Ask John: What Anime “Troll” Viewers?

Question:
For those like me who watched and enjoyed 2009’s NYAN KOI anime, a hint was dropped at the end of episode 12 that a second season would be forthcoming. Very recently I read somewhere that there is a possibility that fans of the series might have been (politely speaking) “punked,” and that there was little (if any) genuine intent to bring forth a second season. Do any other similar examples of fans being “punked” ring a bell in John’s mind?

Answer:
The idea of the anime industry consciously “trolling” otaku seems nearly unfathomable because practical logic suggests that deceiving and frustrating supporters and consumers is a certain way of diminishing revenue and market share. However, the anime industry is aware of the devotion of its audience, and on occasion doesn’t seem averse to teasing or even frustrating its audience. Furthermore, numerous instances that overtly seem like a bait-and-switch are actually the result of legitimate changes in policy or plans rather than a capricious effort to annoy audiences.

The immediate and most familiar instance of an anime studio seemingly consciously frustrating its fans is Kyoto Animation’s now legendary “Endless Eight.” From June 19 through August 7, 2009, eight consecutive weekly episodes of the second season of Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu were practically the same episode with inconsequential changes in situations and character clothing. The series’ characters were caught in a time loop, repeating the same two-week period over and over, so the TV series actually went to the trouble of fully animating eight separate episodes all depicting the same basic events from the same perspective. Two full months of the same episode repeating over and over bored and frustrated viewers like nothing since the straight month of recap episodes of Wolf’s Rain broadcast in 2003. At the 2009 Otakon convention, first season production director Yutaka Yamamoto publicly apologized to anime fans, saying that he had objected to Kyoto Animation’s plans to fully animate the “Endless Eight” but had no power to stop or alter the production.

The middle of the 2003 TV broadcast of Wolf’s Rain was interrupted by four consecutive weekly recap episodes, forcing the production of four OVA episodes added to the home video release to provide a sufficient conclusion to the series. However, unlike Kyoto Animation’s conscious decision to stretch viewers’ patience with eight consecutive repeated episodes, the four consecutive recap episodes of Wolf’s Rain were necessitated by catastrophic delays in the series’ production schedule.

2004’s Chou Henshin Cos-prayers is amazing, daring, unprecedented industry trolling on a level possibly equal to “Endless Eight” because the entire 8 broadcast episode series was intentionally terrible in order to serve as the foundation of a joke for its sequel series. Cos-prayers suffers primarily from a jumbled narrative that’s so heavily cut and edited that it makes practically no comprehensible sense. The show was immediately followed by the Hit o Nerae! television series which revolved around a freshman anime producer attempting and failing to create a good Chou Henshin Cos-prayers TV anime. Just as the 2006 Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu TV series began with the home movie that the SOS Club produced, Hit no Nerae! began by showing viewers the terrible anime its protagonist produced. But while 2006’s Suzumiya Haruhi devoted only one episode to its bad fictitious production, and viewers knew from the outset that the premiere was the introduction to a longer series, the earlier Cos-prayers series spent eight weekly episodes assaulting viewers with terrible anime without alerting the viewers that they were actually watching the set-up for a forthcoming joke.

Revealing exactly why the first episode of 2008’s Ga-rei Zero remains one of anime’s biggest curve balls is a major spoiler, but suffice it to say that Ga-rei Zero’s first episode is a legendary manipulation of viewer’s expectations and goodwill on a smaller but equally unsettling reactionary level as “Endless Eight.”

Perhaps no one outside of Gainax knows for certain if the “To be continued in next season” message at the end of Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt was a genuine unfulfilled promise for more or a knowing tease. The series certainly ended with a cataclysmic cliffhanger, but since the entire point of the show was to be as provocative and unpredictable as possible, the concluding promise of a “next season” may have been the show’s final manipulative exclamation point.

In November 2007 Japanese publisher MediaWorks formally announced the development of a Shina Dark ~Kuroki Tsuki no Ou to Soheki no Tsuki no Himegimi~ anime TV series animated by SHAFT, based on the fantasy manga by Bunjuro Nakayama & Yukari Higa. Three months later, the third collected volume of the manga was released in March 2008 with a bonus DVD containing original Shina Dark anime music videos animated by SHAFT. The previously announced TV series was never produced.

In December 2010 the eleventh collected volume of Sakae Esuno’s Mirai Nikki manga bundled the first ever Mirai Nikki anime. But the OVA was only a cruel tease, a nine-minute long introduction, the equivalent of the “A-part” of a first television episode, ending just as the initial action sequence began. Viewers had to wait another eight months for the studio to release its Mirai Nikki TV series to see the story continue.

I want to precisely clarify that I’m consciously excluding unintentional or unavoidable frustrations like anime such as Dangaioh and Berserk that end with terrible cliffhangers, and anime like Hellsing and Claymore with endings that diverge tremendously from their source material. The practical necessities and compromises of the anime production industry aren’t the same thing as creators knowingly antagonizing viewers by undermining or intentionally not fulfilling viewer expectations. I have no doubt that the history of anime includes other instances of anime creators slyly frustrating their viewers with promises that will never be kept. This list includes only those which I can immediately recall.