Anime filler is hated. There was almost always a distaste for it, but before people were as aware of what they were consuming, some filler flew under the radar.
In the earlier days of watching anime on Toonami or finding an episode split up into 24 parts on sketchy sites, there was less mainstream understanding of what anime filler was. If something was animated and posted or broadcast, you needed to watch it, right?
That’s how it used to be, but now anime fans have a keen understanding of what filler is and isn’t, and they want to avoid it at all costs. There are sites devoted solely to categorizing what is and isn’t filler, so someone watching a series like Naruto for the first time can see that 41% of it is filler they can skip, getting right to the good stuff.
It’s true that a lot of filler isn’t high-quality. It’s animated fluff you can skip to get the confrontations and story beats you’ve been waiting for. However, in the sea of low-quality content, there are some gems.
What Does Anime Filler Look Like?
In broad strokes, anime filler doesn’t move the story forward or create character development. You could technically delete it from the story entirely.
For example, in Naruto, which has become notorious for its amount of filler, there were many points throughout its run where the animation studio would create additional missions or battles to focus on.
In the original series, there were multiple missions Naruto would go on with others in his class, like going with Hinata, Shino, and Kiba to hunt for a beetle that could lead them to Sasuke. Missions like this did not progress the plot or create a meaningful change in the characters, but it gave them interactions absent in the manga that jumped to what would be Shippuden after Naruto and Sasuke’s fight.
Later, during the War Arc in Shippuden, there were fillers focusing on reincarnated shinobi like the scorch-style user Pakura of the Sand. Fillers like this did not push the war in either direction, but they did help create the feeling that there was a war and smaller skirmishes going on beyond the ones the main characters were involved in.
Some filler is a complete episode, some is the extra padding of a scene, and some can go for an entire arc. Essentially, a lot of anime is a studio adapting an original source like a light novel or a manga, and since there’s no strict rule or standard for how much a single chapter or page translates to a single episode, animation studios will add and subtract as they see fit.
Why Is It Sometimes Necessary?
If this filler isn’t meaningfully accomplishing anything in the context of the story or making significant changes with the characters, and fans don’t love it, then why is it here? Well, filler happens for a few reasons, like:
- Extending material to fill the normal length of an episode.
- To create a cohesive season and match the arc in the original source material, rather than ending the season in the middle of a major plot development.
- Keep the anime behind the original source material to avoid catching up.
These necessities make sense, but the most common and most egregious filler comes as a result of the last reason: keeping a gap between the anime and original source material.
As time has gone on and more animation studios have retreated from continuous, uninterrupted weekly series, moving more toward a seasonal model that may or may not recur every year, filler content by volume has decreased significantly. Though that’s not to say it doesn’t exist anymore. Instead, it just looks slightly different. Instead of a filler arc or filler episodes, it’s more likely to get expanded scenes of dialogue and exposition or little side adventures not present in the original material.
Regardless of the reason behind the filler, it’s plain to see, and it frustrates viewers, leaving them with a bad taste in their mouth.
The Bad Filler
Many object to all kinds of filler, looking at all of them negatively. Whether you are against all kinds of filler or you can see the diamonds in the rough, we can all agree that there are some bits of filler that are the worst of the worst.
Everything Foxy
If you’ve read One Piece, then you know about Foxy. He’s the main villain in the Long Ring Long Land Arc after Skypiea and before Water 7, two of One Piece’s greatest arcs with fan-favorite villains.
It’s a weird arc where the pirate crews play games instead of fight, and it culminates in a boxing match between Foxy and Luffy (who’s wearing an afro Usopp told him would make him stronger).
The anime filler begins when Luffy agrees to another set of three rounds. Foxy and his crew were already annoying, but anime watchers got treated to twice as much Foxy. To make matters worse, viewers then get another filler arc where the Straw Hats have amnesia, and then another Foxy arc. Then, after Thriller Bark, Foxy shows up in another filler arc.
Fans have conflated all of the Foxy anime filler with his manga appearance, which I actually think is 19 chapters of fun with some potentially major plot implications. At this point Foxy is a joke side character who could do something interesting in the main story, but anime viewers will just remember being sick of him and his slow slow beam.
The Yota Arc
The Yota arc might be the worst filler in all of Naruto. In the middle of the War Arc, the anime slams the brakes, taking attention away from legitimate action to generate a lot of characters from the main cast’s “past” that can come back in Kabuto’s reincarnated army.
Yota is someone who was supposedly friends with childhood Naruto, Shikamaru, Choji, and Sakura, but erased their memories before leaving the village. Yota is loud, doesn’t stop crying, and their existence ends up going against the canon characterization of Naruto as a lonely victim of ostracization.
There’s other absolutely terrible Naruto filler, but this is one that ends up sticking out because of how blatant it is in rewriting Naruto’s history.
The Endless Eight
In season 2 of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (2006-2009), viewers got eight episodes of the exact same thing, over and over: Endless Eight I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, and VIII. Haruhi has subconsciously created a time loop of the same few weeks, and in the show, it has gone on for almost 600 years. The eight episodes viewers see are already too much.
In the original light novel, the reader only gets the main character Kyon’s telling of the final time loop. In the anime, viewers get a time loop in one episode, and in the next they get another with slight variations created by the different episode directors, leading the staff to re-animate and re-voice the same script.
It’s an interesting idea, but this interesting idea led to eight 24-minute episodes of the same thing. If you watched this series during release, you essentially saw the same episode for eight weeks. That’s not very fun in my opinion.
The Good Filler
There are some purists who object to all kinds of filler, saying that there is no such thing as “good filler.” I can sympathize with the people who were watching later parts of Naruto and wondering when Guren and Yukimaru were going to show back up, only to have their hearts broken.
People with that background may be quick to dismiss all filler, but if you can step back and push aside your preconceived notions, you’ll be able to realize that there is some filler that’s actually high-quality, the kind you’ll remember and revisit for years to come.
Everything Kakashi
Kakashi might be the exception to the status quo of Naruto having bad filler. He’s such a central character who has a deeply serious and traumatized side, and a side that’s just kind of silly. That’s why you can get great filler like his ANBU Arc that follows his troubled years in the ANBU next to Itachi and Yamato, and wackier episodes where he’s racing Might Guy or trying to stop his team from seeing his face.
G-8
If Foxy is an example of One Piece filler in the wrong direction, then the G-8 arc is filler in the right direction. Skypiea was an arc literally bordering on “out-of-this-world,” and instead of the Straw Hat crew returning to the open sea, they dropped right on top of a Marine base.
Yes, this filler arc is 11 episodes, but it’s 11 episodes of goofiness hidden under the facade of the Straw Hats going through a stealth mission. It’s a great glimpse into the inner workings of a generally competent group of Marines who care about their job, and it created a villain, Vice-Admiral Jonathan, that you can actually kind of root for.
G-8 is the perfect push and pull of tension and comic relief, creating a natural flow that ends up making 11 episodes fly by like nothing.
Driver’s Licenses
There’s a lot of negative filler to wade through in several anime series, and Dragon Ball is no exception. Thankfully, amidst all the negative filler, there’s something like “Goku’s Ordeal,” a fun adventure to lighten the mood before the androids reveal themselves in the next episode.
Chi-Chi demands Goku get a car to help get groceries, and when Goku responds that he can’t even drive, she orders him and Piccolo to go to Driving School and get their licenses, or else she won’t cook anymore.
What follows is an episode of absolutely iconic moments like:
- Piccolo showing up in civilian clothes instead of his Demon Clothes
- Piccolo’s instructor telling him he drives like an old lady
- Goku challenging Piccolo to a race
- That same race ending in an explosion of fire and debris.
It’s a silly premise, and that’s exactly what makes it great. It’s not trying to be anything extraordinary; it’s just an excuse to get our favorite characters doing something extraordinarily ordinary.
Good Filler Is Rare…But Achievable
Even without story progression and real character development, you can get good filler. No, there’s not an exact science to it, but with the examples above, both good and bad, you can start understanding the direction that good filler should go in, and what it should stay away from.
It’s okay to go full goofy in a filler if it can give viewers more of a character’s personality quirks that have become so endearing, like Kakashi’s “rivalry” with Guy. Similarly, seeing Goku and Piccolo, who are basically gods, play normal is fun.
Great filler can also expand on the viewer's desire to fill in the gaps. Early Naruto filler couldn’t declaratively tell viewers that Hinata and Naruto had a bordering-on-romantic bond, but they could play around the ambiguity. Filler in this vein is more memorable and more well-received than ones like Yota’s story that rewrites Naruto canon.
Is there a tried-and-true formula for good filler? No, but it is possible to create if you know which feelings and characteristics to play into and which to steer clear of.
