The power of deception.. blessing? or curse?

Do you remember in the first Transformers movie, when Sam Witwicky went out looking for his first car, and ended up with this average 1976 Camaro? If so then you surely remember when it self-pimped up to the 2009 model. Sometimes it feels to me that anime does the same thing. On numerous occassions I have found myself dropping an anime, only to find myself picking it up again after a certain period of time and only then realizing that hey… I LOVE this show!

While there can be numerous reasons for that, I believe that the main reason is simply because of a ‘Deceiving Start’. This is the case where you start watching a show and by episode 3 or 5 you feel you have just wasted way too much of your life on it, that it can not possibly get any better and so you simply move on to the next show that peaks your interest.

I call it ‘deceiving’ for lack of a better word, saying ‘A Slow Start’ or ‘A Boring Start’ would imply that the plot progression is slow (or boring) which is not always the case. In Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann for instance, although it is currently one of my personal favourites, it was once on my ‘dropped’ list due to its… somewhat unappealing start. True, during its course to becoming one of the most beautifully complex, and well planned anime of this decade, it was seen that the intro played vital part in its overall storyline. That didn’t change the fact though, that for someone who is just starting, it can be a turnoff. As Cely_Belly said in the case of Shining Hearts – Shiawase no Pan:

The story derives from a visual novel, but the best thing about the anime is the bread :3  So if you like pan, there is a good chance that you might like Shining Hearts.  Unfortunately, it is not enough to keep me interested.  ~Dropped.

While I have no idea if Shiawase no Pan will round up to being a good show, it definitely could do with a greater effort in producing more of a captivating start. Other popular shows that tend to do this are Katekyo Hitman Reborn, Hunter x Hunter and Darker than Black.

To be fair, there are shows that are just plain horrible. They start bad and they never get better. How then does one tell the difference between a show that simply has a deceiving start and one that is just plain bad? Well to be honest you can’t, most you can do is bear though it as much as you can. If it really has no good end in sight, you leave… or I suppose you could just look for a review on one of the many anime blogs out there, although chances are there may be a few spoilers involved. (Tip, look for *spoiler free* tags or something of the sort).

To conclude, just as the experienced reader does not judge a book by its cover, one should not judge an anime by the first 3 episodes >.<