An episode that thoroughly builds upon the themes of the story and has an effect on the main characters, but isn't directly relevant to the main scheme of the villain? Filler.
An episode that expands upon the characterisation of multiple characters and the relationships between them? Filler. I've seen people call ATLA's Tales of BaSing Se filler, even.
I guess it's filer in the sense that it doesn't advance the main storyline of ATLA but it sets the stage for what is going to be a rather dark and serious denouement. And it's probably one of the most important glimpses into Iroh's story and motivations. I can't imagine ATLA without that episode.
I mean is that what filler means? I figured character development or adding more characterization of someone is valuable to a story. So having a sideplot that is wrapped up in one episode, that shows us valuable information about a character and their motives, doesn't really feel like a filler episode. What is filler is half of Naruto lol.
Filler really gets a bad wrap, sometimes it's an absolute blessing to be able to take the occasional episode away from the main plot and focus on aspects of characters, relationships, and the world that would be difficult otherwise. I'd argue that one of the worst things about the current ~10 episode season is that there's really no room for shows to really breathe and play within the current status quo.
Okay but by this logic Black Clover didn't have filler. The flashbacks were different each time and revealed different information based on where you were in the story. It's hard to recommend to people because I know they'll have to watch 60 variations of the same episode. You can't skip them either because there is important information in the new flashbacks.
Filler is just a studio only storyline that is created to pad more runtime into media that is about to run out of source material that doesn't come from the original author's source material.
It often times has no bearing on the rest of the story.
If someone is calling Tales of BaSing Se filler I would check on them because clearly they are the type who can lock themselves inside of a car.
The episode is important because one of the show main themes is extremism and it's dangers. Since we had an episode just before that about religion and a cult the next one had to go to the opposite end and had to be about science and lack of morality
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u/Ayumu_Dea_84 11d ago
Gotta love Full metal Alchemist: Brotherhood. In my opinion the best series ever drawn/written.