Around 2013-2014 I had gotten into a little something many of us are now familiar with known as seasonal anime watching. For the uninitiated, anime in Japan tends to air in different seasons in cours, or 12-13 episode chunks, and as such a single season of an anime can air in the span of three months. There tend to be so many that you can find yourself watching up to 30 shows and thus be watching 30 episodes every week…if you’re a crazy person. The average person does not have that kind of time and thus many of us choose to determine what is good either from recommendation from the majority of the community or from friends who you trust to have a good opinion on what would be good. However, for the crazier people, many of us just choose to watch the first episode of everything and from there determine what is and what isn’t worth wasting our time on. Hi, I’m crazier people. 

Now, I don’t know a lot about you, but I don’t have a lot of time or patience. It’s hard enough for me to get through a 24 episode show these days without some kind of proper investment, let alone multiple 13-episode ones, so I tended to let the show give me a couple episodes before determining if I liked it enough to keep watching. That’s why you’ll notice that my dropped list on my MAL is pretty large. Most of those entries are just seasonals that I decided weren’t worth my time. So I grew this expectation that a show needs to be good and that no show that doesn’t hook me early on is going to be worth my time, and this spread into shows that I began to watch based on recommendation. OreShura was boring, dropped. Aggretsuko wasn’t that funny, dropped. I don’t like the way BanG Dream’s animation looks, dropped. Dropped, dropped, dropped, dropped, dropped. I have limited time, and the only surefire way that I can watch something that I can get my time out of in the most efficient way is to be selective and find a method for me to determine whether or not I should give this show my time…

You know, time seems to come up a lot when discussing the idea that you can judge a show on episode one. Whenever you have this argument, that topic of time always finds its way there, oftentimes from certain close-minded people as the objective way to determine the worth one has. If it’s not grabbing your attention, then it’s just wasting your time. If it’s not immediately good from the second you begin, then don’t waste your time on it. However, here’s something I find rather interesting regarding this mindset towards judging things on episode one: people begin to use what is really an argument for the allocation of one’s time as a way to determine if something is good from its core. Look no further than Digi-nee’s series on judging anime in episode one, where she argues that by looking at the structure of the first episode, you can determine where a show is going to go throughout its runtime because there is no way a show can change that drastically. I often see people running to this even outside of anime, such as those who get into manga and claim that you can figure out if a shounen action series is going to be good because they all “follow a formula” as if there is some kind of arbitrary set of rules all shounen action series follow. It’s this weird way of the viewer to become more elevated than the media they consume, almost as if they’re better than it, and then use some kind of predictive law to see the end result of a work and where it’s headed. I’m not saying you can’t do such a thing and look to similar threads to get a kind of hint as to where the show could vaguely go, but I want to propose an idea that I think more people should be open to:

Episode one is not indicative of the quality of the show and is, more than anything, nothing but a first impression.

This should come off as rather obvious, but really think about it for a second. What can you realistically determine from a first episode that can be a surefire way of figuring out what the show is going to be like by the end? You can figure out the premise, but as shows like Gintama will show you, that premise is not entirely present in the first episode. You can possibly figure out the tone, but ask any Madoka Magica fan how that went considering the massive amount of discussion surrounding the twist in episode 3. You can figure out the structure of the series and the little directing quirks, but ask anyone the differences between Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann Episode 1 versus Episode 4 and even episode 17. Even within Digi’s videos on judging things by episode one, she mentions Steins;Gate as an example of a show you would be able to figure out is good by episode one, but ask anyone who has actually watched Steins;Gate and they’ll tell you that the first 9 episodes are easily the most boring part of the show. Same thing goes for, in my opinion, the first 12 episodes of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, with episode one especially being heavily criticized by members of the community to be a poor representation of the rest of the show’s material. There really is no surefire way to determine if a show is going to be good in that first episode and all you will ever be aware of is that first impression that you’ve been given.

Stories tend to evolve as time goes on, especially for long-form storytelling. What we see in most first episodes or chapters is simply the groundwork from where the story takes off, but even disregarding “quality”, the very core of what the show is tends to grow as authors become more accustomed to what the story is about, and looking at any series in Weekly Shonen Jump, we can see this to be the case. 

Looking at Naruto from its first episode that adapts the whole of the first chapter of the titular manga, the following information is all we have access to:

Naruto is an annoying, loud mouthed problem child without any parents, friends or relatives desperate for attention yet also very incompetent at his own ninja abilities. He goes to ninja school and the story is obviously just going to be him training to be the greatest ninja ever while everyone doubts him. By this point, we are only introduced to Naruto, Iruka, Hiruzen, and some guy named Mizuki who gets beaten by shadow clones. Based off of this first episode only, we are only aware of these characters, two of which are barely in the rest of the series and one that is ultimately inconsequential. On top of that, you can determine that it’s merely a story of a boy getting power as he finds other people who believe in him. This is really the only things you can determine from this first episode and we haven’t even been introduced to characters that are fundamental to Naruto’s development and his relationships that include and are not limited to: Kakashi, Hinata, Shikamaru, Neji, Sakura, Kabuto, Tsunade, Jiraiya, Obito, Minato, Orochimaru, Pain and Sasuke. If you were to make judgements about Naruto based off of episode or chapter 1 of the series, you would miss all of these characters that are vastly important to the series at large. On top of this, you would also be missing the elements of the series that expand upon themes of war, bonds, challenging one’s ideals through understanding the perspectives of others, the resolve it takes to uphold those ideals and so on, as well as Naruto himself developing from an annoying attention seeker to a determined and compassionate kid to the matured yet slightly airheaded young man he is by the end.

You can use the argument of the “shounen formula,” but such a thing is really just a shorthand for “these tropes happen to be shared across all of these pieces of media and thus it must be scientifically proven that they all are the same.” However, a simple rundown through any of them will lead you to realize the inherent differences that lie between. Naruto, Boku no Hero Academia, Kimetsu no Yaiba, One Piece, Dragonball and Bleach have fundamental aspects to each one that render the idea of this formula null. The aforementioned Naruto is a series that stars the titular loud-mouthed immature ninja that goes throughout the story challenging his own established beliefs and creating bonds with others in a world torn by war. Dragonball stars the battle-loving Goku who doesn’t really care to be recognized and only wants to fight stronger people because he finds it fun, going throughout the story fighting for that pursuit of happiness. Kimetsu no Yaiba is a series about the kind Kamado Tanjiro as he faces the greatest tragedy he could ever face yet still challenging this cruel world with a heart filled with compassion towards those who feel ashamed of their actions. Boku no Hero Academia is a series about what it means to be a hero, starring a neurotic hero otaku who is destined to succeed the greatest hero in the world. One Piece is a story about the determined and single-minded Monkey D. Luffy wanting to go on an adventure to become the Pirate King so he can be the freest in a world dominated by an oppressive government. So, even just based off of the premise, all of these are vastly different, and as each series evolves, they all change beyond the simple idea they were at the beginning. Naruto becomes a commentary on war and the bonds that are destroyed, Dragonball goes from a comedic version of Journey to the West and ends with defeating a galactic threat to the universe with a giant laser ball made with the hope of all of Earth, even Boku no Hero Academia changed from a simple underdog story to a series that shows the moral dilemma of a society built on heroes. Just purely based on these differences, even the end results of these series are hard to determine, especially considering how predictions and theories have all been shown to be false or inaccurate in some way or another.

This isn’t just for long-running shounen, mind you, as you can find this massive shift from the introduction to the end of the series with mostly any story of this nature. Urusawa Naoki’s Monster follows Dr. Tenma Kenzou as he is trying to work up the ladder as a neurosurgeon in Germany. He’s engaged to the director’s daughter and has everything going for him until he decides to stop showing favoritism towards patients and chooses to save a child, causing him to lose his position. So if I told you that and then said the story ended in a twisted mindgame to stop Hitler 2 Electric Boogaloo using children’s stories and brainwashed orphans, you would have to either already be spoiled on the material or be a psychic, because none of that is indicative of the first chapter’s material. Hell, some of what I said doesn’t even happen in chapter one but in later chapters. Another perfect example of this is One Punch Man, as it starts off with its focus on comedy and satire of typical superhero and action tropes while only later on adding in the emotional conflict and really setting a tone for itself. Its latest arc in the Murata adaptation of the manga is one huge long-running arc, which is nothing like any of the past material and focuses less on gags and entirely on characters outside of Saitama and the various moral conflicts each of them face. In fact, jokes have arguably been far less prominent since the end of Saitama V Boros. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann has a flash forward that has Simon and the gang almost as a rebel army continuing to fight against the universe as “all of the stars are enemies,” which is heavily contrasted as the series goes on when the supposed flash forwards isn’t even what happens by the end of the series, which would make sense considering Imaishi and the team in Gainax got a better feel for what the story was as he watched it evolve when they were making it. Just factually speaking, the beginning of the story is not indicative of what the story becomes because those stories will naturally evolve. 

But beyond just premise and the actual content of the story alone, we have the argument of quality, with many believing that stories can’t get much better from episode one because that’s the starting point. An easy debunk for this argument is just pointing out that Part 2 of Jojo is better than Part 1 by a wide margin, but that would start a war in my comments section, so I’m instead going to talk about, once again, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. By the nature of the way and when FMAB was adapted, being only three years after the end of the original adaptation’s run, it would be logical to assume that the choice to have the first episode begin with action was made in order to drastically differentiate itself from the predecessor. FMA 2003 begins with a two-parter with a much slower and more ominous tone while FMAB begins with a giant action setpiece. Both contain non-canon material, though in FMAB’s case it’s entirely non-canon, but FMAB’s first episode is very clearly not as good as the rest of the show. I would even argue that it does a very poor job of being anything other than an announcement that these characters are back in a new adaptation because it’s extremely confusing to anyone who’s not aware of what FMA is, yet it chooses to introduce what is functionally the entire principle cast of the show in 24 minutes and then moves on as if it’s normal. But if you’re put off by this first episode, you’ll be missing all of the amazing material that’s offered in later episodes, in which the pacing is more deliberate and the show spends more time breaking down concepts and fleshing out the material. This is the case for many stories that feel the need to get introductions out of the way as soon as possible, such as Fire Force and Black Clover, but because of people only seeing the first impression, they’re unaware of how good the story becomes almost less than 20 chapters in, let alone the 50 episodes everyone memes about with Gintama.

In fact, it’s far more prominent for a show to start off with a good first episode and then fall flat on its face in later episodes. Charlotte is a show that starts off with a simple slice of life show about kids with superpowers, but by the end becomes so convoluted that it feels as though the last episode had an entire season’s worth of material packed into it. Bokuben AKA We Never Learn is receiving harsh criticism for its recent chapters with how it’s handling the end of the manga. And of course, we have Death Note with its last third that most in the community tend to dislike. It’s just impossible to tell where a story is going to go if all you have is a first impression and nothing but the base of the story.

This is why I find it so weird that people have this obsession with determining if a show is good on episode one. If the real reason is because of your time, is it not wiser to just ask around to get a better understanding of the material and what the story is going for beforehand so as to not let a bad first impression sour your view of the show? What I tend to do myself is either keep watching and wait to see where it goes if I have a solid recommendation or even will just drop it and then give the show a second chance later on. It’s how I came to love stories like the iDOLM@STER, Naruto, One Piece and so on and why I don’t tend to view my droplist as a purgatory but rather just something I didn’t feel like watching in the moment and am always willing to come back to. I will never be aware of what a show is like until I experience all of it.

I feel like seasonal anime watching or even just the internet in general has caused this warped perception of wanting to get that thing as soon as possible. It was much easier before when watching something because you would have to invest time and pick carefully if you were going to sink watch time into it, but with streaming services it’s made the medium more accessible but also made it easier for people to decide to just drop shows. There’s this glorification of the first episode to the point that even shows with only ONE EPISODE are having their material judged in its entirety and there being entire discussions based on ONE EPISODE that is not and will never be indicative of the later material.

I don’t have a problem with people saying that they don’t want to waste time watching something if they’re just watching for fun. It’s understandable. Time is valuable and you want to spend it where you can best get the most effectiveness out of it. That’s just the way things are. But if you are going to judge a series or make sweeping claims regarding its quality, then do more than watch episode one, because honestly, as you’ll find out from people who have experienced the thing you’re attempting to criticize in its entirety, your limited perspective of what is functionally only a twelfth of the material does not stack up to knowledge of 100%. Especially for those who wish to make reviews or analysis of an entire show, why does your word mean more to me if you haven’t even seen the whole thing? Why would I trust your word if someone else watched it all and said that what you’re saying is wrong. Even if it’s for the sake of credibility, it could serve to make your own points concrete. But even then, maybe there’s something you’re not understanding because the first impression has painted your view of the show in a direction the show was not attempting to go in the first place. It happened to me with Re:Zero until I had someone explain it to me. So maybe if you’re going to make statements that judge the work as a whole, do the work and actually figure out if what you’re saying is correct.