I LOVE TIMESKIPS
An essential element of storytelling is using the passage of time well. Timeskips, for those who don’t know is a literary device that advances the timeline of the story ex number of years that usually show older versions of the protagonists.
The reason I love timeskips so much is for, the simple of idea of growth. You ride with these characters for a lengthy amount of episodes and then you get to see a dramatic change and it makes it feel like as if you’ve grown up with them.
The most perfect example is in NARUTO. When the first series started to air on Cartoon Network and when I first read it in Shonen Jump, I was roughly the same age as Naruto.
When the timeskip happened in the next series I was also around his age which made it literally feel like I was growing up with them.
Shinpachi on the Latest GINTAMA volume cover
But timeskips is a heavy discussion topic for today because I’ve been watching GINTAMA and they just had a timeskip. A weak and supporting character named Shinpachi just received massive growth due to the time skip.
He was always super serious, couldn’t really hold his own in a fight, and was far from cool. But since the first time he was shown in the timeskip he possessed the same poise as the series’ main protagonist (Gintoki). His growth is making me more invested in the story because it is always amazing to see the weak go to strong.
From Left to Right: Shinpachi, Gintoki, Kagura
If you’re a storyteller yourself think about the usage of timeskips, when done correctly it is one of the biggest payoffs in storytelling.
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