Assignment 7: Television Without Pity

Actually I cannot link the Television Without Pity website. Thus, I picked one episode on Hulu.com.
The episode what I picked was the Naruto Shippuden, Season 5, Episode 190. This is the updated one. Naruto Shippuden is a Japanese animation by Kishimodo Masashi. Actually I started to watch Naruto when I was in high school. At that time, most of the boys in my class were watching this animation. We talked about it at the time the new episode came out.

Episode 190 is the newest one. It tells the memory of Uzimaki Naruto when he was a rookie Ninja going out to achieve mission. In this episode, the memory of how Naruto grew from a rookie to a powerful Ninja is the main content. The author picks one exact mission of Naruto to describe his immaturity when he was a rookie. The rookie Naruto was kind of overconfident. He was never convinced to anybody. Thus, in this episode, his partner, a very old man was despised by Naruto. They go into the forest to seek for the information of the enemy. Naruto depises the old man so that he wants to seek for the whole forest alone. But he encounters his enemy, and he is not able to beat them. At the dangerous time, the old man comes out to save Naruto defeating the enemy.

The above is the brief content of that episode. Actually I think every show needs to be watched from the 1st one to the last. Otherwise, some background information or context will be missed. So I want to talk about the context of this episode. Because Fire Ninja Village is under attack by their enemy, a dark organization. But the enemy's power is huge, so that the Ninja including mature Naruto cannot defeat them. At this time, the memory of rookie period comes to Naruto's mind. Those memories encourage Naruto and motivate him to stand up again to defeat their enemy. Thus, the central message of this episode is the motivation or the cue for the next following episode.

Actually I don't like the structure at all. Probably all conflict between justice and devil always starts with the loss of justice. Then some motivation encourage the protagnists to show their tremendous power. Finally they defeat the enemy. In fact, the conten of Naruto is worse and worse. The author just expands the episode artificially with some empty content. Even if some protagnists die, the author will call them alive again. Thus, Naruto Shippuden has become more and more unreal. Therefore, it has lost more and more audience. Its ranking of the Japan animation drops down gradually.

I think as a TV show, no matter the reality show or animation, there should be a selling point. This point can catch the audience's eyeballs. But before that, audience determination is crucial as well. Let's use some example. Detective Conan is one of most popular Japanese animation. Its audience deternination is very clear. It's the people from 7-30. Thus, not only the type of drawing, but also the language, even some cases fit the audience very well. But some shows has audience anbiguous. Because they want to make more audience to watch the show. I think it's hard to be possible. Pleasing everybody is the hardest issue in TV shows. Audience deternimation is relevant to the ethnography. Audience refers to the culture in some case. So the TV producer should not extravagantly hope to please all the culture. It is fact that more or less people will like the show and more or less people will dislike the show.

Beside the audience determination, reality is important too. The content of the show should lead the audience in the story in order to make audience feel they are parts of the story, so that the audience will have the echoes, and the show will be popular. But let me use Naruto Shippuden as an example. At the very beginning of this animation which is talking about the growth of Naruto can encourage the audience to make effort to achieve their dream. As we all know, the process of achieving dream must have difficulties. But the author designs the antagonists so poweful that surpasses the possible imagination of human. In order to defeat the antagonists, the author has to make the protagonists more powerful. It is losing the reality gradully. At the beginning, audience can have some echoes to make effort to achieve dream, but as the episodes go, I, as a little part of audience feel the conten is farther away. Because I know no matter how hard I work or study, I cannot defeat nuclear weapon with by body. There is no doubt heroism is important to motivate people to dedicate. However, the hero cannot be so far away from the normal people. After all, the real superman is not alive in our real life.