Crunchyroll Explores Shorter Anime for Shrinking Attention Spans in TikTok Generation

Bad habits should be broken, not fed.

There was already 12 minute episode anime and I hated that, let's please not do more of those. Felt like I was scammed out of half of an anime.

Some shorter anime are fine for some 4-koma adaptations (loved I Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying for example), but generally, please no. Especially for story focused anime.

It doesn't even make much sense either. 24 minutes is already short compared to most beloved shows coming out of Netflix, HBO or Prime.

We already had that. It's called Azumanga Daioh.

If you want to see an example of anime made for TikTok, then @LiteralGrill@ani.social wrote a really interesting piece a while back about Otaku-chans, an anime specifically made for and aired on TikTok, with episodes usually less than 60 seconds long.

I encourage people that are interested to check out the whole article. One bit I found interesting in particular is the constraint that the algorithmic feed places on the ability to tell stories. Specifically, each episode basically needs to start and stop at a similar status quo since the episodes might be served out of order. From the article:

Because viewers are unable to rely upon TikTok’s algorithm serving the episodes in order, anime like Otaku-Chans are forced to work more like syndicated television, where things generally return to the status quo each episode. In fact, the For You feed “generally won’t show two videos in a row made with the same sound or by the same creator” according to TikTok, meaning it’s unlikely that multiple episodes of the show will even appear side by side, let alone in any logical order.

There's 45 new animes a season now so I don't think it would be that bad if a few of them were short vertical videos

I like the idea of more diversity in length, especially since short clips would be a good way to bring new people into the anime world, and I'm hopeful that this means there will be more short-form anime that have decent budgets and some real animation talent behind them. I know that shorter anime can really shine when work is put into them (I'm going to take this moment to plug Kenka Banchou Otome, a favorite of mine that does a lot with its 8 minutes) but so many short-form anime are just a couple frames of character animation in front of a static background.

So more Ebichu episodes then?......

Like.... Ninja Girl and Samurai Master?

Because that was awesome and I'd like more of it

Senyuu.