Happy Holidays!!

Have you ever found yourself  stuck between and rock and a hard place wondering…. ‘should I drop this show’? Well as you can see from my anime list, while I always try to stick with it to the end sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. There are many reasons why viewers decide to stop watching particular shows but I’ve compiled them all into 5 main areas.

1. Gotten too repetitive
2. Plot is dragging on and gets boring
3. It was never interesting to begin with
4. Not your cup of tea.
5. You woke up one morning to have found that you had grown old, your back hurts, you’ve spent all your cash on bingo, you’ve  grown a massive beard as well as a beer belly and suddenly the show seems too ‘kiddy’ for your mature taste.

While #5 is a bit of a stretch lets dive into the others and see the best course of action in any of those aforementioned situations.

Número uno, Gotten too repetitive. This is by far the most common factor in the downfall of what began as good shows, it’s extremely common in most multi-season series and to be honest it’s sort of comparable to being friendzoned… ‘The Pit of No Return’. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, InuYasha, Pokemon and Rosario + Vampire are some of the most popular culprits of this. But should you drop it? Definitely not. Its true that at the peak of its ‘repetitiveness’ you may find yourself bashing your head against your monitor but more often that not the producers catch themselves and rectify the problem. A rule of thumb is that ‘if the show is long, it can’t be that bad’. Why? Because bad shows don’t make money, therefore they get cancelled pretty quickly, so stick with it, don’t damage your forehead too badly and have some patience… it’ll get better. (unless its pokemon… but is that even anime?)

#2 The plot thinks its an energizer battery and goes on and on and on…. Episode 12 they come across a bridge, episode 14 they take one step across the bridge, eps 15 – 19… scenery, episode 20.. we finally get across. This, while isn’t very common, stands as what drives me up the wall the most. Shows like Naruto and One Piece, aka the big boys are blatantly guilty of this. But unlike the shows prone to fault #1 they are not so easily cancelled. More than half the time what happens is that we have a really, really good show that generates alot of hype and then the inevitable happens. The anime catches up to the Manga, and as everyone knows, you can’t turn 20 pages of manga into 23 minutes of anime. The anime producers in turn not wanting to loose revenue by putting the show on hold begin utilizing ‘time fillers’ which include but are not limited to:

– Extremely long intros (ever noticed how by the time the one piece into song and recap is over 1/4 of the allocated time has already passed?)
– Fillers, story-lines most often made by the producers and not the mangaka where nothing relevant happens and just wastes time (Bleach? anyone)
– Boring episodes, i’m sure you have seen episodes of Naruto where they show nature shots for excessive amounts of time, or flashbacks minutes long for no real reason but to kill time.

But should you drop those shows? Welllll…. yes, you should. Yes, they are popular, yes they captivated you in the past but, at that point its simply not worth it to continue, waiting weeks for something that should be done in one episode, nah. It just doesn’t sit right with me.

On to #3, It was never interesting to begin with. This one is pretty challenging because you can never know if the show just starts off slow and turns in to some kickass anime (Tengen Toppa Gurren Laghann) or is just plain boring all the way through (Amagami SS Plus). In all honesty, besides looking for reviews (which may contain spoilers and ruin it for you) there is no way of really knowing. The best method to approach this would be to reach in your pocket, find a coin… and flip.

Not your cup of tea, this one is an easy ‘DO NOT WATCH’, (of course assuming you have enough experience to know what you do and do not like). For me, Junjou Romantica was a complete setoff *shivers just thinking of it*, and Eiken.. dear god *dies*. If you are not familiar with those titles, by all means, look em up, who knows, you may like em. But really, if you aren’t a mecha guy you most likely aren’t gonna like Neon Genesis Evangelion and thats just how it is I guess. Just because a friend is all crazy about a show doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be good for you

To just touch on number 5…. Instead of ranting on about spontaneous aging i’ll simply suggest you read my previous post Maturity Matters.

Hoped this helped you out somewhat and I know i’m a bit late but  Merry Christmas!!!