It Gets Better Later

[Hagi]

Depends on the work. If it's a book or a movie, I agree, but if we're talking about something like a long-running manga series that's possibly published over years (or decades) it's possible the artist just got better, or found their voice.

Also there are many manga that start out as a different genre. Both Katekyo hitman Reborn! and Rosario to Vampire started as something else (humor and harem) but turned into battle-manga.

I personally liked Reborn! best when it was humor, but a lot of people consider it becoming good when it became a genre they liked. (And humor is subjective anyway)

And of course the creative team can change if it's a tv-series or something.

This might apply to books singular, but not to a wider series of work. Just because someone's early stuff isn't that great doesn't mean they won't learn and improve; the Dresden Files is one of my favourite series, and the first couple of books are enjoyable-but-not-great. The writing really picks up after that though.

Discworld is another good example. The first handful of books are crappy standard-fantasy-parody stuff for the most part, but as the series gets older the writing becomes sublime. Of course, then the alzheimers hits and it turns to trash, which makes me a sad panda. Point stands though! A great many TV series I've enjoyed have begun pretty badly - the first season of Buffy is pretty crap - but improve pretty quickly once the creators find their feet.

I'd say that this would make those later works good, but taken as a whole the entire series still wouldn't be that great by simple virtue that there's many series which are great from start to finish.

Also, it's still entirely possible to enjoy mediocre things. However, to me, for something to qualify as genuinely good or even great I expect a minimum of quality to be maintained across the entire work. If at any point I'm struggling through, only going on by the vague promise that 'it gets better later' and not by any virtue of the work itself then that work no longer qualifies as good, let alone great.

I'm not talking about slow spots or rough patches where the work still shows promise in characters, dialogue or storyline. I'm talking about works where literally the only reason you continue to watch/read/view them is on the promise that it 'gets better later', you're not watching/reading/viewing them because of any quality of the work itself.

I've read plenty of books that start of as slow as can be and show no signs of speeding up, but still show promise of good characters and display good dialogue. I'll continue to read such books because good characters interest me and good dialogue captivates me. What I won't continue to read is a book that shows no signs of having any interesting characters, no signs of any decent dialogue or anything else to capture my attention purely on the promise that it 'gets better later'.

 

[Username Redacted]

I'm actually worried about Eureka 7 now because it's on my watch list, still will risk it though. I would say finish the series, since you watched 43 out of 50. Seven episodes is what? around three hours, give or take, if you power watch it.

I can't in good conscience recommend the series. And yes, you're correct, I, after ~20 hours invested into watching the series, decided that I had something better to do with the ~3 hours it would have taken to finish the series. I got tired of being strung along by a story that wasn't anywhere near as deep and complex as it thought it was. It has also been a while since I packed it up on that series so it's definitely too late to go back and pick up right where I left off without re-watching much of what I already watched and that isn't happening.

 

[Soundwave]

Panty shots? Really!? I've seen this show dozens of times, and I can't for the life of me remember a single one of them. The only time the show presents you with a blatant echhi scene is when Misato hangs over the diner table and the camera gives a full view of her ass. But that's really it.

It's like all they talk about in the little bumpers between episodes. They call it "fan service" and have little clips of each one from the next episode . Though I imagine if I'd watch the series "dozens" of times, I'd skip the bumpers too.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I would say it's not a point in the thing's favour if someone has to use that qualifier to defend it.

 

[Kargathia]

Rule of thumb for movies is that if you're not engaged 15 minutes in, you probably won't be.

Games and TV series have their own dynamics - they're much more liable to start strong, and outstay their welcome. Soooo many games I abandoned halfway in, and never could be arsed to resume.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Panty shots? Really!? I've seen this show dozens of times, and I can't for the life of me remember a single one of them. The only time the show presents you with a blatant echhi scene is when Misato hangs over the diner table and the camera gives a full view of her ass. But that's really it.

It's like all they talk about in the little bumpers between episodes. They call it "fan service" and have little clips of each one from the next episode . Though I imagine if I'd watch the series "dozens" of times, I'd skip the bumpers too.

You mean the little preview clips after the credits? Cause I really can't say I noticed it there either. I mean, I know the Rebuild movie previews can't shut up about the next installment featuring even more titties, but that's because the Rebuilds are blatant cash-grabs anyway.

 

[Yopaz]

It depends a lot on how boring something is. Sure it might be boring for the first few chapters, but is it boring for me to want to stop? I can read an entire book and find it boring if it's not terribly boring, but there was one book that was so boring I struggled to get past the first 3 pages.

Then there's books that you really want to read just because of what it's about even though reading it is actually quite boring. I did this quite recently. The reading itself was boring, but I learned a lot from the book which I am glad I read it.

 

[dementis]

With shows I usually work on a 5 episode trial, if I'm not hooked by ep 5 then I quit. I don't want to waste 10 hours of my life to reach the good bits.

With games I'll usually allow an hour or so, maybe a level limit if it's an MMO usually 10 or so as it's quite quick to reach.

I'm not working through mounds of crap for a few nuggets of gold.

 

[Keiichi Morisato]

Tales of the Abyss get better later on as well, in the game you are supposed to hate the main character, this makes his character development have more meaning. if he was like Lloyd in Tales of Symphonia, the character growth would mean nothng.

 

[SonicWaffle]

Of course, in your example it'd still be, as you say, a book significantly better than average. But I myself usually find that authors incapable of writing a solid beginning are also incapable of writing refined and purified textual nirvana, it could still happen of course. But I'd say that once a piece of work gets off on a bad start chances are stacked against it and you're probably better off spending your time looking for another piece of work that starts off significantly better.

This might apply to books singular, but not to a wider series of work. Just because someone's early stuff isn't that great doesn't mean they won't learn and improve; the Dresden Files is one of my favourite series, and the first couple of books are enjoyable-but-not-great. The writing really picks up after that though.

Discworld is another good example. The first handful of books are crappy standard-fantasy-parody stuff for the most part, but as the series gets older the writing becomes sublime. Of course, then the alzheimers hits and it turns to trash, which makes me a sad panda. Point stands though! A great many TV series I've enjoyed have begun pretty badly - the first season of Buffy is pretty crap - but improve pretty quickly once the creators find their feet.

the final ep of the first season of buffy is pretty powerful especially with the scene with buffy realising she has to die. showed me how good of an actor sarah michelle geller can be

In other ways, though - characters not yet developed, the grainy camera, the short arc due to a 12-episode season - it really isn't very good. It can all be attributed to the writers, actors and everyone else finding their feet of course, considering how good season two was overall.

It's just the kind of thing that, on re-runs, you kinda have to sit through waiting for the better episodes to start once the producers were certain of a future for the show.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I started watching Evangelion about a month ago, currently halfway through the series (ep 13 of 26) and I haven't even began to appreciate it the way I thought I would. I can't think of anything slightly quotable or memorable, the angel design is crappy as hell (none surpassed the very first angel), and the characters haven't even began to grow on me (I swear half the cast could drop dead next episode and I wouldn't break a sweat. I don't HATE them, I just don't care for them). And there's soooooo much fucking ecchi, good god, all those panty shots and imbecile stabs at sexualization... how did this get so much attention over your average anime? And yet I keep hearing how awesome it is, and how dark and incredibly complex it gets "near the end". Color me unimpressed. In my experience regarding 26-episode anime, if you're not hooked by ep 5, you won't get hooked at all.

Panty shots? Really!? I've seen this show dozens of times, and I can't for the life of me remember a single one of them. The only time the show presents you with a blatant echhi scene is when Misato hangs over the diner table and the camera gives a full view of her ass. But that's really it.

The camera always lingers over Misato. Rei has that towel scene with Shinji. And I'm pretty sure Asuka gets a panty shot every other episode. Generally speaking though, there's plenty of fanservice. I'd post a bunch of images about it but I'm down to my 4th warning so...

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I started watching Evangelion about a month ago, currently halfway through the series (ep 13 of 26) and I haven't even began to appreciate it the way I thought I would. I can't think of anything slightly quotable or memorable, the angel design is crappy as hell (none surpassed the very first angel), and the characters haven't even began to grow on me (I swear half the cast could drop dead next episode and I wouldn't break a sweat. I don't HATE them, I just don't care for them). And there's soooooo much fucking ecchi, good god, all those panty shots and imbecile stabs at sexualization... how did this get so much attention over your average anime? And yet I keep hearing how awesome it is, and how dark and incredibly complex it gets "near the end". Color me unimpressed. In my experience regarding 26-episode anime, if you're not hooked by ep 5, you won't get hooked at all.

Panty shots? Really!? I've seen this show dozens of times, and I can't for the life of me remember a single one of them. The only time the show presents you with a blatant echhi scene is when Misato hangs over the diner table and the camera gives a full view of her ass. But that's really it.

The camera always lingers over Misato. Rei has that towel scene with Shinji. And I'm pretty sure Asuka gets a panty shot every other episode. Generally speaking though, there's plenty of fanservice. I'd post a bunch of images about it but I'm down to my 4th warning so...

 

[BarkBarker]

It is the creators job to keep me interested from start to finish, if anything states it "gets better later", then they better have set up the entire universe and characters on the first 2 or maybe 3 episodes for shows or the first 2-3 hours of games, I need my meat of the substance or I'm leaving, if it IS better at the later parts, someone should write them a letter about the importance of pacing and keeping interest, because you can sell your product for shit unless you get someone else to suggest a improvement of quality over time, even a subversion to a series like Madoka Magica was to a degree INTERESTING at the start, a bait and switch only works if the bait is catching.

 

[carpathic]

In my experience, "it gets better later" usually is true. This seems to be especially prevalent with animes, though sometimes the opposite is true (Psycho Pass is a good example). As for Eureka Seven... well, whoever told you it gets better is a liar. That anime sucks balls

I've almost always found the exact opposite.

Dexter: First two seasons brilliant. After that: less stellar
The remade Battlestar Gallactica: First season amazing. Second season and on: Hey everyone is a cylon
Mass Effect 1: By FAR the best game in the series. Mass Effect 2: Still stellar (hehe, star joke). ME3 - Star Child 'nuff said
Joan of Arcadia: First few episodes: Thoughtful, interesting deep. The rest.....
X-Files: Creature of the week: AWESOME! Odd conspiracy theories...meh
Elder Scrolls stands out as one that has stayed consistently good

I find that a lot of the time the writers just start looking for drama, or have to raise the stakes to make things bigger, faster and "more". Often with little good reason to do so.

 

[Thaluikhain]

It seems shows are doing this on purpose nowdays. Sure, it's rubbish so far, but we'll hint at something which might or might not be explained over the series, and might or might not be interesting. Grrrr...

I miss the old days when each episode was worth watching in of itself, and the arc story wouldn't stop the story to remind you its still there.

 

[Best of the 3]

I find things usually get better with time because you get invested in them and so look upon whatever it is more favourably. Eureka Seven was a weird one. I remember it being dragged out but I remember liking it at the end. I wish it was more condensed. I had the same thing with Kurokami (I think) but I didn't like the end of that as much.

One thing that I say doesn't get better with time is School Days. I've tried 3-4 times to like that show now. Every time I feel like crap the more I watch it. I can't seem to feel disgusted at the main character so much that I just can't watch it. I don't think it gets better or worse, but it makes me feel like crap the more I watch.

 

[Fappy]

In my experience, "it gets better later" usually is true. This seems to be especially prevalent with animes, though sometimes the opposite is true (Psycho Pass is a good example). As for Eureka Seven... well, whoever told you it gets better is a liar. That anime sucks balls

I've almost always found the exact opposite.

Dexter: First two seasons brilliant. After that: less stellar
The remade Battlestar Gallactica: First season amazing. Second season and on: Hey everyone is a cylon
Mass Effect 1: By FAR the best game in the series. Mass Effect 2: Still stellar (hehe, star joke). ME3 - Star Child 'nuff said
Joan of Arcadia: First few episodes: Thoughtful, interesting deep. The rest.....
X-Files: Creature of the week: AWESOME! Odd conspiracy theories...meh
Elder Scrolls stands out as one that has stayed consistently good

I find that a lot of the time the writers just start looking for drama, or have to raise the stakes to make things bigger, faster and "more". Often with little good reason to do so.

I think it has a lot to do with how planned out the story is. In many instances where "it gets better later" applies, the story's been planned out from start to finish. Many of the stories you mentioned are installment-based (multiple seasons of television show for example) in which a lot of what happens later in the story wasn't thought out before it was created. As a story gets dragged out due to popular demand the writers run out of steam and start pulling stuff out of their ass. In the case of Dexter for example, I think it's just a case of a premise lasting longer than it logically should.

 

[SonicWaffle]

I'd say that this would make those later works good, but taken as a whole the entire series still wouldn't be that great by simple virtue that there's many series which are great from start to finish.

Also, it's still entirely possible to enjoy mediocre things. However, to me, for something to qualify as genuinely good or even great I expect a minimum of quality to be maintained across the entire work. If at any point I'm struggling through, only going on by the vague promise that 'it gets better later' and not by any virtue of the work itself then that work no longer qualifies as good, let alone great.

I disagree, but then maybe I'm just more forgiving. Does one mediocre episode downgrade an entire body of work? Being consistently quality is hard; everyone raves about Breaking Bad, and while I really enjoyed the first three(?) episodes, I stalled on the one where they went to a birthday party and had cringe-inducing conversation with his old business partner. And that show is supposed to be slow-burn. On balance though, from what I've seen so far, I'd still call it a great show and one day I fully intend to go back and keep watching. That one episode hasn't really dragged down the overall quality, as a bad patch can be easily forgotten if the quality of the rest is high enough.

I'm not talking about slow spots or rough patches where the work still shows promise in characters, dialogue or storyline. I'm talking about works where literally the only reason you continue to watch/read/view them is on the promise that it 'gets better later', you're not watching/reading/viewing them because of any quality of the work itself.

To be honest, I can't think of any time I've genuinely experienced that. I often find myself playing through a dull game (*cough* Witcher Dishonoured ACIII*cough*) not because I'm told it'll be better later, but because I'm loathe to have wasted the money I spent on it. Arguably, I suppose that's more masochistic that continuing with something in the hopes of it improving :-/

 

[Silverbeard]

On the subject of anime, I am reminded of the original Guyver series.
The first handful of episodes were piss-dribblingly awful. But the individual episodes and the show as a whole gets much better from number 5 onwards- so much so that I was almost certain that they had brought in a new production team to make it so.

My own video game equivalent has to be Spec Ops: The line. The early bits are rather bland and tedious. Two hours later, however...

 

[John Heater]

Homestuck would be an example of "It gets better later" most definitely. It genuinely does, and the first part of it isn't the most engaging (But its alright) As for video games, this would apply mainly to RPGs and RTS games, due to the needed buildup for their plots, and some story driven games definitely suffer from it. Anime DEFINITELY suffers this like 99% of the time, i find Anime nearly unwatchable myself...I would say keep at it, first impressions are some of the things most books/games/shows/comics can never seem to get right, unfortunately.. So its harder to make decisions on what you want to keep at.