Forum - View topicAnime's 3-Episode Rule: Is It Still Valid?
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2316 Location: Online Terminal |
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My version of the 3-episode rule comes from judged sports, where you usually throw out high and low judges and put the remaining together to get the actual score. Hence, if you assume one episode was the show's best, and another was a show's worst, how good is the stuff in the middle?
Of course, nowadays I follow a 0-episode rule because if something's on streaming, I don't perceive a "penalty" for not watching like I do with linear television, so I ultimately find something with a higher payoff to do. |
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 2911 |
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article is missing the forest for the trees, and it was so close to be there.
the rule is made for a few reasons. you need one episode to introduce the characters, another to introduce the world and another to introduce the plot, timewise, they don't have to necessarily be split that way , much less in that order, the ars section is almost there. if your show is shallow enough to to do all that in a single episode, that's a bad sign. let's take magirevo, it looks like a generic Isekai and in general , bad Isekai will not do any world building or worse character building and will only introduce the plot/gimmick. but magirevonhas to explain who the characters are , the royals and the nobles, how is the world structured, an Isekai where only no les can use magic and hint at the political kachinationsand the putting everything together and the two main events, the kidnapping and new job. of course sometimes the source material, not being anime centric will make it very hard to follow that rule, you get mishoku, whoae plot only kicks after episode 8, or any Shounen property, really. liberties have to be taken with the plot ( restructuring), to make it fit the 3 episode rule. but it works well enough for a majority of shows. and even source heavy shows have to do something in 3 episodes, back to mushoku, it already did so world and character in the first 3 episodes, and the real plot, live a life you won't regret, was already there. now the bit about the ending is just bad, that has nothing to do with the 3 episode rule, a show can become bad or good at any given moment, death note, darling, etc... the longer a show runs over the intended plot, the more likely it is to turn out different and change from it's initial premise. one thing that was not mentioned is that the 3 episode rule is also a measure of quality, it's "very easy" to make a great 1st episode, putting together your best staff and the best plot elements of the show, in Isekai this is where the decent ones feel fresh because it's all about the gimmick, giving it 3 episodes mean the series has time to get it's realpace. will the production be a mess? usually the budget runs out, so to speak, in episode 3, and the animation quality there is how the rest of the show will be. also, if the Isekai/ romantic comedy is going to have a real plot or will it be just generic hijinks? i mentioned those two genres because those are the ones where that most commonly happens. and yes, really bad shows and shows not to your taste will fail right in the first episode. |
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FilthyCasual
Posts: 2412 |
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If something is vapid fluff for half its runtime, is it really worth watching? No, obviously. However, sometimes it takes stories a bit to hit their stride. That's why the three episode rule is useful. It also aligns nicely with adaptation practices for light novels, which usually have their first volumes covered in two to four episodes. The article errs in identifying the purpose of the three episode rule: it's not to determine what the story is about, but to determine whether the story is worth your time. How well does the isekai web novel adaptation execute its gimmick? What level of characterization and plotting does the succinctly synopsized original anime display? Did the comedy need another character to make the interactions click just so? Answering these questions is what watching three episodes is for.
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AQuin1904
Posts: 270 |
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The "overarching plot" of Cowboy Bebop is six episodes out of 26, and the series is often lauded for that ratio. I think it's safe to say that someone who doesn't like the episodic content that the first three episodes showcase probably does not like Cowboy Bebop. As for the three episodes, it seems like a more valid approach than ever, if anything. Three episodes is now a quarter of most shows' total runtime (a greater percentage than Cowboy Bebop's entire "plot"), and if someone doesn't want to watch more after that, then whatever they're watching probably isn't for them. Shows that suddenly transform into something else or horribly botched endings have always been weird outliers that require word of mouth to find or avoid. (Personally, I watch whatever seems interesting at the time and continue until I don't feel motivated to watch more, and I don't see why anyone would do anything else unless they're being paid or watching with a group/for a class.) |
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meiam
Posts: 3450 |
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I never cared for it because any decent director should know that you only have one first impression and that you need to show your best stuff first and makes sure the audience understand what they're getting into. If a director isn't competent enough to understand that, then they're not competent enough to make a good anime, so why bother with 2 more episodes of mediocrity? Does anyone actually watch the first 3 episodes of all the low budget/low talent isekai sludge we've been getting, where it's extremely clear that they won't deviate from the formula by the first 5 seconds?
Everyone always bring up Madoka, but did no one watch the first episode? It's pretty obvious that the show isn't going to be a standard magical girl show, how could you watch the first witch sequence and think "yup, most standard magical show ever, nothing weird/creepy/unsettling here"? Almost every show with a big twist either reveal its hand in the first episode or at least makes it clear that things aren't quite what they seem. Cowboy Bebop is also a strange example to bring up, most of the show is episodic, there's like 4 episodes that aren't, the first episode clearly lays that down. Darling in the franx was obviously going to be terrible by its first episode alone, wonder egg had a ton of production issue so its not clear that what they eventually ended with was what they intended at first. |
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Joker#941490
Posts: 266 |
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anyone who uses this rule are dumb and hasty people usually since anime with who have a plot or a story can improve later on and those who can't wait doesn't know what is patience so they can't judge something fairly at all.
Last edited by Joker#941490 on Wed Feb 01, 2023 3:24 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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AQuin1904
Posts: 270 |
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This is almost certainly true. Interviews with the writer (in the blu-ray booklets) make it sound like he came up with some of the late-series twists and swerved the show in a new direction halfway through production. |
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b-dragon
Posts: 500 |
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The three episode rule strikes me as an incredibly flawed necessity for many viewers. I have a limited amount of time each week for anime and will generally narrow my viewing list to six or seven. Thats still a few too many for me though- so seeing what still hold interest after 2-3 episodes provides a way to trim the list to where I'd like it. But in doing so I accept that occasionally I'm going to pick the wrong ones, and may want to revisit a series I have dropped once it is completed.
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SHD
Posts: 1759 |
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It was never valid, IMO. It's something that may help if you're new to anime, but once you have some experience and know your likes and dislikes it's pointless to cling to it, let alone expect people to follow it.
Last edited by SHD on Wed Feb 01, 2023 10:55 am; edited 1 time in total |
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njprogfan
 Collector Extraordinaire Posts: 1232 Location: A River Named Toms |
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I dropped two this season using this rule, (4 episodes to be exact): The Tale of Outcasts and To Your Eternity Season 2. The first because it is so generic and predictable and the second because the current arc is dddrrraaaggging. I'm watching so many this season (now 18), if there's talk about either picking up as the shows progress I might get back to them, but for now...it works for me, personally. There hasn't been too many series that I stuck with towards the end and wished I didn't, (maybe Promised Neverland Season 2 and Trapped in a Dating Sim I can think of recently).
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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The three-episode rule saved Hikari no Ou ("The Fire Hunter") for me. The first episode was intriguing; the second was a directorial nightmare. They seem back on track with episode three.
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Florete
Posts: 384 |
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These days I'm pretty good at identifying what I'm likely to enjoy from synopsis alone, so I can use a 0-episode rule. But otherwise, I find a 1-episode rule is all you need 98% of the time. Most shows, anime or otherwise, don't change much in quality after the first episode. In fact, they're more likely to get worse than better over time. A 1-episode rule will find a lot of success and save you a lot of time.
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Stretch2424
 Posts: 168 |
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The only way to be certain that a show isn't any good is to watch it to the end. But that takes too long, and you would have to watch a lot of trash just to occasionally find a diamond in the rough. So, we compromise and watch a certain number of episodes until we are confident that we have gotten a mostly accurate impression of a show's overall quality. We will make some mistakes, but that's better than wasting all that time. How many episodes we watch probably depends on how much free time we have. A person for whom time is extremely precious might not be able to afford watching any more than one episode before making the call. I typically abandon around 1/3 of new series after one (or less) episodes, another 1/3 at some point further along, and watch about 1/3 to completion. And some shows I don't even watch the first episode, mostly if they are sequels to series that I didn't watch S1 of.
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Hoppy800
 Posts: 3331 |
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Not for modern isekai, you can pretty much tell what to avoid pretty easily these days. Also most Idolmaster anime fall into a 0 episode rule but for the opposite reasons as they tend are worth the watch and the disasters are few and far between, Love Live is even better with this, as it has no disasters and all of the anime are worth watching.
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Numberseal
Posts: 6 |
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The rule really comes from the old time of DVDs, where you would buy new shows you thought looked good on the shelf of video stores, and each DVD had 3 episodes on it and that is were the rule comes from, since you needed to watch one DVD to see if you liked it or not.
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