Why do anime "spell everything out" for the audience?

taco_truck_tom

Even for anime that target adult audiences (and thus may have higher level thinking/awareness than perhaps younger audiences), whenever there's a significant plot development, the anime characters spend 3-5 minutes explaining how they discovered the true identity of whoever, how they found out where the real whatever is, or, how they executed their plan so flawlessly.. Why do they always do this? Do anime creators suspect the audience can't...

Originally asked by Charles on Stack Exchange (movies) (CC BY-SA 4.0).

uphilltech

Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:

This happens more often in series than one-shot movies, and is common in more than just anime. Basically, it's to help the episode stand better on its own for viewers who are just joining the show, or missed an episode or two earlier, or who have simply forgotten a plot point from an episode two months earlier. This over-explaining becomes even more noticeable when watching several episodes back-to-back of a series that was originally aired with days or weeks in between episodes.

Full answer by LazyGadfly: https://movies.stackexchange.com/a/84564 (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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