If you’ve watched anime for any significant period of time, you know that the term “slice-of-life” has a very distinct definition. After all, isn’t it odd that “slice-of-life” is a descriptor of
Think about it for a moment: the term itself implies something involving people living out their lives. But by this definition, if a show possesses characters that aren’t dead, the show falls into the category slice-of-life. Yet, slice-of-life is a genre any anime goer will not think twice about, for slice-of-life is also one of the largest genres in anime. As a result, I’ve come to ask, and attempt to provide an answer, to the question of why? Not so much why slice-of-life is so big or why it has its set definition, but more importantly, what is the point of making a slice-of-life anime vs. making one in any other genre? What does the slice-of-life genre provide that others don’t? To put it bluntly, why does slice-of-life exist? I want to show that slice-of-life
Has a point in existing, but has not had itself fully vindicated as a legitimate genre because it’s potential, still to this day, hasn’t been fully exploited. But before we go there, let’s first define, for those unfamiliar, what on earth this slice-of-life thing is.
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I feel the best way to get across what slice of life is, is to tell the story of my first experience with a pure slice-of-life anime: a show called
When I was first getting into anime and came in with all the expectations of a normal show. The expectations weren’t that grand; I expected a story with goals that drive the characters to develop and grow while they solve the central conflict of the narrative. You know, I expected
, it’s a show about high school girls and the things they talk about. There is no story that connects episodes together; there isn’t even a cohesive story in the each episode. It’s just events, with no connections tying them together. I found this
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Odd; so odd in fact, that I couldn’t believe it. The thing that put anime above the western cartoons I grew up to was the fact that they all had a story to them. Sure, many of the famous animes of the late 90s that came to the west (Ex.
) were episodic, but there was an overarching narrative attaching each episode, which built a sense of progression and made me want to watch each new episode even more. This to me was one of the most defining aspects of my naïve view of anime.
But then, before me was a show that didn’t have any character development, any story to speak of, any structure, anything at all! What on earth was this? I assured myself, this was nothing but a
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Long buildup, and sure enough the plot would arrive, and then the characters and I would all embark on a wonderful ride of protagonists, antagonists, and causal relationships!
Before finally realizing this wasn’t the case. It was really this experience that made me start asking the question, “Why is this a thing?” Why would someone want to watch a show where girls talk about stuff and do silly skits?
You would think that after my experience I would avoid touching slice-of-life with a 10 foot pole, but actually I ended up watching almost every major slice-of-life on the market. Don’t ask me how, not even I know the answer to that. But as a result, I can define what the gist of slice-of-life is.
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First off we need to make some distinctions. As I said in the intro, every show in existence can be called a slice-of-life.
Spends most of its time following the lives of Edward and Alphons Elric, but it wouldn’t be considered a slice-of-life. This is because Edward and Al’s lives aren’t considered normal in the scope of their world. This is criterion 1:
Takes place in a world not that different from our own and has characters leading pretty normal lives by our standards, making it partly a slice-of-life. But
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Slice-of-life because there are other genres it can fit into, such as the romance or coming-of-age genres. This is important, because slice-of-life is a type of minimalism; there can’t be too much going on. As a result slice-of-life is a genre defined by having so little going on that it can’t fit into any other genre. While this isn’t universally the case, we can say, for the most part, this. Criterion 2:
3) Overarching narrative, character development and a sense of progression, are all optional, and are never present in every episode.
, after the first 3 episodes, lacks all three. K-On! lacks character development, and is missing all three when you ignore the first 2 and last 2 episodes.
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Are the exception in a way because they exhibit all three attributes, but as the second clause states, these aspects are not consistent over the entire series.
While my categorization has more holes than I could possibly clarify or fill, it’s a good start to discussing the issue I want to bring up. Why would any artist want to follow condition 3?
Slice-of-life seems to get rid of most of the things that make up a narrative, but why? Why would an artist purposefully choose to
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Have character development, an overarching story, or a sense of progression? And even more importantly, wouldn’t adding plot, character development, and progression to a slice-of-life add all the benefits of proper story structure while taking nothing away? If so, then why does slice-of-life exist?
To fully show the dilemma, we need to show how adding story, character development and progression to a work makes it, in some way, better, without taking anything away from it. While many people might have an issue with this premise, I think it is for the most part, reasonable.
Plot is the causal link that leads to the emotional and psychological pleasure of narrative. Strongly coherent and complex plots lead to immersion on the part of the viewer as they are drawn into the narrative fabric of the story being told. At the same time, these narrative threads are the main focus of many contemplative viewers, as they seek to analyze and understand the interworkings of the story.
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Progression, I would argue, is even more fundamental than plot. Think of the “narrative” of having to get water from a well. It involves causal events linked in time and space, but unless it is connected to some greater plan or scheme, it doesn’t advance anything. Progression is the difference between events happening towards a goal and events existing for no other sake than having something happening.
Progression is key to engagement and represents the very reason we take interest in a show. Surely you have asked yourself, “Why do I care about this story and this series of plot events?” The most common answer is because you want to see how they build to a climax, how the new twists affect the characters course of action; you care because the show’s going somewhere, and you want to be there to see that journey. Think filler episodes: they tie into the story, but end where they start. Why does filler elicit such hate, and why do many people go so far as to skip these episodes entirely? It’s simply because progression is that important to most people.
In addition, one thing that always attaches people to narratives are the characters and the transformations they undergo. Simply speaking, character development not only makes more interesting characters, it makes characters far more endearing and human than if they were unchanging entities.
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So hopefully you understand — with all this potential benefit — that one must be well-justified to make a show that ignores these 3 otherwise integral parts of narrative.
When it comes to reasons a person would choose to ignore the guiding principles of narrative I can think of a few, but only one can truly offer a solution to the dilemma I presented.
, the answer is relatively simple: these slice-of-lifes want to exposition their world to the viewer and don’t need a narrative to accomplish that. The reason they don’t use overarching stories is because they are engaging in their own right as they paint creative and imaginative universes and hence can afford to utilize episodic formats and stagnant protagonists. In addition, a narrative would make expositioning the universe they created more cumbersome, as each aspect of the universe would have to somehow tie into the narrative. But this class of slice-of-life is the exception; the real challenge is answering the dilemma for the high school slice-of-life genre (which is by far the largest sub-genre), where shows like
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One would at first simply reply “comedy”, as that is the main thing high school slice-of-lifes do, but this doesn’t answer the question. It seem pretty reasonable to believe that comedy can be done while having a plot, character development and a sense of progression (think
Experimentation is the next thing that comes to mind, as it has always been a reason for ignoring the grounding principles of narrative. You see this a
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