Up until now, I’ve never really thought about the difference between a “good” or “bad” timeskip, I’ve simply considered a timeskip to be a tool. But with every tool, it is the operator who decides how it’s used. You see, The Promised Neverland made me realize that this concept of course applies to the timeskip tool in writing because holy SHIT the latest episode’s implementation of the idea was absolutely… something. Without saying spoilers, episode four left off on a complete cliffhanger with the heroes in immense peril. Life or death danger type of thing. Then episode five starts off and the group is in a new location, interacting with new characters, in a whole damn new society. For the vast majority of the twenty minute run-time, I was sitting there trying to figure so much shit out. Where are we? How does this new society function? How did the characters learn to blend in to this society? How did they escape last episode’s peril anyway? Who are these newly introduced characters, will they have any importance? And in the midst of being bewildered by those questions, a HUGE reveal is dropped at the end of the episode, I’m talking something that’s been hanging in the air since season one. When the episode concluded I was left dumbfounded. Manga readers have been warning that the season 2 of this anime has been going downhill by cutting content, but this is the first time I’ve personally felt the effects were blatantly obvious from a non-manga reader perspective.

Anime is no stranger to timeskips. Usually this is done in between seasons or after a huge plot point/arc has been concluded so that there’s an excuse for everybody in the show to get new outfits and redesigns. Alternatively it’s also used a lot during training arcs where a character needs to get a lot stronger but they don’t want to subject the audience to watching the MC do 500 push ups a day in real time. Looking from the outside in, it woud appear quite hard to fuck these kinds of timeskips up because their purpose is simply to avoid shit nobody wants to see. Nobody wants to see a character train every day for a year to get stronger in real time, nobody wants to see Sasuke and Naruto going to the local shop to buy new clothes and change their outfits, it’s irrelevant. It’s typically made clear to the audience that it’s going to happen and what general events occurred during it.

See, I don't need to watch this man visit Hot Topic 12 times.

Now when you get into the danger zone, is when you perform the “intentional confusion” timeskip as I call it. This is when a timeskip is done to confuse the audience on purpose. For example, Aki Baki and Kaki are fighting, and finally Baki says “sorry guys, I have to use my sicko mode powers” and in the next scene Baki is dead and the other two are missing. Now you have questions. Who ultimately won the fight? Why did Baki apologize before going sicko mode? Was her sicko mode power killing herself or did the others kill her? Obviously the writer doesn’t need to answer these questions in the very next scene, but they need to be careful because the audiences’ mind is likely going to be focused on trying to figure it out. If you do a big boy timeskip and confuse the watchers, and then before answering even a single question you slap them with a HUGE twist that actually Aki’s brother Saki was the evil chef the whole time, people will probably react by replying “bruh who the FUCK cares, why did Baki go sicko mode?”. In my experience, anime have skirted around this issue by having a confusing timeskip, then shortly afterwards explaining a majority of what happened in the timeskip, then progressing the story and returning to any secret MAJOR events of what happened during the timeskip afterwards.

Dammit I should of known there would be a timeskip, they even put a clock in the opening!

I didn’t even plan to write this article at first because I figured “eh, I sure am confused about this timeskip but maybe they will explain what happened next episode” and then I realized it doesn’t matter. Because they revealed a HUGE event while I was still trying to gather my bearings, I barely even had a reaction. It was just another big mindfuck on top of all the others. Even if they backtrack and start explaining the situation, the impact of that reveal has already been lost to me and probably a good portion of the audience (and definitely the manga readers they’ve BEEN hating on this season’s adaptation). What anime have done timeskips well? Have you ever seen a jarring timeskip like this that fucks up the experience for you? Skip down to the comments below and let us know!