When pacing goes so fast it leaves you dizzy (fictional media in general)

[Fiery Diamond]

Quite often, you will come across complaints (or make them yourself) about slow pacing in any form of serialized story - webcomics, manga, anime, TV shows, you name it. Because we have to wait in between pieces, if not enough happens in any given segment, it can get very annoying.

But it's somewhat less common to hear people complain about the opposite problem (and when they do, it's usually for stories that are NOT serialized, like books or movies), which is overly fast pacing. While sluggish pacing can make you feel like things are taking forever to happen or make you bored, speedster pacing can detract in other ways. One way it can be detrimental is by making it harder to become absorbed in what's happening in the story, lessening emotional connections. Another way is by confusing people through leaving out connecting bridges of events. It can destroy drama just as easily as pacing that drags out too much.

What got me thinking about this was the most recent episode (6) of C - The Money of Soul and Possibility Control. While I have enjoyed this anime so far, I had found that several previous episodes suffered from slow pacing which focused too much on exposition and not enough on the character interaction. But the latest episode takes the cake for just being messed up with pacing by flipping it into the speedy overdrive problem. The first third or so is pretty normal, combining exposition with character interaction. The next part is where is begins to get rushed; in fact, the characters start motor-mouthing just to get through their entire lines, giving the impression that the makers were trying to squish everything into one episode because it wasn't quite enough material for two episodes and they only had limited space. While the conflicting information that flows from the main character from multiple sources is apparently supposed to produce tension at his indecision, it instead feels like too much stuff is being thrown at you all at once.

But that wasn't even the worst part of the breakneck pacing in the episode. No, that was in the last third, when the actual fight went down. I half expected it to be some kind of dream sequence. While previously the fight scenes had been of reasonable length (not long and drawn out, but long enough to be engaging), this one was ridiculously short. It includes what could potentially have been the most emotional scene with the main character so far in the show (something which I admit to have been looking forward to) but it failed spectacularly because it just raced through it so fast I could barely register what was happening.

So, this is my recent experience with super fast pacing. What experiences do you have? Complain, comment, and share!

[MammonAzrael]

The only too fast paced issue that comes to my mind is Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. I've only seen what is currently available on NetFlix, and while it was enjoyable, I feel like it just moved too quickly. I'm very glad that I saw the original (and read the manga) first, as I feel that Brotherhood does not give one enough time for certain events to have the profound impact they do in the other versions.

You know which event I'm talking about. :smallfrown:

[Razgriez]

Well the obvious pick here would be The Room

But since the Nostalgia Critic Remembered it so I didn't have to... I will not be talking about "The Room" (You may all now relax)

Instead, I shall talk about 2 Animated CG movies. One, is Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (The original version, not the better Complete version) and Bandai-Namco's "dotHack//G.U. Trilogy"

Both of these movies had a fast pace. Too fast actually.

In Advent Children's case, the story, quickly devolved into a long series of fight scenes.

Thankfully, I can cut my rant short on it, because the much better Advent Children Complete came out, which was a much better version, and the extra half hour of film certainly helped a lot. Add on some redone lines and graphics, and everything became so much more better and well explained

But G.U. Trilogy however, I can not excuse. (Warning wall of text ahead)

dotHack has always had a major problem in my view. While it's common for Mangas and Anime to have different takes on the story, they typically aren't that big of a stretch. Not so with dotHack. The Novels have one story, then the Mangas have another, then the Anime has yet another different take, and finally, the Video games come out, and they have still yet another take on the story. Well then comes the movie. //G.U. Trilogy, which said "Don't worry, we'll do CGI movie, based on the G.U. Video game Trilogy.

Let start off by saying the following... if you have never read the G.U.+ manga, or played the G.U. videogames... you will be hopelessly lost.

What's that you say? You're a hardcore fan of the video game series and/or Manga? That's great Billy!.... You're going to be lost too.

So it starts off just like the video game's main story in Vol.1 Haseo PKKs Bordeux and her gang of PKers with extreme pwnage, And we notice problem number one... apparently, the movie was on a tight budget, and Chain Scythes are too expensive to produce and show. Cut to the town of Mac Anu, and the intro to Moon Tree's Sakaki, and Atoli... who is Sakaki? well according to the movie, he's only important enough to criticize Haseo for one scene, and never appears again. I mean hey, the 2nd half of G.U. Vol2, and the first half of G.U. Vol3 pretty much only revolve around him, but here, nah, he doesn't even matter. Why? Because this movie is only 1 hour and 30 minutes long dang it!

So we move to... well apparently we have to skip the waterfall meeting with Ovan, because we instead need to focus on the Cathedral instead. Ovan meets up with Haseo, and rather than doing the smart thing, Haseo charges inside the cathedral alone, and gets defeated by "Tri Edge".

Flash Forward to.... wait... the Serpent of Lore? hang on, what about Gaspard and Silabus of Carnard?! And we're pretty soon fast forwarding again through the rest of Vol1. where, apparently, Haseo can't even call out Skeith....and is defeated by Alkaid, who again, is not ever really mentioned, and is only shown briefly (again, she's a major character in the series)

Some more story fast forwarding, Haseo fights Azure Flame Kite, summons Skeith for the first time, wins, and then frees Atoli from the AIDA corruption all within 10 minutes... where they proceed to warp to yet another of the "Forbidden zones" and see Ovan again... yep that's right folks, the VOL2 part of the movie, spends a total of about 15 minutes to touch basis on Atoli being corrupted by the AIDA virus, being taken over and going insane, being cured of it, and is then the Reveal of Ovan's secret... yay...

And then for something that is not mentioned once in any other part of the G.U. series, Haseo gains a berserker mode known as "B-ST" Form... and loses after 5 minutes.

Cut to another few minutes of dialogue. and Haseo learns that that using the power of hate against Ovan doesn't work, and instead he needs to use love and friendship and instead get's Xth Form.. He uses one Attack against Ovan, it doesn't work completely, because Ovan is also protected by his own Epitaph power: Corbenik.

They turn to each other and say the following, (according to translations from a reliable source, since this movie is all a Japanese Dub, with English subs)

Ovan: "So uh... yea, we've got about... 10 minutes left of film in our budget, you just want to charge at each other, screaming about our beliefs and the power of friend ship, and just get our Epitaph user Avatar battles over with?
Haseo: "Yea sure... might as well. SKEITH!"
Ovan: Corbenik!"
Haseo Punches Ovan once, and wins....


The movie only rams through at Ludicrous Speed for the last few minutes, has a montage of characters that Haseo has met in "The World" (But that the movie has never bothered showing up to this point) and yea...

Seriously, if you want a prime example of a movie where the pacing is so fast, it destroys the movie, just watch //G.U. Trilogy... To make matters worse, the movie doesn't even follow any of the G.U. story lines, and keeps on thinking it needs to rewrite half the story line, when it was alright in the first place

[VanBuren]

The only too fast paced issue that comes to my mind is Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. I've only seen what is currently available on NetFlix, and while it was enjoyable, I feel like it just moved too quickly. I'm very glad that I saw the original (and read the manga) first, as I feel that Brotherhood does not give one enough time for certain events to have the profound impact they do in the other versions.

You know which event I'm talking about. :smallfrown:

The problem with that is basically from two issues. First of all, the first part of Brotherhood basically retreads a lot of what the first anime covered with some small differences, so that part was rushed in order to get to the manga-only material (where the paces slows down considerably). The second thing is that the manga itself had similar pacing problems during that same part and it was the first anime that significantly slowed things down.

[RLivengood]

The only too fast paced issue that comes to my mind is Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. I've only seen what is currently available on NetFlix, and while it was enjoyable, I feel like it just moved too quickly. I'm very glad that I saw the original (and read the manga) first, as I feel that Brotherhood does not give one enough time for certain events to have the profound impact they do in the other versions.

You know which event I'm talking about. :smallfrown:

That was the first thing to pop into my head about overly fast pacing, too! :smallsmile:

[Psyren]

Brotherhood is indeed the perfect example of horribly fast pacing. Anyone who is new to FMA and starts with Brotherhood could be forgiven for being turned off, which is a grave mistake on the creators' part. I know WHY they did it, but that doesn't really excuse it.

It would be nice if, at some point, FMA gets a Dragonball Kai-style reboot that has the full story in chronological order, without any of the filler or the branch plot with Dante.

I can't really think of another story that goes too fast though.


An anime that had perfect pacing for me was Death Note. No filler, everything happened exactly when it needed to happen, and even during high-tension moments it was easy to follow.

[Gnoman]

I found the Death Note live-action films had this problem. While overall a superior telling, compressing it into two films seemed to cut any sense of the passage of time from the film, so it looks like it took L twenty minutes to figure out where in Japan Kira lived, and only a day or two to wrap everything else.

[DomaDoma]

Some of the Honor Harrington books (such as Honor Among Enemies) felt like this, because they introduced too many important side characters and gave then too many important things to do before you really processed who they were. (But if we want to talk slow pace, then we'll have to talk about Ashes of Victory, and I really don't want to talk about that one.)

Gnoman, the Death Note films aren't a superior telling, because Misa was never in any real danger. That's... that's a pretty serious plot hole.

[Gnoman]

She was seconds from being caught when Rem sacrificed itself.

[DomaDoma]

They knew she was in on it the whole time, and at the end of the movie, after they've got her on film quite clearly demonstrating that she's the second Kira, she's living as a free woman with a creepy, creepy shrine. And I can't think L was honestly going to go through with it, but then changed his mind when Watari died.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

I'd say one of my most recent experiences with this effect was in David Gaider's Dragon Age novel, The Stolen Throne. I felt that it was an okay story and served as a great introduction to the world of Thedas, but the story moved much too quickly.

It covers the course of an entire war (granted the war was apparently short, but still) along with a few dungeon crawls and the like in a single book. I felt the story of the rebellion against the Orlesians really was the kind of story that needed multiple volumes. To put it at it's simplest, war takes a long time. In the medieval world of Dragon Age, the rebellion likely would have taken a year at the very least to succeed, given the troops of both the rebellion and the occupation either had to travel on foot or on horseback, which takes a while. Yes, I know a war story tends to cut out the time between battles, but in The Stolen Throne it felt like someone had pushed a fast-forward button. The second novel, The Calling, had a much more consistent and manageable pace, since it didn't try to compress as long a period of time into a single work.

[Hawkfrost000]

The only too fast paced issue that comes to my mind is Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. I've only seen what is currently available on NetFlix, and while it was enjoyable, I feel like it just moved too quickly. I'm very glad that I saw the original (and read the manga) first, as I feel that Brotherhood does not give one enough time for certain events to have the profound impact they do in the other versions.

You know which event I'm talking about. :smallfrown:

really, i dont

i've watched that through twice as an intro to FMA (once in Japanese once in English) and loved it and understood everything that happened. the pacing could have been more even but it was still a beautiful piece.

i enjoyed it massively, FURER KING BRADLEY FOR THE WIN *waves flag*

anyway, i find books more guilty of this than films. Ringworlds Children, god i love this book. i think its one of the best in the series. but at then end when Louis Wu becomes a protector things just move so fast, you have to re-read most of the book to get past the "wuh?" feeling at the end. but still its worth reading twice (or five times).

oh, and Rise of Endimion, its just so weird its almost incomprehensible (but still awesome), and the end moves extremely fast and introduces so many very important events, ideas and people (some of whom are dead but aren't) that its just too much. but again an epic book.

READ THEM. BOTH OF THEM. :smalltongue:

then read them again, you might just understand them

DM

[The Big Dice]

anyway, i find books more guilty of this than films. Ringworlds Children, god i love this book. i think its one of the best in the series. but at then end when Louis Wu becomes a protector things just move so fast, you have to re-read most of the book to get past the "wuh?" feeling at the end. but still its worth reading twice (or five times).
Read any of the books where Protectors feature and you get the same thing. It's Niven's way of showing how Protectors think so much faster and with more precision than other species. But ultimately they are trapped by their own biology demanding that they have to act to protect their bloodlines.

[MammonAzrael]

really, i dont

The assassination of Maes Hughes had a much deeper impact in the original animated show than it did in Brotherhood. It, and he impact on the other characters, felt rather rushed over in Brotherhood.

[Da Pwnzlord]

Brotherhood is indeed the perfect example of horribly fast pacing. Anyone who is new to FMA and starts with Brotherhood could be forgiven for being turned off, which is a grave mistake on the creators' part. I know WHY they did it, but that doesn't really excuse it.


I was told to watch Full Metal Alchemist, and accidentally started with Brotherhood. A couple episodes in I realized my mistake, and switched to the original, but I think the damage had already been done. :smallfrown:

[Ravens_cry]

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the film anyway, felt far, far too fast. I only knew what was happening because I read the book.

[VanBuren]

The assassination of Maes Hughes had a much deeper impact in the original animated show than it did in Brotherhood. It, and he impact on the other characters, felt rather rushed over in Brotherhood.

Honestly, I felt like the first anime went too far in the other direction. Slow, dragged-out pacing and OMAIGAWD so much wangst.

I mean, at least Brotherhood got better. :smalltongue:

[MammonAzrael]

Honestly, I felt like the first anime went too far in the other direction. Slow, dragged-out pacing and OMAIGAWD so much wangst.

I mean, at least Brotherhood got better. :smalltongue:

I'm not commenting on the aftermath of the event on the characters in the story. Rather that the impact of the event on the viewer (aka us) was much less in Brotherhood than the original.

[Gnoman]

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the film anyway, felt far, far too fast. I only knew what was happening because I read the book.

All the HP movies are like that. There's a ton of plot holes and missing explanations.

[Serpentine]

I saw The Social Network slightly sped-up because the cinema forgot to put it back to normal after fast-forwading through the previews.
It was about how you'd expect. Chipmunky...

[BlackSheep]

I stopped watching the TV show The Cape after two episodes because of this problem. They just flung concepts and characters at the audience and didn't take enough time to nurture the plot and characters into something I could care about. It seemed like they just wanted to get to the part where he uses his cape.

[Mauther]

Stephen King does this with his resolutions. He takes his sweet time getting there, but the climax and denouement take about a page and a half.

Jack Campbell's "Lost Fleet" series is also pretty fast paced. Its still a good read, but its lightning quick, especially when compared with similiar fare like the Honor Harrington books.

[Mewtarthio]

I saw The Social Network slightly sped-up because the cinema forgot to put it back to normal after fast-forwading through the previews.
It was about how you'd expect. Chipmunky...

But infinitely more entertaining, yes? :smallsmile:

[VanBuren]

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the film anyway, felt far, far too fast. I only knew what was happening because I read the book.

Blame the director for that one. They were going to do two of them but he insisted it would only take one.

[Ravens_cry]

All the HP movies are like that. There's a ton of plot holes and missing explanations.
You are probably right, but that film, I never saw any after that, really stood out to me more than the previous ones.

Blame the director for that one. They were going to do two of them but he insisted it would only take one.
Too bad, I enjoyed Goblet of Fire, the book anyway.

[Lord Seth]

Blame the director for that one. They were going to do two of them but he insisted it would only take one.He was right, though. All they really needed was 10-15 more minutes and they would've been able to fix up most of the issues.