I’ve been thinking about something lately when it comes to anime, and I’m curious if you guys have ever had this happen too.
You know when you’re watching an anime and you suddenly figure out the mechanics behind the story?
Not the actual story itself, but the little recipe the writers are using to keep the thing going.
Like you watch enough episodes and suddenly you think:
“Ohhhh… I see what you’re doing.”
And once I see it, sometimes that’s it. The magic is gone. 😂
I’ve had this happen with Re:Zero, Demon Slayer, and Mushoku Tensei. At some point I become so aware of the particular plot device they’re using over and over again that I start seeing it coming from a mile away.
And then instead of watching the story, I’m watching the mechanism.
That’s the part that kills it for me.
I’m no longer thinking “holy shit, what’s going to happen?”
I’m thinking “yeah, okay, here comes the thing they always do.”
And once your brain starts doing that, it’s really difficult to switch it off again. It’s like you’ve accidentally looked behind the curtain and discovered the little bloke pulling the strings. 😆
BUT…
And this is where it gets interesting.
Sometimes it actually works.
Higurashi When They Cry is probably the best example I can think of.
That anime is absolutely full of repetition and recurring patterns. You start recognising things. You start noticing that certain situations, characters and events keep coming back around.
And yet somehow… it works.
In fact, in Higurashi the repetition almost becomes part of the appeal. You’re sitting there thinking “okay, I’ve seen this before… but WHY is this happening again?”
So even when you start figuring out the recipe, the recipe itself becomes part of the mystery.
Which I find really interesting because technically I’m still being fed the same kind of thing over and over again. 😂
So I started wondering whether this is just something that happens with me, or whether other people get this too.
Have you guys ever watched an anime where you suddenly figured out the repetitive plot device or storytelling formula being used, and from that point onwards you just couldn’t enjoy it in quite the same way anymore?
And I’m also really interested in the opposite.
Are there anime where you KNOW exactly what the writers are doing, you know the formula, you can practically predict what’s coming… but it still works anyway?
Because I think there’s a big difference between repetition and good repetition.
A recipe isn’t necessarily bad just because you know the ingredients. Sometimes you just really like the recipe. 😆
I also wonder if this is more common with the really popular, commercial anime. Especially the long-running stuff. I mean, I get it. If you’ve got a manga that needs to keep producing chapters and an anime that needs to keep producing episodes, eventually you’re going to find a formula that works and you’re probably going to keep using the bastard.
But does this happen just as much with more obscure or experimental anime?
Or is this mostly a problem with the big popular stuff?
And I suppose there’s also the question of how much repetition we’re willing to tolerate. Because obviously pretty much every story has some kind of formula. At some point it’s not about whether there IS a formula, but whether you notice the formula more than you notice the story.
Anyway, this isn’t meant to be a Higurashi thread, but since I mentioned it…
I’m actually really curious about the new Higurashi season that’s been announced. 😂
After the last season, they’ve got a pretty damn high bar to clear. That felt so much like an ending that I’m honestly wondering where the hell they’re going to take it next.
But that’s a whole other discussion.
I’m more interested in the general question:
What anime made you realise you’d figured out its recipe?
And did that completely kill the anime for you, or did you somehow end up enjoying it because you figured it out?
I’m really curious what you guys think about this one. :)
I’m watching Dragonball Z for the Bajillionth time and was thinking about this same thing, but have the opposite take.
You could argue that DBZ has a very predictable mechanic - Goku strong, Goku defeats lots of enemies, Goke gets crushed by some super serious enemy, Goku trains hard, Goku comes back super unbelievably strong and crushes them. Rinse and repeat for a long long time. Maybe switch Goku out for another character sometimes.
However, there’s a lot more to what’s happening than that. The depth of the show isn’t that mechanic - it’s what happens around it. The mechanic and its various flavors are just catalysts for change, and it’s the change which happens around it that makes it interesting.
Seeing the character progression and things that happen along the way is the meat important bit.
You basically explained why I hate 99% of shonen.
It is tropes on top of tropes. But for many fans, it’s also comfort.
Like reading a Young Adult book.
Not to say there isn’t a series that sees the tropes and does the complete opposite, like Dan da Dan.
I actually did not like dan da dan at all. I think the only shonen I enjoy are like FMA (the original, not FMA B) and Gurren Lagan (I initially hated it but someone told me to keep watching and I did so it did get better). And maybe FLCL (season 1 only) but apparently that one isnt a shonen. I think I would enjoy HxH as well but ive only read it and not watched it.
Shonens I’ve tried and didnt like:
- dbz
- bleach
- naruto
- inuyasha
- mob psycho
- jjk
- csm
Note that I didnt watch all of these to completion as I dropped some of them after a dozen episodes. Also note that “didn’t like” doesnt mean hate, but I don’t think I would watch any of these if given the choice to.
I’ve watched more shonen than listed above but the ones I didn’t list I consider the cream of the crop and I still didn’t love them but they were better. Eg. FMA B
Media literacy
Once you dabble with storytelling, dramaturgy and all tropes, you automatically start to dissect any media you consume, notice the patterns and wonder about it. You’ll notice what’s meant to be easy to digest, fast to setup and made to please the masses (like classic Shonen). You’ll notice when good authors try to make something new or take popular formulas to dissect them as a commentary or underline tropes.
Enjoyment is no science though. There’s more to a story than tropes and dramaturgical tools. You may like a certain theme or a system in its world building for example. I personally like well-written and deeply psychological characters with development. Or take one of the many slice of life things, that have nothing much going on, which are something like Zen for your mind. So even if the formula is bland and predictable, there can be other aspects that make one enjoy a story.
Ps: I love Higurashi, too. They established a pattern with deeply dark and psychological arcs, then they broke out of those patterns themselves by undermining their own patterns in ways I couldn’t predict. Also they layered their arcs in such a way that you always learn of a new, deeper aspect of the overarching story they were trying to tell.
I love slice of life animes, they’re probably one of my favorite genres of anime. In example “Was the order a rabbit”, nothing going on, yet it still manages to stay fresh somehow.
Me watching Gochiusa:
OP wrote their post like a recipe website. Explained with an essay and still didn’t write down the recipe at the end. lol
There is no one recipe, can’t very well list them all. The recipe differs from anime to anime.
Right, but I was waiting for the recipe of the example you pointed out.
Are you serious? I just told you that a moment ago why its not there.
I’ve had this happen with Re:Zero, Demon Slayer, and Mushoku Tensei. At some point I become so aware of the particular plot device they’re using over and over again that I start seeing it coming from a mile away.
So what’s the recipe/pattern you noticed?
Higurashi When They Cry is probably the best example I can think of. That anime is absolutely full of repetition and recurring patterns. You start recognising things. You start noticing that certain situations, characters and events keep coming back around.
So what’s the recipe/pattern you noticed?
You gave examples but never explained what was the pattern you saw on those examples.
Well since this seems so important you, sure: I’ll try to keep it short.
Yeah, okay, I understand what you are asking now. You don’t mean “give me examples of anime that are predictable”, you mean specifically explain what recurring story mechanic / recipe I was talking about when I mentioned those shows.
And I actually think the reason I didn’t explain it properly before is because when you have watched enough of this stuff, you start recognising the mechanism almost instinctively. You stop thinking “what is going to happen?” and start thinking “ah, I know what this show does when it gets to this point.”
That’s what I meant.
The pattern isn’t necessarily one single identical plot event in all three shows, because obviously Re:Zero, Demon Slayer and Mushoku Tensei are very different anime. What I was talking about is the way they repeatedly construct situations and then use the same kind of mechanism to get the audience through those situations.
Once you recognise that mechanism, you start seeing the machinery behind the story.
That’s the thing I was getting at with Higurashi too, although Higurashi is actually a really interesting counter-example because its repetition is much more deliberate and mysterious.
With Higurashi, you very quickly realise that certain things are going to happen again. You see the same characters, the same village, the same general circumstances, the same kinds of interactions, the same escalating paranoia and violence, and then things seem to reset or begin again in another variation.
But the important thing is that Higurashi makes the repetition itself part of the mystery.
You’re sitting there thinking:
“Okay, this happened again. Why?”
“Why are these people doing this again?”
“Why does this situation keep happening?”
“Is this actually the same timeline?”
“Is somebody remembering something?”
“Is there something supernatural going on?”
So although you can recognise the recipe, you don’t necessarily know what the recipe is actually making yet.
That is very different from a show where you eventually recognise the recipe and can basically see the next ingredient being thrown into the bowl.
That’s what I mean by becoming aware of a plot device.
Take Re:Zero, for example.
The broad mechanism becomes pretty obvious after a while. Subaru gets himself into an impossible situation, things go horribly wrong, somebody dies, Subaru dies or otherwise reaches the point where the current attempt is unsalvageable, and then the story gives him another opportunity to try to solve the problem.
So the interesting question gradually changes.
At the beginning you’re watching because you genuinely don’t know what is going to happen.
After you’ve seen the structure enough times, you start watching it differently.
You start thinking:
“Okay, this is the bad situation.”
“This character is probably going to die.”
“Subaru is going to reach the point where this attempt fails.”
“Then he’s going to have another attempt.”
“And now the actual story is going to be figuring out how he gets from THIS version of events to the version where everything works.”
That is the pattern.
And that can be very effective. I am not saying it is automatically bad because it is predictable.
The problem starts when you become so familiar with the mechanism that you stop being emotionally surprised by it.
If the show spends a huge amount of time making me care about a character, then kills that character, then uses the established mechanism to effectively rewind the situation and try again, eventually I can start seeing the emotional machinery too.
It’s not just:
“Someone is going to die.”
It’s:
“Ah, they’re deliberately putting this character in danger because the show is preparing another reset.”
And once you start thinking that way, you’re no longer experiencing the story quite the same way.
You’re watching the author move the pieces around.
That’s what I meant by the “recipe”.
Demon Slayer does something similar, although obviously with a completely different mechanism.
The story repeatedly puts Tanjiro and the others into an increasingly dangerous confrontation.
A powerful enemy appears.
The heroes initially appear completely outmatched.
Someone gets badly injured.
The situation gets progressively worse.
Then somebody reveals another ability, technique, memory, connection, transformation, power-up or previously established element which allows the fight to continue.
Then the battle escalates again.
Then another character gets their big moment.
Then another desperate attack.
Then another revelation.
Then the enemy appears to be defeated, except there is another layer to the fight.
And eventually you reach the conclusion.
Again, none of those individual things are necessarily bad.
In fact, Demon Slayer is often extremely good at executing that formula.
But once you’ve watched enough of it, you can recognise the shape of the episode.
You know when the heroes are probably not actually finished.
You know when somebody getting absolutely destroyed probably isn’t the end of their involvement.
You know when a flashback is coming because the story has reached the point where it needs to explain why this character can suddenly do the thing they need to do.
You know that when the situation looks completely hopeless, there is probably another card somewhere in the deck.
And that’s where my “I can see it coming from a mile away” comment comes from.
I’m not saying:
“I can predict every single event.”
I’m saying:
“I recognise what kind of event the story is going to give me next because I’ve seen this storytelling mechanism repeatedly.”
That’s an important distinction.
It’s like watching a magician after you’ve learned the trick.
You can still appreciate the performance, but you are no longer experiencing the trick in exactly the same way.
And Mushoku Tensei has its own version of this.
There the pattern is less about one specific combat mechanism and more about the way the story repeatedly structures Rudeus’s development.
You get a particular situation, Rudeus develops or learns something from it, his circumstances change, he moves into another stage of his life, another problem appears, and the story uses that problem to push him into another period of development.
So after a while you start recognising the rhythm.
Something happens.
Rudeus reacts to it.
He changes.
The story moves him somewhere else.
A new set of circumstances appears.
He has to deal with another problem.
Then the story uses that problem to develop another aspect of his character.
Again, that’s not inherently bad. In fact, character development through recurring life situations is one of the strengths of that kind of story.
But once you recognise the structure, you can start anticipating the kind of thing the story is going to do next.
And that’s really the common thread between the examples I was talking about.
It isn’t:
“All three anime have exactly the same plot.”
They obviously don’t.
It’s:
they establish a storytelling mechanism, repeat that mechanism enough times for the audience to learn it, and eventually the audience can start predicting the mechanism itself rather than merely predicting individual events.
That’s the thing I was trying to describe.
And there is another important part to this.
There is a difference between predictability and recognising a formula.
Almost every story is predictable to some degree.
If a character is introduced as the main protagonist, I can probably make some assumptions about whether they’re going to survive.
If the villain is introduced in episode 2, I can probably assume the story isn’t going to resolve everything in episode 3.
If somebody says “I have something important to tell you” and then the episode cuts to commercial or ends, I know the writer isn’t suddenly going to have them explain everything immediately.
That’s normal storytelling.
I’m talking about something more specific.
I’m talking about reaching the point where you recognise the sequence of storytelling decisions.
You don’t necessarily know the exact line of dialogue.
You don’t necessarily know exactly who will die.
You don’t necessarily know exactly what power will be revealed.
But you recognise what FUNCTION the next scene is going to serve.
And once you can do that, the story starts feeling different.
You start thinking:
“Oh, this is the part where…”
“Oh, this is obviously setting up…”
“Okay, they’re doing THAT thing again.”
“Right, this is the point where…”
And that is what I meant when I said I had become so aware of the particular plot device that I started seeing it coming from a mile away.
It’s not that I have some magical ability to predict anime.
It’s that the anime taught me its own grammar.
And once you understand the grammar, you can start reading the sentence before you’ve finished it.
Higurashi is especially interesting because it uses this exact phenomenon against the viewer.
The repetition is obvious.
That’s not really the trick.
The trick is that the viewer initially doesn’t understand what the repetition means.
So you start recognising the pattern:
“Wait, I’ve seen this before.”
“Didn’t this happen already?”
“Why is this character acting differently this time?”
“Why is this person alive now?”
“Why did that event happen differently?”
And because the pattern itself is part of the mystery, recognising it actually makes you MORE interested.
That’s why I think Higurashi is probably one of the best examples of this kind of storytelling.
It doesn’t simply repeat something and expect you not to notice.
It practically says:
“Yes. You noticed. Now figure out why.”
That is a very different use of repetition.
And that is why I wouldn’t necessarily complain about repetition itself.
(Continued below)
I tried to keep it short, here’s part 2:
Repetition can be brilliant.
A recurring pattern can be brilliant.
A formula can be brilliant.
The problem is when I become so familiar with the formula that the formula becomes more noticeable to me than the actual story.
That’s the point where I start feeling like I’m watching the mechanism rather than the story.
It’s basically the same thing as when you watch a horror movie and you suddenly realise:
“Okay, this character has just gone into the basement. They’re not coming back.”
Once you know horror conventions, you don’t necessarily stop enjoying horror.
But you become aware of the convention.
And sometimes the movie can use that awareness brilliantly.
Sometimes it can subvert it.
Sometimes it can make you think you know what is going to happen and then completely screw with your expectations.
But if it just keeps doing exactly what you expected, eventually you’re not watching the story unfold anymore.
You’re watching the recipe being followed.
That’s what I meant.
So if you want the shortest possible version of the answer:
The pattern I noticed wasn’t one specific plot event shared by Re:Zero, Demon Slayer and Mushoku Tensei. It was the repeated use of a recognisable storytelling mechanism. After enough repetitions, I stopped merely predicting events and started predicting the function of the next scene, the next escalation, the next reversal, the next emotional beat or the next reset/development. At that point I became conscious of the recipe itself.
And that’s why I brought up Higurashi.
Because Higurashi is almost the perfect demonstration of the difference.
It repeats itself constantly, but the repetition creates a mystery.
In the other cases, once I understand the mechanism well enough, the repetition can instead make the story feel increasingly mechanical.
So I’m not saying:
“These anime are bad because I can predict them.”
I’m saying:
“Once I can see the storytelling machinery operating underneath the story, it changes my experience of watching it.”
And honestly, that’s something I’ve noticed more and more with anime.
The first time through, I’m watching the story.
After I’ve figured out the recipe, I’m watching the writer make the story.
And those are two very different experiences.
When will I recieve my grade for this assignment?
TLDR. God damn! I respect the effort!
I’m no longer thinking “holy shit, what’s going to happen?”
I’m thinking “yeah, okay, here comes the thing they always do.”
I have always assumed that this is a universal experience. Once you have consumed enough media, everything just seem so obvious.
So I would tend to prefer a unique premise over a recycled one.
Sometimes it actually works.
My experience is less of a epiphany like your’s. In my case, the execution / story-telling of some anime is so awesome that the story being cookie-cutter didn’t matter.
That’s why my method for finding anime nowadays isn’t to seek recommendations, but to go down the list of top-rated anime.
In my case, the execution / story-telling of some anime is so awesome that the story being cookie-cutter didn’t matter.
This is a point that I think more anime fans could learn from. It’s all about the execution. When we like something it’s easy to jump to the conclusion, “I enjoy this genre and should thus seek more of it out” when actually we just liked that it had good writing/animation/music/sound design/whatever.
Thats good advice, I think i’ll start doing that too!
I know just what you’re talking about and as I consume more media I even start to notice certain setups across them. Like even if one show has never used that trope before I can kind of tell where it’s going to go.
The best is when they know - and they know you know - and then subvert your expectations with a mew twist to the trope.
It’s possibly the only really great thing about becoming so literate in a certain media. Typically it spoils the fun as you well described, but it’s a real joy to have almost like a dialog if you will with the creator of the show as they play with your understanding of what is happening.
But what does any of this have to do with Mathilda from Léon: The Professional?
(Is the app I’m using showing the wrong image? That’s something that’s been known to happen occasionally.)
I’m relatively new on the Fediverse, this was a force of habit from image boards who usually force you to post an image with your post. My bad.
When I was watching Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure I knew at the beginning of every episode that they were going to get jumped by a new villain of the week, it was going to look like trouble, and then Jo/Bro is going to pull something out of nowhere and beat the ass off the villain. Rinse and repeat next episode.
Somehow, it worked, JJBA is actually one of my favorite animes. It hits the same sort of notes that Dragonball Z does, I think. You know what’s going to happen but the excitement of the show is within the way that they pull it off. “Oh, man, the boys are in trouble. Wonder how they’re going to get out of this one?”
JoJo is proud in its absurdism, so watching Araki and David Production go ham works almost every time.
There’s so many formulas and recipes to list comprehensively, so sharing the most niche I have that others here haven’t touched before.
Maeda Jun’s story’s recipe is “make the saddest story humanly possible”. In practice, it is the saddest from his perspective. Not everyone saw it that way. This recipe gave us Clannad and The Day I Became a God.
Are there anime where you KNOW exactly what the writers are doing, you know the formula, you can practically predict what’s coming… but it still works anyway?
The below I mention generally work because they apply their formula on different things. You as a viewer discover something new about their style or a facet of the story if you follow certain staff.
Okada Mari for general drama: Nagi no Asukara, Maquia. Kinda YMMV because her stories can be convoluted at times.
Hanada Jukki’s writing excels in character dynamics, tensions, and resolutions: Love Live, Sound Euphonium, A Place Further Than The Universe
Kuroki Miyuki as episode/anime director appears to work with a core staff in A1—later Cloverworks—that shaped her cinematography, direction, and art style choice. If you haven’t seen these three, I recommend seeing these in the order they aired so you can see for yourself: Your Lie in April -> Akebi’s Sailor Uniform -> The Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity.
What anime made you realise you’d figured out its recipe?
Okada: Maquia after I saw Nagi no Asukara. Further confirmed when I later saw Maboroshi
Hanada: Love Live Superstar with my knowledge of A Place Further Than The Universe
Kuroki: The last two episodes of Akebi’s Sailor Uniform when I saw what I thought were meta-references to Your Lie in April. To be fair, some of those in Akebi are in the source material. I personally loved Kuroki’s “creative DNA” enough that seeing KaoruHana’s poster for the first time in 2025, and also seeing who directed it, made it an instant PTW for me. Was not disappointed.
This is how you end up becoming a ‘critic’, in the sense of “this is someone who is media literate enough to speak more about whether a show has broken new ground creatively, rather than just saying whether they have succeeded in being merely entertaining”. A lot of people simply don’t care about the creative merits of a production and just want to be entertained, but enough of us are harder to please that good critics with worthwhile observations are always in demand.
Not anime, but OP would fucking hate House.
90% of House episodes
What’s that, positive character development?
Time for some contrived relapse to reset everything to baseline.haha I’ve never watched House, but if its like that I imagine so!
IMO it’s actually fine in series, not just anime, in general. There is a formula for each series that work for them. You watch the series if you like the formula.
On the other hand, I hate this for a lot of Hollywood films. A lot of them share the same formula, it’s not even fun to watch.
I won’t even try to reach One Piece, there is Detective Conan. Every episode is the same for 30 years yet they still make it and people still watch it. Why? Because the formula is good.
Same!
I remember being a teenager and getting tired of Pokemon’s formula, where every episode after a certain point became “new pokemon from the newest games shows up, Team Rocket justify it as rare or special somehow, try to capture it (and Pikachu) and get their arse handed to them, end”. That being said, as I get older and Pokemon becomes more of a nostalgic comfort show to me, I can’t help but soften on it over the years! It’s like the one constant in a world of chaos!
I’m also a big Dragonball fan, and ultimately every saga boils down to “new villain shows up, usually from space, about four or five of the Z fighters have a go at fighting them, they get trounced to build tension, and then Vegeta and Goku give it a go, and eventually Goku wins”.
But I really love it! It’s a formula that so many shows since have tried to replicate, but they never had the diversity of inspirations and the playful nature of Akira Toriyama to give it the same appeal!
I remember back in the 80s with He-man, he’d always have an afterthought like Jerry Springer, sharing his wisdom with us kids.
This can be a problem for me sometimes, especially with Weekly Shounen Jump manga. Even if the mangaka tries to have an original thought their editor will often push them towards doing the standard WSJ thing if their originality doesn’t immediately translate into tons of readership. I really loved the first season of Demon Slayer. After a while though it was hard to ignore that every dang fight played out the same way over and over. For this reason I rarely pick up shounen series these days; perhaps originality is lower-priority when the target audience is younger and thus hasn’t seen all the stuff it’s cribbing on anyways.
Of course, this isn’t only a problem with anime, or even with bad writing. I used to read a lot of classic sci-fi 15-20 years ago because that’s what I could consistently find in libraries, or in thriftstores for ultra-cheap (think $0.25 per copy). At some point I was about 10-15% into some Isaac Asimov book and realized that I was pretty sure I knew roughly what was going to happen for the entire remainder of the story. TBH I don’t even know if I was correct; I lost interest and returned the book to the library without ever having finished it. I don’t think this happened because Isaac Asimov was a bad writer, but he wrote a lot of books and I had already read a lot of those books.
As for whether there are stories I can enjoy despite this, certainly there are! Phineas and Ferb is one of my favorite American anime, and it’s about as formulaic as it can get. The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You is also very formulaic, yet it’s zaniness rarely fails to amuse me. You and I Are Polar Opposites is pretty straightforward about what it’s going to be doing, but it’s just the sweetest thing so I enjoy it nonetheless. Heck, most Gundam series follow the same few basic formulae and yet they still are (usually) an enjoyable time. Most of Golden Kamuy is just “let’s see what kind of insane dude we meet in Hokkaido today” and I’m absolutely here for it.
