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)