I hate to bring up 'it depends' in these kinds of conversations...it almost feels like cheating.

But a tonal change is what made me really enjoy watching Ergo Proxy, while it made others hate or drop it. The futuristic, detective style beginning ends abruptly and changes to an episodic, post apocalyptic, meandering plot. While that was my favorite part of the series, many were turned off by the change and felt cheated. I felt the opposite way about Mawaru Penguindrum. They dick around for so long about that stupid diary that it just turned me off the rest of the series. Then you have something like Ouran High School Host Club, which is absolutely hysterically loony and yet when it turns around to deliver some sadness and feels, it just works.

I think what it comes down to is a tonal change that is true to the series as a whole (the Nanami episodes are not filler, each one has at least one important moment or an intriguing line of dialogue). A change in mood is okay, but to feel like you're watching an entirely different series can be jarring - not always unpleasant, but your mileage may vary.

Last edited by YamPuff (05-12-2015 11:11:40 AM)

Any jazz artist will tell you that a little dissonance makes a piece more interesting.  I think filler episodes can make tonal dissonance work in many ways.  And I think what's disorienting about the Nanami episodes of SKU is that they don't quite commit to which of those ways they're going with.

So you can do dissonance the way Avatar: The Last Airbender does.  Avatar's filler episodes can be goofier than the main plot, even in the middle of a very serious arc, but overall are well calibrated to the show's tone as it develops over three seasons.  It also helps that Avatar has multifaceted and emotive characters who are capable of laughing out loud one minute and being gloomy the next, the way people can do in real life.  Most SKU characters have a more limited emotional range, so goofiness comes out in this kind of stilted way, at worst like a high school student reacting to the jokes in SparkNotes Hamlet.

Or you can do dissonance the way Puella Magi Madoka Magica does.  (Or Higurashi When They Cry, or even Haruhi Suzumiya.)  These shows have tonal dissonance in spades, and that's obviously an intentional artistic decision that is intended to keep the viewer off balance so that the hard impacts hit harder.  What's crucial for making this work is that the tone should shift gears the way a T-boned car shifts lanes.  It needs to give you whiplash.  (You probably know what I'm talking about, but if you don't, go watch the first episode of Higurashi, which is a work of art unto itself and executes this perfectly.)  But the Nanami tone shifts in SKU are not stark enough to give you whiplash in this way.  They are goofy, but they're also bizarre, just like the rest of the show; they don't make you forget that you're watching a show where you can get sucker-punched out of nowhere.

You can do dissonance the way Star Trek: The Next Generation does.  In back-to-back weeks you'll have Beverly Crusher hamming it up in a poorly conceived dramatic show about her family, Jean-Luc Picard starring in a serious piece about the nature of humanity, and Data goofing off on the holodeck.  But that works because the show is episodic.  It doesn't have arcs.  There is nothing for the filler to interrupt; it's all filler.  The same is not true of SKU. (-- or is it?  Why exactly is it filler when Nanami turns into a cow but it's totally serious when Keiko makes goo-goo eyes over Touga and later joins the ranks of the Expendables?  If Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku played while Utena fought Cow Nanami,  would that turn the cow episode into a non-filler episode?  Is Tatsuya's episode filler, even though it would clearly not be filler if Mikage had stabbed him with foliage?  If Saionji had kidnapped Anthy and taken her to the cafeteria instead of the dueling arena, would that turn that episode into filler?  These are very deep questions indeed.  But the question is really about tone shift, not about What Is Filler.)

And lurking in the background of this whole discussion are the Shadow Girls, whose skits I think stick out tonally within episodes the same way that Nanami episodes stick out within arcs.  The Nanami episodes and the Shadow Girl skits have in common that they are tonally dissonant, that it's not clear what they're doing there, and that most viewers either love them or hate them.

I'm not sure what the conclusion is.  Mostly I am ing.  Maybe the answer is that Ikuhara also is ing, and that frankly we kind of like that in a show like SKU, at least in moderation.  (Or we don't.)

OnlyInThisLight wrote:

I am looking so fucking hard at you, Samurai Flamenco.

I was about to post that I couldn't believe nobody had mentioned this yet. That show was a rollercoaster for sure.

If it is an important part of what makes the series unique, then I think it's good to keep. Utena's silly moments don't feel forced in, they feel appropriate.

I absolutely love tonal changes! It's part of why I like Steven Universe, Teen Titans, Full Metal Alchemist, and of course Utena.
Something that I say when people ask me what kind of shows I like is that I like shows that have a good balance of serious and silliness. Full Metal Alchemist has themes of human sacrifice, going against god, and paying dearly for consequences because you didn't understand the full extent of what you were doing. But it also has tons of slapstick, zingers, and dark humor galore. Hell even it makes a joke about Ed eating ridiculous amounts of food into a significant plot point.

Repeated exposure to just about anything will lessen its effectiveness. I don't see any reason why that wouldn't apply to the various arts as well. It's part of the reason we have so many art movements that are in stark contrast to one another. People get tired of the status quo and limiting themselves to a certain set of principles. So they either take the norm are turn it on its head or go to the extreme opposite of it.

Of course, how effective the author is at managing this tone shift is crucial if they care to retain their original audience. There really is no simple rule on how to manage it though. As Satyreyes pointed out, the work can have different needs to make the tonal shift work. I don't think Nanami-esque episodes would have worked in Madoka Magica. It needs to be a dramatic shift.

This whole subject actually ties in to a theory I've had for a while. I personally think that comedies have the potential to deliver the most impact on tough subjects. You raise the viewer's emotion and then drop it like an anvil. Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is a great example. It is generally a funny show with lots of shenanigans. It's very inviting. But there are a few episodes sprinkled throughout the series that are deliciously anvilious. There was an episode where Will and his cousin Carlton are given permission to borrow an expensive car but are racially profiled, pulled over by a cop, and put in jail. Will is hysterical about the injustice and we're made to find his reaction humorous as Carlton tries to reason that the cops must be doing this for some just reason. Then at the end Carlton's dad delivers a heavy line about how he too had tried to reason with himself about what happened when he was pulled over, the first time. The episode had kind of a slow burn because after you hear that you realize that everything Will had been saying was right and that you probably found it funny.

I do have to admit though. While I'm  a fan of it in most media, I don't particularly like it in music. Like, I hate it when there are decently long pauses in a song. There's a few where I like  it being there but it's pretty rare. And generally it's a very serious song.
I question if duration plays a role in that. Like does less time automatically equal to less effective tone shift?

satyreyes wrote:

Is Tatsuya's episode filler, even though it would clearly not be filler if Mikage had stabbed him with foliage?

This had me dying. Thank you~

That's true!  Genre savvy can affect how we perceive the tone of a show.  Like, Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE! is also a magical-girls-fight-evil-with-love show, but we don't expect it to suddenly become grimdark, because it's already being subversive by using boys.  If it were using girls like a "normal" show in that genre (e.g. Madoka), we would expect badness to start pretty early, because it's got to be subversive somehow.  Sailor Moon, of course, created the mold for this kind of show -- before there was a genre to have savvy about -- and so its tone shift comes as a surprise even though it happens slowly by comparison with Madoka.

You know, literally a couple hours ago on the treadmill I was thinking about how Queen has a number of songs (Bohemian Rhapsody, Don't Stop Me Now) that have rockin' middles sandwiched between gentle piano intros and outros.  And the moment in Bohemian Rhapsody when it goes from "Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me, for me, for meee" into the headbang part is so gorgeous.  I didn't even connect it to this conversation until you brought up music, DD.

Some shows dearly need it. In the case of Higurashi, the comedy actually serves as both relief in the comedic sense and stark relief to the violence that happens both overtly ([The MC beating two girls to death over what turned out to be only his own delusional paranoia]) and covertly (Sadako's abuse, Shion's exclusion from the rest of her family). I watched the live action movie made for it-and it just felt less shocking and more 'oh, just another slasher flick.' Without its hilarity to both relieve the viewer and to underscore its dark tones, it just didn't work and gave you no reason to feel bad for anyone and proved actually to be a plotpoint. It's narrative chiaroscuro at it's finest.

Last edited by Anthiena (05-14-2015 09:02:54 PM)

Anthiena wrote:

Some shows dearly need it. In the case of Higurashi, the comedy actually serves as both relief in the comedic sense and stark relief to the violence that happens both overtly ([The MC beating two girls to death over what turned out to be only his own delusional paranoia]) and covertly (Sadako's abuse, Shion's exclusion from the rest of her family). I watched the live action movie made for it-and it just felt less shocking and more 'oh, just another slasher flick.' Without its hilarity to both relieve the viewer and to underscore its dark tones, it just didn't work and gave you no reason to feel bad for anyone and proved actually to be a plotpoint. It's narrative chiaroscuro at it's finest.

The hilarity, I think, also helps balance out the screaming amount of Moe and combined with the violence, paints that Moe as satire rather than pure fetish.

Your students might also be used to the movie, which is a straight comedy.  There's a frame tale, but it's just more comedy, not frustration and heartbreak.  I really like the book, but there's no question that it wasn't what I expected after watching the movie.  They're both good art, but they're different kinds of art.  And the movie in particular is art that is aimed at nerds, and you know how nerds feel when something isn't what they expected it to be.