I hadn’t heard of Rule #7 before. Basically its the rule where you don’t watch a series until its complete. Well, being a relative newcomer to the whole anime thing, I’ve been watching a bunch of well recommended completed programs. The idea of watching anime more or less like I would a regular TV series is novel to me. But obviously it changes how one relates to the program.

In some ways the noob/backward looking viewer is rather like somebody reading a novel. By and large doing the whole thing at once would require a marathon session – it would be unnatural. There may be chapters, but they’re taken gradually. The thing is that chapters are convenient tools for the reader – episodes are designed to be viewed as discrete regimented entities.

I don’t want to make the obligation for the writer to tell stories incrementally into a criticism of the form, just as TV show writers utilise advert breaks to create tension and to lend structure, episode divisions can be harnessed by decent writers. This can be done by simply dividing the story into sections, providing each one offers enough to the viewer to be worthwhile. A common ploy is to have independently watchable episodes containing clues towards a series finale.

Some of the most memorable moments in Cowboy Bebop come from its two mini-arcs devoted to resolving Spike’s backstory, which act as season finale’s. These episodes don’t really follow on from the preceding ones, the incremental elements in Bebop are the characters and the setting. There’s a shift (also seen in, for example, the sections on Faye’s past) from genre games and fun capers which happen to feature our characters to a fully fledged drama. That shift is an effective one, those episodes would not be as good without the context. That kind of trick essentially relies on building things up over time for the viewer, providing a sense of the “normal” – a weekly dose of fun which acts as the basis for a later piece of storytelling.

And yet I, like many, watched the whole thing in quick order. Because it’s old. I didn’t go for a marathon, I took it at my own pace, but I can’t help but feel that I was still experiencing the show in a somewhat different way. In addition, owning the show, or having it widely available online, further alters the experience – turning those episodes of Bebop “at play” into a possession, a toy as much as a lived experience. Shows built into a weekly schedule develop a different relationship with the viewer, in the case of Bebop I kind of wish I could have experienced that.

In contrast I can’t imagine watching Darker Than Black as individual episodes rather than a series of mini-arcs, and some shows (Bleach/Naruto especially) don’t really have enough guaranteed dramatic content per episode to lend appropriate week to week tension all of the time.

Of course the entire anime watching experience of a Western viewer is fundamentally altered by the fact that we are viewing from a different perspective, with different frames of reference. Indeed we don’t know how much we don’t understand, we’re experiencing something different (better? worse?) just by virtue of our cultural origins.

Add to this the English-speaking online anime-viewing culture. Oddly, something like Rule #7 (however few adhere to it) actually brings us further apart from the original viewing context. The reason I find this interesting is that I don’t think that all shows adapt to episodic divisions equally – not every show can be adapted as easily as a Cowboy Bebop. I can only assume (not knowing its etymology) that Rule #7 comes from people going through what I’ve been doing recently – consuming the (ill-defined) anime canon in chunks – and enjoying that way of experiencing it.

Well obviously with any work in any medium external factors will affect our perceptions. However I think that, if we judge a series as a whole, the episodic divide is a really big deal in terms of structure in the narrative. And in anime there’s clearly a divide between the past and present – between series we can watch like TV shows as they come out, and series we experience in the way we would novels.

Rule #7 then asks the viewer to take on the present the same way they did the past. In fact I’d be inclined to say that the sense of ownership inherent in being able to access a series online, when combined with this focus on the series as an artistic whole, rather than a weekly entertainment, is a force contributing to the formation of a canon. I’d compare it to the impact of widely distributed sheet music, or recording, on music. Claiming a medium within the popular domain rather than have it exist as part of the personal cultural history of a TV viewer. Its judging everything by a common standard, its seeing the series as a complete entity rather than something wrapped into weekly routines.

I have yet to hear of Rule #n, which I posit calls for viewing a series as close as possible to the way it was intended – week to week (maybe even a course in cultural research on Japan before each episode!). But the existence of Rule #7 tells us something about how the way we view those great “canonical” series affects us, and about how we can actively manage our relationship with anime. Perhaps there needs to be a division, between anime best watched like TV, and anime best acquired and watched at our leisure. Anime which sucessfully exploits the constraints of the TV schedule, and anime best liberated from it. But its vital to emphasise that the former sort isn’t inferior – that constraints can be a good thing.