Don't Waste a Good Premise

Too many anime these days have just enough sparkly art and just enough uniqueness in its premise to get people watching, just to disappoint those viewers by telling a story that has been told a million times. A two year epic of fighters in a virtual world sounds amazing until you realize it's Sword Art Online. A time travel show sounds at least interesting until you hear that it's Sagrada Reset. You're mildly surprised when Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody passes the three episode test - just to see it go crashing down to... wait, why does it have a 6.9 on MAL? I would rate it 4.4 at the most.

Trust me, this image is as entertaining as the entire show (before I dropped it).

The number one element halting creativity in most people is the initial block. You want to write something amazing, but don't know where to start, or you want to paint something, but don't know what palette to use. Some people completely sidestep the problem and have a knack for putting together interesting themes and ideas almost constantly. Yoshihiro Togashi is one such man, who was able to put together Yu Yu Hakusho and Hunter x Hunter, both long-running series full of variety. However, the premise is not enough to make a writer. To truly make a good story, a meaningful plot needs to exist, holding all the ideas together.

The fate of many an anime series is to find an interesting idea, say, six heroes are called upon to slay the demon lord, but seven people appear. People are interested because it seems new and unique: ooh! There's an imposter hero! how will they figure it out? They all start out to take on the demon lord, some cool action, and oops, looks like we're all stuck in a forest for the rest of the season. It's not like a plot progression requires a setting change, but the plot does not progress regardless. If you hadn't noticed already, I'm taking a jab at Rokka no Yuusha. This series is symbolic of a lot of problems faced by anime nowadays. Rokka no Yuusha is a light novel adaptation that aired in 2015, and it ended up like a lot of light novel adaptations do. It looked cool, the action was good, the protagonist, while not original, was surely better than your average overpowered fantasy hero, and it had an interesting twist. However, the show (because of the light novel) wasted all of its strengths, leaving a below-par mystery series behind.

The best parts of the show have to have been the character interactions and the action. Neither of these capitalize on the twist of there being seven heroes instead of six. If it wanted to be a mystery, it would have to first attract the mystery fanbase, then deliver with a good mystery. What ends up happening is action fans get excited, just to be let down until the very end. For mystery fans, they cannot enjoy it either because 70% of the hints either make no sense, or were only revealed after the characters had already solved it. It's the same problem that disillusioned me with Gosick when I realized only the first arc or two could possibly be solved by a viewer.

It is not just a problem with Rokka no Yuusha. Many light novels are written by someone with an idea and no clue why they like the idea. Defaulting to generic plot points to tell a story only slightly distinct from those of its ilk is a major problem in anime that I hope gets addressed sooner rather than later. Some anime writers need to know what makes their story good so they know to emphasize those points and not disappoint their audience.