Don’t let it confuse you.
Summary:
- Three episodes of Ishura have been aired.
- A number of fans find its storytelling confusing.
- Ishura has a lot of characters, and each episode is dedicated to some of them.
Ishura started airing on January 3, and it’s already managed to frustrate some of its viewers with only three episodes released. Only great anime are capable of that!
But jokes aside, what is the issue with Ishura? And why are there so many disappointed fans?
Too many character
The main question seems to be “Who is the main protagonist?”. To cut it short: there isn’t one. And this what’s causing all the confusion among fans for a couple of reasons.
Each of the three aired episodes focuses on various characters, and each has its own story. That’s why it often feels like you’re not watching the same anime anymore, and this might be confusing. The timeline only adds to the confusion.
On top of that, there aren’t just 4-5 characters to keep track of. Ishura has dozens of them, and it tries very hard to introduce new ones with each episode and even give you a glimpse of what they’re like.
This is not an easy task, considering the limited screen time the characters have. Fans joke that they have to start taking notes about each character in the series to have a proper structure of who is who.
Is it good or bad?
This narrative strategy has divided the fandom into two teams: one is enjoying it and is glad that all the characters’ stories are told, and others are frustrated by this, don’t fully understand everything and are worried about the future impact of such a narration.
Fans like to compare Ishura to Game of Thrones where there wasn’t one main protagonist, either. But Game of Thrones introduced most of the characters at once, and one episode included different stories, not just one. Some fans think that would be better for Ishura, too.
We can’t forget that Game of Thrones episodes were an hour long, while Ishura has only 20-something minutes, though. So it would be difficult to follow the Game of Thrones storytelling strategy.
Ishura is just non-linear, so you shouldn’t expect its story to be a straight line. However, all of these introduced champions are meant to fight each other one day, so there will be a point where their stories come together in one. And let’s hope that it will get less confusing then.