I love a good story. But in this day and age of multimedia consumption, of here today, gone tomorrow, a good story can be hard to come by. And I’m not talking about books, I’m talking about audio-visual: movies, tv shows, anime, cartoons etc… It’s nothing new, you only have to look around yourself, at the latest movies or shows, to realise that the emphasis shifted a long time ago - from telling a story to selling you an idea, neatly packaged in special effects, famous people and whatever else is popular at the time. Which also isn’t to say there aren’t any good stories around anymore, they’re just harder to find.

My gripe though isn’t just with the celebrity cult western societies have been afflicted with for a while or the rise and predominance of the blockbuster movies and tv series. Rather it’s with the fact that a good story, especially in serial format, is just not something you can find easily anymore. Back in the days, things were simpler and while we had our fair share of crap we also had our fair share of good. Taking TV series as the main focus here, things have only got worse as the years have gone on.

While for the last ten years or so TV series have definitely moved towards a template that resembles more the Hollywood blockbuster prototype than anything else, one thing that has always been a constant is that if the series isn’t pulling in the viewing numbers it won’t last long, regardless of its artistic merit, especially the story. Examples of this are ripe, and it’s a given of the game, which is I guess fair enough. But today things have got more extreme - ratings are still a factor, but it seems that the story, the magic of telling a story over a long period of time is definitely getting lost. Series not only resemble movies, or try to, they also a lot of the time seem like they’re not really going anywhere. There isn’t a definite beginning, middle and end to a story anymore. Only the factors of ratings and popularity. And so the few series that do at times appear with a strong story, often end up never being told in full, due to low ratings or popularity.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: anime, movies, storytelling, Television, TV series

The advent of web 2.0 has supposedly been a boon on both the internet and its users. Personally I’m still standing on the fence. Yes it has some very definite and enjoyable benefits, hell I’m using one of them right now by blogging this, but it’s also brought about a whole host of painful things, most notably in my opinion a giant free for all of user created content with no benchmark or quality control whatsoever, meaning we’re not only flooded with information, but we’re also flooded with a shit lot more crap information and data than before. Oh and it’s now never been easier for everyone and their dog to voice opinions on anything and everything. Maybe I’m getting old or maybe it’s democracy, I’m not sure.

A web 2.0 moan isn’t my purpose this time round though. Rather I’ve got thinking about one of the many promises the advent of the internet has made since its prominent rise in the late 90s. And that’s the promise of online, on-demand TV. Having been in Japan for over 9 months I must say I’m starting to suffer from slight withdrawal symptoms, not because I don’t watch TV anymore (that ticks a good box in my book) but because I don’t watch anything in English anymore. Japanese TV has its uses, but so far they’re pretty limited. As my mate put it, Japanese TV is the equivalent of having Channel 5 on every channel :lol: . Which ain’t that great is it? Ask the Italians if you don’t believe me, Berlusconi has ruined Italian TV forever with the same, cheap tactics.

So the other day I decided I wanted to start watching some TV programs again - partly because I’d been given some bits to watch by my friend (the first series of Heroes amongst other things) and partly because Ella had been hinting that TV links is a good way to watch some TV online. The downside of being given things to watch, is that once you’re hooked you want more, and yes TV Links is quite good, but it suffers from some problems like many other streaming sites out there. Links are often broken, copyrighted content is hunted down and withdrawn and streaming quality varies greatly, all of which don’t make for great pleasure. Unless you’re a technology freak.

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written by Laurent \\ tags: internet, Television, web 2.0