Remembering the Episodic

It's amazing how when one dives into the depths of serious amounts of anime and manga, how their perceptions of stories change. Many anime titles are contained to around 13, 26, or 50 episodes, with some exceptions. As fans dive deeper, they often can find themselves estranged to the typical western storytelling in television shows, losing interest because the overlaying story is nearly non-existent, or irrelevant. One of the popular reasons to cite for anime and manga's superiority over conventional western film, TV, and comics, is ability of their stories to actually end.
Sometimes there are exceptions, such as Dragonball Z, Inuyasha, Naruto, and Bleach*, where the plot continues at a snail's pace, or even more disheartening, filler material is produced for the anime while the manga work it is based on has a chance to buildup more story material for the anime to work off of. Yet, there are exceptions. Some of the greatest anime titles are ones in which the story has nowhere to go. Takahashi Rumiko's more recent Inuyasha may be at fault for having an overlaying story that takes forever and a day to tell because it is constantly sidetracked, yet her earlier classic, Ranma ½ is almost entirely episodic in its stories, and it does not suffer at all. A romantic sitcom, with stories only lasting a few episodes here and there, the overall plot in Ranma is pretty simple to grasp. So long as one knows the core characters, they can jump into any of the small story arcs and not be lost.
This weekend I took to watching two of the Lupin III movies, Farewell to Nostradamus, and Dead or Alive. Lupin is considered a classic manga and anime title, with over 30 years behind it. Perhaps what makes it so successful is its ability to stay strictly episodic. As long as one knows Lupin, Jigen, Goemon, Fujiko, and Zenigata, the story can be picked up rather quickly. To further bolster the episode-by-episode nature of the exploits of these characters, the relationships between these characters and their personalities are easy to pick up on rather quickly as well.
While it is important to know how to make a story go somewhere, the complaint of stories that go nowhere is sometimes misused. Titles like Ranma ½, Lupin III, and Keroro Gunso are effective because they are virtually independent entities. What's my point? Knowing how to end a story and prevent it from dragging on is extremely important, but at the same time, we must not forget that sometimes all that is needed to tell a story is a single episode.
* Do not get me wrong, I think these shows are with their merits, but their plots do tend to take longer to tell.
Last Tuesday I was able to attend a short seminar, Japanese Anime and the Global Imagination, with both Ian Condry and Susan Napier discussing things. It was a very interesting panel, and I hope to have a write up on this coming soon.