That’s an interesting lesson you learn when you watch anime, especially the older kind. In 20 minutes, you can explain how three unlikely friends first meet. You can throw them into a difficult situation and force them to help each other. You can let them emerge and realize: “Huh, maybe these other two rascals aren’t so bad after all.”
You can tell a love story in 20 minutes. You can send someone down nostalgia lane. You can enact a complete revenge arc, where someone avenges their long-dead brother. But you know what’s best of all? In another 20 minutes, you can do it again.
Pokémon, Steins;Gate, Code Geass, Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo—watch any random episode of these, and you’ll go, “Okay, that was fun but nothing crazy. I got the message, and that’s it.” Exactly! Wouldn’t it be nice to watch a show for once where each episode is a self-contained journey? Nowadays, we have far too few of those. It’s always an hour per episode and, sometimes, a whole season just to find out what’s going on.
At the same time, if you stack 26 of these 20-minute adventures, you gain a lot more room to tell a bigger story. What used to be irrelevant details start to add up. You discover a little more about each character’s background as you go along, and that makes the ending feel meaningful and satisfying. What you end up with is 27 beautiful stories: one for each episode and the bigger picture. It’s a fascinating way to build a worthwhile tale, and if you ask me, we could use more of it.
“Ahh, he got his dog back!” “Whew, they escaped.” “Aww, and now they are friends, how cute!” It only takes a few sentences to make us feel real emotions. Not every TV episode needs to reinvent the wheel. Enjoy some classics from simpler times, and you’ll realize: For stories as for many other things in life, 20 minutes is enough.