be exact, episodes 3 and 13-24 are filler (Out of 24), (and other episodes have filler scenes as well) which means they could have cut the entire second half easily and there'd ve been no problems. Oh, wait, lead character Mikoto is very popular, better drag on this to sell more DVDs. It wouldn't have been so bad if the filler was good, but other than the Beach Episode (Which was episode 13, so once again, might as well have stopped with that) and the last arc, it was decent at best, with several one-shot episodes with little interest other than having Fanservice of (Guess who!) Mikoto and Kuroko (Uiharu and Saten fans might as well go look for ecchi pics), as well as contradicting canon (To the point a second season would need a few retcons to be possible) and the last arc's Filler Villain starting decent but ending as rather unoriginal. Sure, the original author penned it, but still. The stinger? This comes from an animation studio known mostly for compressing their adaptations (Such as Tora Dora), which makes the sudden 180-degree turnaround into Adaptation Expansion territory all the more strange.... or not.