I enjoy a lot of Nonlinear storytelling. You may have gotten the impression I'm biased against it because how many of my recommended watch orders are more chronological then the release order, but that’s not always the case, and I’m not talking about franchises here. When a single movie or episode of a series is being told nonlinearly I am inclined to trust the writers that this is an effective way to tell their story.
But I have noticed from watching YouTube Video Essays that some stories told nonlinearly will get a lot of credit simply for that, there is a desire to always praise nonlinear storytelling as braver and more “creative”. But sometimes the reason events are not being shown in chronological order is a matter of convenience rather than artistry.
Take for example the Anime titled Baccano!
I love Baccano! It's fun and cool and a lot of the time it’s fun and cool because of how nonlinear it is. But it isn’t that Deep, it didn’t need to be Deep, I wasn’t watching it expecting depth but a fun Anime homage to classic Gangster films and Pulp. If any Nariato saga has something Deep to say it’s Durarara!!
It’s nonlinear the way it is because like many Light Novel adaptations they decided to make a full cour out of 4 novels. However Baccano! as a LN series follows a mostly different core cast each volume, how they connect to each is very broad worldbuilding. These three different stories were not written to parallel each other Cloud Atlas style. They are edited together only to prevent this 13 episode show from feeling like its narrative stops and starts again repeatedly.
But some Baccano! Video Essays don’t know that and insist on pretending this timeline jumping has some deep artistic symbolism like it does in Once Upon A Time in America, it doesn’t.
What is somewhat deep in Baccano! doesn't exist because of Nonlinearity, they exist within how that specific story is told.
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