(Jun. 28, 2021 9:40 PM)Instarez Wrote: Possible hot take: I think Burst should have had 10 minute episodes. My reasoning is that during the District and National Tournaments ant lots of times they felt drawn out, so being forced to work with small run time would make each episodes be more plot focused, because they don't have extra time to put filler in. More plot focus probably means more progression, which is the solution to the aforementioned problem.
Burst and Evolution made very good use of their runtime. Didn't feel stretched out at all. Everything that happened in the tournaments was necessary to move the story forward. Certain matches had to take place to progress to others and so on and so forth. That way it doesn't become a disjointed mess leaving us wondering how certain characters got to certain places.
When it comes to storytelling, a common bedrock principle is to progress character as the plot progress. Take the Regional Tournament for example, because Valt lost in the finals of the District, he had to compete in the regionals in order to try and win his way to a spot in the Nationals; that's a logical progression that makes perfect sense. During that particular arc though, Burst utilized it's runtime well to also progress character forward, we see this done with Valt, Hoji, and Daigo.
In fact Daigo's arc is during this part of the season. It's because of the longer runtime we get an opportunity to delve into what's going on with the characters internally while also moving the plot along; we get to see Daigo's struggle with trailing behind Valt and later during his arc we seem him struggle with his guilt. We get to see Hoji struggling to reconcile his realtionship with Wakiya with his desire to beat him. They're able to spend time dealing with these things because they have more time. They're deepening character while keeping the story moving. Some viewers are more plot oriented, while some are more character driven viewers. It's usually a good idea when telling a story to balance both character and plot as the narrative progresses.
This is something Burst, Evolution, and to a lesser, Rise do really well. As another example, during the District tournament, we get introduced to Ken, yes he's a competitor in the tournament, but because we have that twenty minute runtime, they have to time to round him out a character; we get to know his backstory, his personality and how he interacts with others, and it's because they established his backstory early on, that his character arc across the season works because we get to see where he started as a person to where he ends up. Another example of progressing character and plot forward. In addition because of that extra runtime we they were able to layer believably into Valt's growth both as a person and as blader. Seeing the training was excellent way to achieve that. Some other examples of progressing both plot and character at the same time.
Rise does this well, but to a lesser extent. Rise took the time to develop and grow their major characters; Dante, Delta, and Arman using this ten minute runtime, but the extent to which they were able to do so was limited. In addition we missed out on having the nice mini arcs for some of the side characters that Burst & Evolution had the runtime to employ. DB is an example of the trip falls of a limited runtime. Instead of progressing plot and character at the same time, they're stopping to do one while not doing the other. And in Sparking we barely got even a drip of character development or growth, due in part to the limited runtime, so while it more plot focused, it was lacking in character work. That's not using your storytelling time economically. So, all in all Burst & Evolution do a excellent job of putting their runtime to good use and in so doing progress character and plot forward at the same time in meanigful ways.