Can success ruin the storytelling of an anime?

It may certainly sound paradoxical, but sometimes the success of an anime (or of any TV show) can produce negative effects on its reputation, on the perceived likability of the audience, and in some cases it can even ruin it forever, ruining something that had started in the best of ways and that later, precisely because of its success, completely lost all momentum, becoming almost banal. 

Something very similar, according to some, happened to the soul of One Piece, the highly successful series based on Eiichiro Oda’s hugely popular manga that first aired in 1999. The show is still running, but according to many observers it has gradually broken down over the years: this is due not only to its success, which has, so to speak, forced its producers to unnaturally lengthen its seasons and individual episodes, often offering entire episodes in which not a damn thing happens, but also to the overall quality of the storytelling, which seems to have dropped dramatically in the space of two decades. 

The case of One Piece

It must be said that One Piece, in fact, represents a case in point: TV shows and anime that last more than two decades, without one still being able to see the end of it, are very, very few indeed, one can almost count them on the fingers of one hand. 

The dilatation of its duration, in a sense, has also produced a dilating effect on the length of the individual seasons-the episodes always last a little over twenty minutes-which have been lengthening in a truly incredible way for the past few years. Suffice it to say that the season that is currently airing in Japan, the Wano saga, began in the summer of 2019, and is not yet over (but that is not long now…). 

Another fact that is quite interesting, and also potentially useful to those who also exploit storytelling outside of TV shows-such as companies and professionals-is precisely the deterioration of the overall story, which has sacrificed its initial quality (clearly discernible in the anime’s first seasons) on the altar of business and financial gain, often disappointing millions of passionate fans. 

The end result is there for all to see: nowadays, those who still watch the One Piece anime are only those devoted viewers who have been following it for 20 years, and who believe that they have to follow every episode solely because of the bond that unites them with the TV series. Certainly there are very few who could get hooked on the anime if they started watching it today: for who could enjoy episodes of twenty minutes or so in which very little happens, and in which spectacular scenes are increasingly rare? Almost no one. 

Between 1999 and 2001, Toei Animation’s show achieved great success because it managed to condense entire sagas into a few, very few episodes, even as few as a dozen, thus offering a balanced and enjoyable product for all viewers, and with storytelling capable of adapting perfectly to the medium through which it is conveyed.

A lesson for brands 

What lessons might brands learn from this? First of all, they need to understand that storytelling is a technique that needs to be mastered with extreme delicacy, and that the main challenge is to make it possible to fully integrate and fit between the main narrative and the channels in which it manifests itself, thus avoiding producing unpleasant effects on your audience. 

Consciously choosing not to stretch a successful piece of content but keeping its quality intact will undoubtedly produce unanimous audience appreciation, which can undoubtedly translate into immediate material benefits (especially in terms of loyalty and trust). 

One storytelling that has proven effective over time is undoubtedly that used by some of the best online portals dedicated to gambling, such as Asiabet: in this case, they opted for a storytelling of a visual and content nature, offering the user a complete overview of what can await him on the portal (such as the various sites where he can play or bet, and reviews written by experts in the field) and a deep immersion in the universe of online entertainment, thanks to the omnipresence of certain unmistakable graphic references that immediately refer to the world of gaming. The redemption of the various bonuses, in this sense, becomes the beginning of an incredible story, which will lead the user to magnificent adventures and unlimited fun with no surprises. 

The quality of the storytelling can greatly influence the level of your final product, whether it is a television episode or a service offered to the public: in any case, the quality of the story should always be kept intact, without distorting it in any way.