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Unpopular opinion: watching 4 episodes of an anime before judging it changed how I feel about slow starts
I used to drop shows after the first episode if nothing big happened. Then back in March I made a deal with myself to give every new anime 4 episodes before I quit. I started with a slow slice of life show about a girl learning to cook, and episodes 1 through 3 were honestly boring to me. But episode 4 had a small scene where she messes up a dish for her mom and just sits there quiet, and something clicked. I realized the first 3 episodes were setting up why that tiny moment mattered so much. Now I wonder how many shows I wrote off too fast over the years. Does anyone else have a set number of episodes they give a show, or do you just go with your gut on episode 1?
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thea85714d ago
Waiting 4 episodes sounds nice in theory but it also means sitting through 12 hours of stuff you might hate just to get to one small moment. Some shows really do just start bad and stay bad, and no amount of patience will fix that. Also you could flip it around and say a good show should hook you faster, that's a skill in itself, not something the viewer owes the creator. Saying the 4 episode rule would have saved @william_carter from dropping 50 shows assumes all 50 were secretly gems, but odds are half of them were just boring the whole way through. My gut on episode 1 has been right way more often than it's been wrong, and I'd rather spend that time on something that grabs me early.
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