I've been thinking about Hunter X Hunter a lot and I saw a review of it where the reviewer states that Hunter X Hunter has a really slow start. And, as much as I disagree with that, it did get me thinking. What should a series use to draw you in? And how long should it take?
For this, I'm going to be speaking in general terms because every series is different and everybody has different trial periods. While I will use specific examples to highlight certain points, this is intended to be more of a guideline than an actual set of instructions. Ultimately what your series needs and what is best for it is something you'll have to decide for yourself. I'm simply going to be stating my observations based on what I know, who I interact with, and the opinions that I hear around me.
So, to answer the second question that I presented, I'll get to the first in a while, but for now the answer is as quickly as possible. Everybody is different. I myself have a "3 episode" try on every anime and TV show that I watch. I do this because I'm aware that not every series has their strengths and weaknesses well balanced throughout the entire episode lineup and I know that an amazing show can have a slow start and a bad show can have a really strong start. However, I also know someone in my personal life who will only watch a series if it is instantly amazing. That said, he's not quite consistent on that.
The show in particular I'm going to be referring to for this particular comparison will be the first non-anime cartoon that I will ever talk about on this blog and that is Rick & Morty. This friend of mine stated that he will only watch a series if it is instantly amazing when I said I give everything a 3 episode try. However, before I stated that, I told him that I thought the first episode of Rick & Morty was below par in comparison to the rest of the show, which he conceded. So I'm wondering if he just didn't catch on, if he just had a brain blip and forgot what we were talking about or if he simultaneously thinks that the first episode of that show was amazing and not that good.
In terms of my opinion of that show, the first episode was a bit of a slog. I didn't like the characters all that much, the scene where Morty lies on the ground with his legs broken lasted too long for my taste, and the establishment of the girl Morty is attracted to, while quite brisk, was really cringe-worthy to me. That said, I did watch the entire episode because I wanted to see what the fuss was about, and I genuinely liked the scenery.
Then episode 2 came along and it grabbed me then. Why it couldn't grab me earlier I'm not sure why but I'm glad I persevered because the rest of the series is just a delight.
Something that's similar in a way that is actual anime is Fate/Zero. Fate/Zero is a prequel to Fate/Stay Night and is what got me hooked into the series proper. However, the first two episodes are pretty hard to sit through. In particular, the first episode has way too much nothing going on for how much it's trying to establish, with the summoning of the servants being really the only thing that was worth seeing to me. And the second episode, while it finished establishing the major players that couldn't be fit into the first episode, it still didn't grab me all that much because there was no fighting, no strategy, no plotting, no nothing that I'd heard prior were the series' strengths.
Then episode 3 came along and the series shot off like a matchbox car that just discovered light-speed travel. If you don't get that simile, watch South Park. Episode 3 was the first episode that got my eyes glued to the screen and got me binge watching the entire series because, holy shit, this stuff was good.
Something that's similar that's newer in terms of animated stuff and older in terms of actual source material, One Punch Man was another anime that didn't quite get me the first episode. It almost got me with Vaccine Man and his over-the-top introduction that led to his One Shot Death, which I knew was coming. But other than that, it didn't really do much for me. It did well to establish Saitama as an overpowered badass who can't enjoy the thrill of danger anymore, that much was pretty apparent, as was the focus on really powerful bosses that have like no health or durability. That stuff was well established for what it was but I wasn't invested.
Then I saw the second episode, which is also the episode where we formally meet Genos and, like Fate/Zero before it, it just shot off.
That said, while these two shows did have some boring and cringe-worthy initial episodes respectively, they are by no means the worst offenders.
The worst I've ever seen in terms of start-up time has to be YuYu Hakusho. I might talk about Stein's;Gate once I get around to watching it but, from what I've heard, it has a 7 episode start up time. And while 7 episodes is a long time to get good, I think YuYu Hakusho has it beat with 22. YuYu Hakusho doesn't get good until the Dark Tournament but I would argue that Rescue Yukina is at least important to read up on because it's the catalyst for the Dark Tournament.
Hunter X Hunter by contrast, introduced 3 of the 4 primary players of the arc within the first episode, established two of their motivations, got the third one out of the way a couple episodes later and, in that time, introduced our fourth major player as well.
If you think about it, this may be down to the characters. In YuYu Hakusho, Yusuke and Kuwabara weren't all that interesting or motivated until the Dark Tournament where they're fighting for their lives but, Kurapika had some pretty interesting motivations and, even though the manga has tapped all it's going to of Gon and Killua, Kurapika is still interesting to go back to. At the very least, Hunter X Hunter isn't really as bad of a start as YuYu Hakusho, even if some people aren't interested in the first set of episodes.
As for the draw of the show, what should get you to watch it, there's a number of answers to that question and you're not allowed to get too many of them wrong when executing your series.
One way to draw people in is to use brand recognition. Fate/Zero benefited from this as the prequel to the already established Fate/Stay Night, coupled with a famous writer and director by the name of Gen Urobuchi, most famous for his work on Madoka Magicka, which I've heard is quite good but I still haven't seen. He also did Psycho-Pass, take from that what you will.
Another series that uses brand recognition that much fewer people like is Dragon Ball Super, and the currently famous mangaka who is now writing and directing the show, Akira Toriyama. However, there is a very stark difference in the nature of these two shows that makes Fate/Zero a success, both commercially and at what it sets out to do, while DB Super is, not bad, but very underwhelming by comparison.
Now, everybody has talked to death about the animation in DB Super and how it's effectively garbage. However, I want to make it a point to not do that outside this disclaimer for two reasons. Reason number 1, every instance of bad animation anyone cites either comes from one of two episodes and are in stark contrast to the rest of the show or is compared to a scene from a previous movie which, let's be honest, not a fair comparison. The other reason I don't want to talk about animation is because I'm comparing Dragon Ball Super to Fate/Zero and, while Super doesn't really hold a candle to Fate/Zero, really almost nothing does outside of Ufotable's other works, and arguably Red Line. So instead I want to talk about other things that Fate/Zero does well and not as well, and what DB Super does well or not as well in comparison to each other.
One major thing that Fate/Zero gets right in terms of brand recognition is being able to see what transpired before the events of Fate/Stay Night so that readers of the Visual Novel have answers to questions about characters involved in the setup. Fate/Zero does have characters from the visual novel, such as Artoria Pendragon, Gilgamesh, Kirei Kotomine and Rin Tohsaka. However, for the most part, the cast is entirely separate from Fate/Stay Night, with the only crucial character appearing in Fate/Zero that's not in Fate/Stay Night but is consistently referenced is Kiritsugu Emiya.
Kiritsugu Emiya in Fate/Stay Night is five-years dead and is the reason Shirou Emiya, the star of Fate/Stay Night, wants to be a hero. In Fate/Zero, a full ten years earlier, Kiritsugu is the star and the juxtaposition of these two series goes to show Kiritsugu's very different idea of heroism from Shirou's and why Kiritsugu didn't want Shirou to go down that path. Kiritsugu wanted to save the world just like Shirou does. However, Kiritsugu is a realist while Shirou is an idealist, and this illustrates the differences in their growth.
Kiritsugu grew up as a mercenary with his adoptive mother. Kiritsugu wanted to help people but his upbringing as a mercenary caused him to understand that a single person cannot save the world. This, right here, is his entire motivation for hunting the Holy Grail and participating in the Grail War. Namely that he, as a single man, cannot bring about world peace but the Holy Grail, an omnipotent wish granting device, potentially could. This meant that if he acquired the holy grail by any means necessary, he could have his wish, even if it meant that he would be known as All the World's Evil. At least, that was the theory.
Shirou, by contrast, had a more idealistic view of heroism, where a hero makes people's lives better with their own self-sacrifice. What Shirou doesn't really understand, at least outside Unlimited Blade Works, is that a single person can only sacrifice so much of themselves before there's nothing left. This often makes Shirou seem dimwitted or suicidal because he takes helping people and self-sacrifice so seriously that he doesn't take his own life into account before making a decision.
Dragon Ball Super, by contrast, is not a prequel or featuring a mostly new cast. All of your favorite characters return, including but not limited to Goku, Vegeta, Gohan, Piccolo, Frieza, Future Trunks, Vegito, and Majin Buu. All these characters that you love come back to grace your screen. Not all at once, mind you, Goku, Vegeta, Gohan, Piccolo, and Majin Buu are all here at the beginning, and everybody who saw Resurrection F knew that Frieza was going to come back. However, the Goku Black arc brought back Future Trunks and Vegito as characters that we never thought we'd see again or even together outside the video games.
However, one problem I've seen hurled at the series recently is that the characters don't behave the way they're supposed to. Ignoring Vegito, who is really not around all that long, and Gohan, who seems to be going fairly the same way he did in GT, a lot of people are looking at Goku and thinking he's too much of a not-serious character who takes fighting impossible odds as if it's not a big deal. Or, to put it another way, Goku fights but he's unassertive and nonchalant about the whole thing.
Some people have described Dragon Ball Super as Dr. Slump pretending to be Dragon Ball, which is not an insult, necessarily, but it does go to illustrate a drastic tone shift, which was not entirely unexpected. For those of you who don't know Dr. Slump was a comedy gag manga that was out before Dragon Ball. Dragon Ball became more serious at around the Z parts, where every villain was such a threat that it had to be taken seriously but, even before that, King Piccolo was pretty menacing, even if Mercenary Tao, the Red Ribbon Army, and Emperor Pilaf really weren't.
However, those who saw the pre-release interviews for Resurrection F may not be entirely surprised by this because, during the production of that film, Akira Toriyama stated that he wanted to be more lighthearted and comedic in his future works related to Dragon Ball. At the time, everyone thought it would be in relation to Resurrection F, which it kind of was but Dragon Ball Super seems to be going all in on that, which is not really what everyone wanted.
Sure some people enjoy it, and others still will tolerate it but many were disappointed by the tone shift because they wanted less Pilaf Saga and more Perfect Cell or Frieza.
That being said, though, I'm not certain one direction is necessarily better than the other. Fate/Zero has some lighthearted moments in the beginning with Kiritsugu and Illya but it was never going to stay that way, if the brand didn't make that clear, the writer did. I'm confident that Gen Urobuchi will never write a slice of life or a comedy and that's fine because, as far as super serious works go, he's very good at what he does.
Akira Toriyama, however, was always much more in the middle with Dragon Ball. Sure Dragon Ball had a lot of serious moments but, for the most part, you can clearly see that Dragon Ball will never be as serious as Fate/Zero and Toriyama never intended for it to be.
One anime that's really weird in terms of its hook is Berserk, the original anime. While you can argue the merits of the first episode as much as you want, the first episode is the beginning of an arc in the manga that is completely abandoned in favor of an origin story in literally the very next episode. Because of that, many people who want a clear idea of what to expect should begin at Episode 2, which is a plan that is pretty much unanimous among all fans of Berserk who get new people to watch it nowadays.
Ultimately, what you want to do is figure out who you're making your series for. Fate/Zero is obviously made for fans of the Fate franchise, and Dragon Ball Super caters to one particular type of Dragon Ball fan, but if you're making something new you want to figure out, who are you appealing to?
This is something that the Devil May Cry anime completely botched. Many are likely already aware of the Devil May Cry video games and, at the time this anime was made, DMC4 was still in production but, hear me out. Fans of Devil May Cry are fans of 2 things: the stylish action, and Dante. The Devil May Cry anime doesn't show enough of Dante for Dante's character to be the focus, so you would think the focus would be on action sequences. However, those are poorly animated and not present enough for it to be an action anime. This is something that I'm absolutely positive had nothing to do with the games' creators because, if it did, more of the budget would've gone into action sequences and showing off how cool Dante is.
I don't think the Devil May Cry anime is necessarily a cash grab, it's too good looking and well produced for that to be the case. But I do think that the creators of the show were just doing a job that they wanted to get done.
So, if you want the draw to be Action sequences, focus on making the fights accomplish as much as possible with the run-time you're given. If you want to do tragedy, or anything else, take your run-time into account. Hunter X Hunter, YuYu Hakusho, Dragon Ball, Fairy Tale, and the former big 3 can afford to have run-times exceeding 100 episodes but, more likely than not, your run-time is going to look a lot more like 52 at most, and that's assuming your producers have enough faith in it that they will publish something that long.
So those are the key things to take into account: find your target demographic, hook them in as much as possible, and stay within your allotted time. That's all for now. Thanks for reading.
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