Overarching and episodic: Likes and dislikes

[Fantasy Leader]

Well, I've seen a lot of dispute among fans whether a show/story is good or not whether it's an overarching story or if the show is episodic. I hadn't seen any thread like this, so I decided to make one.

some examples:
Overarching: Dairanger, KR Agito, KR 555
Episodic: Shinkenger, Dekaranger, Maskman

So what are your likes/dislikes/feelings towards the over-arching shows and the episodic shows? Do you prefer one over the other?

 

[Shirubaa]

The main issue I've found with shows that try to be completely serialized is that they have a hard time getting a very solid story to fill in 50 episodes. I've noticed a lot of times in the Heisei Rider shows you'll be chugging along well and then you can tell they run out of ideas and do something completely wacky and weird just to change it up.

This is why I prefer the Sentai style a little more where episodes can easily be watched on their own. It's nice when an episode can be a self contained story, while at the same time really grow the characters nicely. There can be a bit of an overarching story in all the episodes but having individual stories helps space those out nicely, with the advantage of still growing the characters. A good, epic two or three parter every now and then helps a lot too. Gekiranger would be a good example of this, right? Gaoranger too probably. Timeranger's episodes were mostly self contained but they did an amazing job of growing the characters in between as well, right?

 

[Jacky392000]

I prefer a mixture of overarching and episodic series, then the series will be balanced.
Boukenger was episodic until it got even more boring after BoukenSilver's arc.

 

[Blade Dancer]

I gotta go with Jacky on this one. I like it when there are "mini arcs" of two or three episodes telling a story, but it works best when they add up to an overarching storyline that stays consistent throughout the series.

This is obviously difficult when a series has many writers, though I've seen it work.

 

[lazycoconut]

I wouldn't agree that an "episodic" series is inherently less rewatchable. As with most things it depends on how well it's done, although you have the factor that when episodes are self-contained it's easy to skip over them :sweat:

 

[NeonZ]

I think an episodic series done well is much more rewatchable than a long running series, because you don't have to either watch the entire series or be satisfied with incomplete fragments, you can watch one or two episodes and get a complete story.