Kirya Jin and Yoshino Soma from the Bount Bleach arc.

Filler is generally defined as an anime episode or arc that does not contribute to the plot and/or not originally a part of the manga storyline. Logically speaking, from that definition then filler shouldn't exist, right?

To be honest, nobody truly knows if fillers should exist; nevertheless many fans obviously have problems with fillers.

One of these problems is often known as the butterfly effect. In laymen terms the butterfly effect means, when you change one thing about something then everything else will change because of that one thing. For example, Bleach aired an arc about the bount that was not originally apart of the manga plot but reference it countless times throughout the anime, thus it became cannon. After they made this arc, they held back about referencing other filler arcs in Bleach which might have been due to this influence.

Another troubling side of filler lies with the episode or arc itself because it does not add anything to the overall storyline. Of course that is what you should be expecting when you watch filler. Moreover, the viewer should have expected the episode from Naruto where the entire episode was purely on trying to find out kakashi's face was just filler. Sure it was funny, but is it really necessary to have a whole episode be about this and waste everyone’s time?

Since everything is true so far, then why do we have filler in the first place? A number of reasons come to mind, friend.

In particular, it’s all in the matter of culture differences. The Japanese have school year-round while most of the west doesn't. Therefore, it makes sense that some of their shows are aired year-round. That is also why anime episodes are aired on Japanese times because again they are made in Japan. Quite obvious yet many times people tend to forget this important fact.

Curious, why would you have filler episodes when the manga is not caught up? The easy answer is the anime company is trying to milk everything they can from it. Plus the longer it runs, the more people will talk about it even if it is bad publicly. And once again, generally the main market for anime has always been Japan rather than any other country unless the anime was geared towards foreigners. Often enough that is usually not the case.

There is just one thing you have to keep in mind, filler is here to stay. Nothing will change that fact unless the Japanese go with a different model of presently anime to their fans. True many fans will argue about not wanting filler but will you stop watching it if it is not year-round?

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