Thread: Filler Episodes - Are they important?

I would say they are, because they can have character development, and can be interesting, plus if it was just non-fillers every week it might get repetitive pretty quickly, and they would get through an entire region in less than a year. I think it would be better to have slightly less fillers, but not stop them altogether.

EDIT: 500th post!! :)

Uh, only some fillers have character development. I remeber in Johto that they had made several Jessie/James episodes but yet I didn't see anything change. They could atleast have Meowth learn Payday or James do a competition of sort. But to answer the question, I guess it depends.

I don't really mine fillers since I am tolerable of most of them mainly the Advance series, DP series, and BW. Besides, some of them are pretty funny.. I like the anime the way it is and I don't try to overanalyze it.

Some are, MOST aren't!! Sure it gives the characters "development", but it can be a bore sometimes and when its a bore, it makes you stop watching.

All Anime shows have fillers including the children card game show that's what common in this day and age more 'fillers' A thing put in a space or container to fill it (AKA time wasting.)

Wow, I didn't even think this topic would still be active after all this time. IMO, there is no such thing as a filler as virtually all episodes have some kind of character development no matter how little and we get to see more of the expanded Pokemon Universe in each and every episode.

The very definition of filler pretty much answers that question. No. Filler is designed to take up space, plain and simple. Whether or not filler can be enjoyable, however, is a completely different question. (The answer to that is yes, by the way. It's a guilty pleasure of mine.)

Originally Posted by CliveKoopa

Wow, I didn't even think this topic would still be active after all this time. IMO, there is no such thing as a filler as virtually all episodes have some kind of character development no matter how little and we get to see more of the expanded Pokemon Universe in each and every episode.

Do we really have to know that ribbon twirling shows with pokemon exist. No it's boring as hell. They can show and develop characters in the main story and they can easy add more story. Give Ash like ten rivals make more evil groups and have Ash go on mini quest to make him stronger. There boom plenty of stuff to do every episode.

I don't find them overly entertaining unless they were based on the games.

I think fillers are very important in padding out the time between important events in the show for a number of reasons.

The first in my opinion is the timing of a saga. As we know a new episode tends to air every week and I don't think there is simply enough "non-filler" to be able to be the subject of all of those episode. Satoshi's quest involves earning 8 badges (which is definitely not enough, not even if he lost against every gym leader and had training episodes before challenging them again). This could be rectified by say, expanding the gym quest so that it requires more effort than in the games but then that defeats the purpose of the anime altogther: being an advertisement.

The second is that fillers actually give us a chance to see the character's personalities more. I do think personality can be shown in non-fillers but I think in a more "relaxed" episode you can see the characters in a more casual sense. It's also nice to see them not always "on" in regard to their goals, like Saotshi being fired up for a match or something.

Thirdly, non-fillers can get tiring after a while. Honestly, I think they'd lose some meaning if they were on constantly. Satoshi saving some people from TP nearly everyweek would cause people to resent them (the same way some resent fillers in fact). Variety is a good thing, in my opinion.

And last, they can be pretty damn entertaining when done right. This one always gets mentioned, but the Togepy DP episode. That's pretty much universally praised across the fandom.

I agree that filler is needed because there isn't enough plot it would do them much benefit to add more. One suggestion make the league longer. Seriously the entire anime is build up to the league so 7 episodes really isn't enough.

Fillers can be done right if you take stuff from the game, add a new character and some Pokemon development. It's just that I don't really feel that the BW fillers aren't important because Oshawott is is mostly all of them, there is no better character development from the villians and the plots of the stories have toned down a lot from DP standards.

They are boring as hell and they can make the plot more complex to avoid them. Also a tournament in yu gi oh is an entire half of a season a tourney in Pokemon 7 eps. Really?

Fillers are mostly a waste of space. They are there mostly for marketing purposes, and even though they are sometimes fun, they tend to be more of a chore, while leaving less episodes for Leagues and/or post-League arcs. What can be more annyoning though, are the 4-episode-arcs that are fillers outside each other! I mean, things like the Summer Academy, Twinleaf Festival, Larvitar eps. The main reason Johto/Sinnoh did not get second arcs is fillers or 4-part-fillerish-plots.

EDIT: Not to mention that 6-string at the start of Battle Frontier... The main reason the rest of the saga was rushed.

Sometimes filler can be important *points at The Path to the Pokemon League*