There is no such thing as dropping an anime forever. When I use the term ‘dropped’ that does not mean that’s the last I’ll see of that anime in my life. Dropping a show means that I don’t have the enthusiasm to watch this show currently and at a later date I’ll return to that anime. This later date may be the time when I’ve had bzzt cheh~ Present Day. Present Time. Hahahaha bzzt che bzzzzt with nothing other than a dvd player and a ‘Lucky Star’ boxset, but I will one day return and give the anime another shot. With this in mind, combined with the fact that I’ve passed the 100 anime mark on my MAL account for anime I’ve dropped, I’ve decided that I’m going to take a look back at all those series I’ve dropped, recognise why I dropped them and evaluate when I should give them another go.
Serial Experiments Lain
Dropped After: 6 episodes
Why I dropped it: Because it fails as entertainment. Now I do love the occasional mindfuck every once in a while. However before you start to get abstract with your imagery, there needs to be some grounding in realism. There should be something believable about the whole thing, which admittedly Lain did not fail at. However, the grounded in realism parts were dull. It was never entertainment and there was never any sense of entertainment on show. I could see what they were trying to do, but I couldn’t summon up any enthusiasm to decipher what was going on. You need to open my interest before you start to screw with it. Foreplay for the mind before you fuck it. I should probably stop with the metaphors now
Rebirth Chances: Above average. It would be ranked at ‘High’ but Princess Tutu has made me much more wary of stepping into something whose appeal lies mainly in abstractness than entertainment, especially something I’ve tried before and already know fails on an entertainment level. Still, I would like to have another pop at it and see if I can work up the enthusiasm to tackle what the hell was going on in Lain.
Shangri-La
Dropped After: 13 episodes
Why I dropped it: At the end of 2008 I made a wish. Just one wish. A wish that Gonzo, creators of Gankutsuou, Last Exile and Full Metal Panic, would recover from its current slump. For Gonzo’s latest project to be a success. It wasn’t. While it had some fans, the majority opinion was that Shangri-La sucked horribly. It was mildly entertaining, but really the show was a total mess. Uninteresting characters and general stupidity killed that show.
Rebirth Chances: Below average. It wasn’t that bad. Some of the plot twists were pretty entertaining, if a bit silly, and since when has that ever put me off a series before. Also I have no idea whether the latter episodes were any good. I remember were people complaining about plot holes, but they did for the entire show anyway. What’s really putting me off is the possibility of being burned by late 00’s Gonzo yet again. You used to be such a great studio 
Soul Eater
Dropped After: 24 episodes
Why I dropped it: It looked pretty. I’ll give it that. But otherwise Soul Eater fell perfectly into the absolute shounen category. Now I can enjoy shounen and have done so many a time in the past. But Soul Eater gets that perfect blend of stupidity and drawing out fights that I really don’t like. The characters were dumb and sprouted awful stock lines. But it wasn’t the stupidity of the characters that caused me to drop the show. It was that painfully dull drawn-out fight that started around episode 20. You know the one. The one where they spend the time explaining their attacks and very little time doing any real attacking. Most of this drawn-out shounen series have them.
Rebirth Chances: Average. Despite my whinging, it wasn’t all that bad of a show. I liked Soul and those scenes with the dancing imp where he was wearing that black pinstriped suit. There was something very classy about Soul Eater when it came to scenes like that. I just wish the class spread to the character personalities. I’ve heard the ending isn’t anything to write home about but I suppose it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to give Soul Eater another shot.
Letter Bee
Dropped After: 13 episodes
Why I dropped it: Ah yes, Letter Bee. After your highly impressive pilot episode, aired at a Jump Festa thingy, I made the leap of faith and decided to blog the show. The show just drowned itself in unsubtle cheese. Sometimes it hit the mark, but that was only ever when it was focusing on the main story. Considering I dropped the show right when it had begun a massive trawl through fillers, what I missed out on was probably more ridiculous cheese.
Rebirth Chances: Average. There’s a new season coming this autumn so clearly they couldn’t have continue with the fillers the whole way through. However the chances that the show sets forth on its great plot journey from here on in seems unlikely. It seemed pretty set on having stupid side stories. If someone can tell me where I can pick it up again and back to the non-fillers again, then maybe I’d be convinced to give it another shot.
WARNING
WARNING
IF YOU ARE AN OLDFAG AND/OR MECHAFAG THEN PROCEED WITH CAUTION BEYOND THIS POINT. PLEASE REMEMBER THAT EVERYTHING WRITTEN IN THIS POST IS MY TOTALLY BIASED VIEWS
Shin Mazinger Z
Dropped After: 1 episode
Why I dropped it: Before going into this, I was told by many people that this would be glorious. Rebirth of an old legend, return of the great director Go Nagai. What I actually got was nothing short of extraordinary. There was a giant robot, followed without warning by a guy with a blue face. Then came an army of robotic horses taking on zombie samurai. Then a volcano erupted and a robot with boobs was fighting something. Then someones dad died and everything turned very serious all over again. Then the screen set fire and a guy with no head appeared. Events happened with no connection to one another, no purpose and generally the biggest load of nonsense I have ever seen in my life. The first episode Lucky Star may have hit me on a different level of terrible but at face value, the first episode of Shin Mazinger Z is the worst I have ever seen in my entire life.
Rebirth Chances: Average. So I heard what the deal was with that first episode afterwards. Apparently they decided to throw a bunch of scenes, at random, from the rest of the series into that first episode to give you a taste of what was to come. Why they thought this was a good idea I shall never know, and I seriously question the competence of said director who decided that. What turned me off most of all, though, was the oldfags reactions to people who didn’t like the series. Did you not know the history of Mazinger Z!?! The glory of Go Nagai!?! How dare you disgrace his name with your noobishness and your insolence! Thanks but neither you lot nor this Mazinger Z remake are making me remotely interested in checking out those super robot series from the 70’s.
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40 Comments
Ehh I know nothing about Mazinger Z but Panda-Z was fucking awesome.
“first episode of Shin Mazinger Z is the worst I have ever seen in my entire life.”
Agreed. The most vile and putrid pile of shit, mecha genre could ever poop out. Almost as bad and intolerably talentless as Gurenn-Lagann.
Watch almost any Getter show made after 95′ instead of this Z garbage.
BTW, what was so bad about Lucky Star’s 1st ep ? It was _exactly_ the same as all the rest of them, very enjoyable.
I only watched one episode of Lucky Star. If the rest are the same then it’s the worst anime of all time by a bizzilion miles
Eh~
The Soul Eater Manga was good. You already seen the best parts of the anime. (It get’s worse.)
I liked Soul Eater, it wasn’t the best, but it was entertaining, but then again I like to watch shounen.
I used to think I liked shounen, but recently I’ve had to reassess that idea. Fairy Tail, Soul Eater, Letter Bee and Nurarara have left me pretty burned out on shounen
I used to like fairy tail and air gear. Then they both hit chpter 200 with no serious thematic or fundamental change, so i lost mai faith in shounen. The only things that i read in shonen nao is kekkaishi cuz the idea of boxes of death is cool. Kimi no Iru Machi sounds fun too and i hear it is shounen. Yeah most shounen are bound to the action and fanservice over and over law. Shojo is more liberal and although I am embarrassed to say this: Shojo is 10 fold better and the romances in shojo are a lot more enjoyable to read than fairy tail anyday. Although i liked shaman king alot.….
I don’t think any of these are worth much second consideration. If I were really pressed to pick one, “required viewing” if you will, I’d say Lain, except I stopped at the same point you did. It has the one-two punch of drearily boring story and insufferably pretentious presentation. I can grind through one or the other but not both at once.
I’d have to check back through these posts, but I don’t think I’ve ever dropped an anime for being pretentious. Being pretentious is slightly linked to being ambitious but not reaching those ambitions, which I probably prefer to something with low aims and reaching them. Mind you, that comparison is a bit of a stretch.
Wait, I have thought of an anie I dropped for being pretentious. Coming up next post~
Hurrrr, Soul Eater. Once upon a time, I liked Soul Eater. I got a collector’s pin and poster from NYAF way back. But I never finished it.. If you finish, I’ll finish <3
Read the manga. The anime ending is stupid.
Soul Eater is, like, two years old now. Yikes, I remember looking at the website for that before it aired. I’m on my way, one baby step at a time, to becoming an oldfag
Now that One Manga is down, I’m not going to. Besides, I buy all my manga.
I do too o___o
Do you not have the Soul Eater Manga in America or England? (I’m a german.)
It’s out in America, but I’m not commited enough to the story to buy it XD I have other series that are more important to me.. like FMA and Hellsing and Hellgirl and Gurren Lagann and Higurashi~
Go Nagai is the writer of the Mazinger Z manga. The anime’s director is Yasuhiro Imagawa (G Gundam, Giant Robo, etc.).
Anyway, I don’t think you have to like the first episode to enjoy the rest of the series. It has some goofy moments, but the plot is legitimately good, and there are plenty of cool characters. (Though, as a warning, most of the big twists and turns come after the halfway point. The plot isn’t dead/non-existent before then, but it isn’t as exciting, either.)
Lain is a favorite of mine. I can dig the cyberpunk style, mindfuckery and crazy conspiracies. If you don’t like it after six episodes, I’d probably say that you shouldn’t go back to it, but I guess that depends on how long it has been since you first watched the series.
You could say the same about plot twists coming later on about Gankutsuou
Lain I watched…2 years ago? Probably not long enough to go back to it
Your review of Lain is almost word-for-word my review of Kaiba. Even the dropped after six episodes part.
If you didn’t like Soul Eater after 24 episodes, don’t bother watching the rest. As a shonen fan, I wasn’t crazy about the series either.
Mazinger Z is pretty good. I didn’t care much from the robot angle, but the story overall is solid. The first episode was a mess.
Except I adored Kaiba and I’m pretty sure I mentioned to you how much I disliked your review of Kaiba back when it was posted originally. Turned me off your site for the next year or so.
I’d say it’s a toss-up.. if you’re in the mood for mindfuck (which you aren’t, I take it) then I’d say go with Lain. It was something of a coming-of-age rite for computer science geeks of the day to watch Lain and Hackers. All I recall is a lot of annoying scenes of buzzing power lines and being kinda bored until the last episode.
I think you’d probably be better off watching Mazinger Z-hen for the lulz. The first ep turned me off as well, but it turned out that from ep2 on it was actually a pretty solid mecha series with a Shinbo-esque “screw the audience” first episode. I suppose they only expected us oldfags to watch it, so thought alienating the rest of their potential audience was clever?
As for the rest, I’ll second our resident dino sage on Soul Eater being “stuck in first gear”. Annoyed me after a while. All it had was scenery porn and a weird sense of plot and writing. Letter Bee bored me though I liked the central setting and concept, so I decided to read the manga at some point so I could go at my own pace.. still haven’t gotten to it ’cause there’s so much better stuff to check out first.
Ah the powerlines~! I also remember Lain scribbling circles over and over again on a piece of paper. I also remember a wierd cyber human thing standing in her hallway. Aha, now I remember why I dropped it! That weird cyber thing stood in the hall and I was all like ‘woah, I wonder what that thing is…actually I don’t care what it is, this show is boring’.
When I heard what the first episode of Mazinger Z was, along with a lot of other stuff I’ve heard about it, it’s become more and more clear that they really were trying to alienate any potential audiences. And fans of that show complain about the moe crowd >:(
I loved the setting for Letter Bee and how it felt like the animators had too much indigo paint left over from a previous show so just dumped it all on Letter Bee. The plot and characters…not so much
Lain is something I keep meaning to watch, but can never bring myself to start since it seems you really need to be in the mood for it — I will watch it at some stage though!
I didn’t hate Shangri-La, I was just very disappointed in it. The show started well, had loads of interesting ideas and characters, but it just didnt go anywhere and the plot just nosedived in the final quarter in this mess of ‘lolwut?’ Its not the way I want to remember Gonzo.
Soul Eater is fun, and I really liked its style, but I really enjoy shounen anyway so I’m somewhat biased. You’ve probably seen the best of it now as the end was a bit lacklustre.
Haven’t seen Shin Mazinger Z and don’t really plan to any time soon — I like mecha, but I’m not overly fond of the Super Robot genre.
I ended up voting for Letter Bee, because I have a soft spot for the show and am quite looking forward to the sequel. It has to be said that S1 was a very, very mixed bag — some of the filler was awful, but it also had some very touching episodes. It felt like S1 was all about world building and character development — establishing a firm foundation upon which I expect S2 to build the real meat of the plot. Its still an enjoyable series though.
I don’t think I’ve seen all that much of the super mecha genre. I watched Gurren Lagann before I knew of the genre. I suppose Mazinger Z and oldfaggery turned me completely off ever watching any more.
I think I’ll wait for reviews of season 2 of Letter Bee before I jump back into the show. Re-reading my episodics told me that I enjoyed very little of the actual plot-related episodes as well
Shangri-La: I don’t see Gonzo around now, do I? In the end, the series was “okay” through and through. I didn’t find it as horrible as most others did, but it just wasn’t anything to write home about. Finishing it just left me with a sort of feeling of going “that was it?”
Soul Eater: If you’ve gotten that far and you decide that you still don’t like it, then it’s pretty hopeless to think that you’ll get any farther than that.
Letter Bee: I liked the beginning and end of the series, but the middle was just riddled with silly fillers that you could easily skip to get to the plot again (which was around episode 22 — though it sorta tied in with a fairly good/okay filler starting at 21). Overall, the first season ended pretty well with the plot twist that I had hoped Studio Pierrot would have gotten to by episode 16 or so if they hadn’t dawdled and wasted half their episodes.
The original material itself, though, is kinda hard to explain in terms of its quality. Sometimes, it has some wonderful chapters/plot arcs that take full advantage of the characters and imaginative world, but other times it seems to veer off into “sob story of the week” territory. Thankfully, those are fewer and far between and some even end up tying in with the plot. I just hope the second season clears up by learning that being a kid-friendly show doesn’t have to mean you have to put in stupid short stories to “dumb it down” for them. [[Though that doesn’t really make sense, since their 10:55pm timeslot would mean most kids would’ve been asleep, right?]]
I mourn the demise of Gonzo. They were capable of such amazing stuff. God only knows what happened to them in the latter half of the 00’s. I hope whoever was responsible for some of those series they put out never gets a job in anime again and those who made Gankutsuou get a new comfy job at Madhouse or Brains Base.
It felt for me that Letter Bee was aiming to be an episodic series. The ‘fillers’ were what the show was aiming to be in the first place, which is worrying when those episodics were so bad
TOWER OF DRUAGA FTW such a good show. Idk if u don’t like the first episode. Get to episode 5 and if u don’t like bai then.… I no longer believe u are human with asense of humor. OMG 3 PEOPLE USING THE SAME PIcTURE OF THAT_BLONDE_GIRL _FROM_THAT_OBSCURE_BRIDGE_ANIME!!!! kthxbye <3
I’ve finished all of these except Shin Mazinger…though I got through 13 or so episodes of it.
I’m not gonna speak for the shows I didn’t vote for even though I enjoyed them all to certain extents and can understand why someone would drop them.
I voted for Letter Bee mostly on the hope that the 2nd season picks up and carries where s1 left off. At a huge freaking cliffhanger. The world Letter Bee takes place in is what intrigues me most about the show. The fillers weren’t too terrible though their fare generally varied. It is a melancholy show. It’s not terribly entertaining. It’s something you watch to wind down at the end of the day. Even the shonen action bits are very muted and smudged out in the bleary atmosphere. It’s interesting though that the world, while dark and dreary, is not entirely devoid of hope, happiness and light. I see it as a series that has a kind of warmth in the people and characters despite the bleak atmosphere.
That being said the show picks up again around 21 or so. I have high hopes for the 2nd season but I still expect it to create the same mood as it did before. That tone is what keeps me watching.
Letter Bee had an amazing setting. It just didn’t use it properly and spent time being corny and cheesy. There was one episode about ‘The Day of Flicker’ that was amazing, but it didn’t get that right at all for the rest of the series
I watched Soul Eater. It was pretty okay; I enjoy some shonen. Thing I didn’t like about it was that it ignored the parts with the greatest potential, either downplaying them or only remembering them when it absolutely needed to. Ending was exceedingly average with a side of awkward. I think its biggest failing is that Soul, despite being the title character, doesn’t get the character exploration he deserves because he actually seems like he could be really interesting. If you pick it up again, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.
Soul’s character was quite interesting compared to the other generic shounen characters. A bit dissapointed that they didn’t develop on that much, because I quite liked where they were going with his character
I must say that you made a mistake in dropping Letter Bee. It’s a really good anime in my opinion and deserves the right to be watched by you.Smiles.
I liked the power lines!
Unfortunately the ending of Lain wasn’t great enough for me to recommend people slog through when they aren’t having fun. I liked it, but I thought it was really fun, in a messed up way.
I gave a copy of the first disc to someone once thinking I would turn them on to anime … probably turned that person off to anime forever. Even so, I think it was borer-line brilliant. Man, if it didn’t end up with a fairly standard sci-fi resolution, I would be declaring it a top twenty series.
Lain is one of those series that some people love to bits. One of those series that are essential watching simply because there’s a chance that you will absolutely love it
havent seen any of these, though lain is on my “to watch” list, somewhere down there. i really dont have any enthusiasm to watch it though since i find i dont really enjoy shows that try to screw with your mind with weird nonsense, like evangelion. i got through paranoia agent and enjoyed it because of the horror story element, which i really liked back in the day.
kinda interested in the mazinger z whatever it is since i DO enjoy robots and nonsense. that combo i do like.
Ah I like Paranoia Agent myself. The ending was a gloopy mess but some of the earlier episodic tales were great. Shounen Bat scared me
Life’s too short for bad anime. Thanks for the heads-up on what to aviod. Which, in my case, looks like all of them.
Well this is a first. ‘Don’t bother with any of these’ winning the poll. Guess that means I’m picking up nothing, which I suppose goes well with the fact I picked up two from the last post
The lesson as always: People suck.
“return of the great director Go Nagai“
Go Nagai isn’t a director. He’s a manga artist. Now the person responsible for the first episode is actually Yasuhiro Imagawa, the one who directed Shin Mazinger (known for directing the Giant Robo ova which is a critically acclaimed title and this too had the first episode which puts you into the middle of things but not as extreme as Shin Mazinger) and the first episode isn’t “what is to come”. I’d say it’s misleading, because the show is the opposite of what the first episode portrayed. It’s more plot focused than any other Mazinger series and plenty of twists (if you like those). Just give the second episode a try. If you don’t like it, you can drop it, but the episode 1 really isn’t what it says it is. Oh, and best of all, it’s nothing like 70s super robot shows (No monster of the week at all)
You dropped Lain.
We can’t be friends anymore.
J/K, but I did vote for that. A, I think you’ll like it better then Tutu, and so far I’ve had a decent track record about predicting what you think, and B) I want to see what you have to say about Lain and Alice. All negative, but amusing, I’m sure it’d be.
Also, if you watch too much Lain in a row, it does weird things to your brain when you try to go back in the real world.