When Did A Series/Artist You Like Find It Groove?

Tanis

The Last Albino
Aug 30, 2010
5,264
0
0
Music/Anime/Cartoon/Movie/Video Game/etc

I'm re-watching Babylon 5 and find myself being kind of felt 'meh' at the first season.
It's not that it's bad, it's just that I didn't think the series felt like it got its groove till SE2 and the start of Shepperd.

DS9:
For some reason I don't think the series really felt like got great until Sisko got his facial hair.
 

Elfgore

Your friendly local nihilist
Legacy
Dec 6, 2010
5,655
24
13
The Rosario+Vampire manga had a really rough start. If I wasn't such a big fan of the anime, I would've dropped it. The first forty chapters are mostly pointless filler until the last few. Then the second season of the manga comes in and just takes the story up to ten. It becomes a dark fantasy manga with tons of brutal action. Each girl actually becomes a character and we learn of their past. We learn that one girl has actually put her life on the line, and I mean literally, to be with the MC.

To Love-Ru kinda hit its grove for me in the second season, Motto To Love-Ru. It realized that a fifteen page manga couldn't make a twenty minute episode. So they kinda changed it to be like Robot Chicken and have several segments for one episode. It worked and I breezed through the twelve episodes. Then Darkness came out and tried at a story and I just lost all interest.
 

Neverhoodian

New member
Apr 2, 2008
3,832
0
0
Star Trek: The Next Generation got off to a rocky start. Some of their early episodes are downright embarrassing ("The Naked Now" springs to mind). It wasn't until season 3 rolled around that the show finally got its footing. It's probably no coincidence that this increase in quality occurred around the same time that Gene Roddenberry stepped down from his role as producer due to ailing health. The general consensus is that his involvement seriously handicapped the show's potential and was the cause for some ugly disputes behind the scenes.

Bringing back Dr. Crusher probably helped too. Ooh la-la. You can keep your vapid Counselor Troi, I'd take a house call from the good doctor any day.
 

Casual Shinji

Should've gone before we left.
Legacy
Jul 18, 2009
19,570
4,374
118
Eureka 7 didn't find its groove till Eureka has the accident. I think this is like episode 10 or something.

Before that nothing much of anything happens, and you'd be excused in thinking this was just some shallow Cowboy Bebop wannabe.
 

TheRightToArmBears

New member
Dec 13, 2008
8,674
0
0
This album. I don't really like Last Night In Town or Hot Damn!, but Gutter Phenomenon onward Every Time I Die simply haven't written song that I don't love, and each album has been getting better (the new one is being produced by Kurt Ballou. Fuck. Yes.). All their albums since have had a similar sort of sound, but I'd say they've been getting a bit more mature and heavier since then, they're just fucking great.

I'm probably the only Protest The Hero fan that thinks they've been getting better each album as well, Kezia is my least favourite by a long way (although it's still pretty good) and Volition is a fucking masterpiece (although I don't think Chris Adler is as interesting a drummer as Moe was).
 

Cette

Member
Legacy
Dec 16, 2011
177
0
1
Country
US
Tanis said:
Music/Anime/Cartoon/Movie/Video Game/etc

I'm re-watching Babylon 5 and find myself being kind of felt 'meh' at the first season.
It's not that it's bad, it's just that I didn't think the series felt like it got its groove till SE2 and the start of Shepperd.

DS9:
For some reason I don't think the series really felt like got great until Sisko got his facial hair.

Is it sad that the second I saw the title of this thread I was headed here to mention B5? Though I'd argue by the last 5 or so episodes of season 1 it was shaping up pretty nicely. They always did know how to throw together a season finale.
 

NeutralDrow

New member
Mar 23, 2009
9,097
0
0
I did enjoy the first two City Watch-themed Discworld books, but the storyline really started to come into its own with Feet of Clay. At that point, the command structure is well-established, Vimes and Carrot have some character stability from which to grow, the affirmative action nature of the Watch has become a basic assumption, and to top it off, the story itself is pretty damn good.

I'm tempted to say Negima, which pretty famously (in the fandom, at least) started out a modern fantasy themed Love Hina-esque ecchi comedy before gradually turning into a pretty excellent shounen action series, in which case the turning point would have been the Kyoto arc...but Akamatsu made a point even late in the series to mix up the action and romantic comedy bits. And to be honest, I enjoyed it all, even the first two volumes.

And kind of a retrospective thing, but for me, Blind Guardian hit its groove somewhere in between Tokyo Tales and Imaginations From the Other Side. Maybe that shouldn't count, since I started listening relatively late (A Night At the Opera), but I went after a bit to listen to Follow the Blind, and was surprisingly disappointed. It's recognizably them, but there's something missing that distinguishes their later albums...
 

purf

New member
Nov 29, 2010
600
0
0
As for the question, I don't know, but
there must be a The Walking Dead[footnote]the TV series[/footnote] joke in here
 

Diddy_Mao

New member
Jan 14, 2009
1,189
0
0
While Chris Eccleson is my favorite Doctor from the new series, I always felt his run was tonaly inconsistent. It didn't really find it's voice until the middle of Tennant's run.

I blame it largely on the early series heavy focus on Rose and her extended relations. I like Billie Piper just fin and I don't hate her character, she was just a bit too much of a distraction.

--

As much as I love the MCU I don't think the Marvel/Disney films really hit their stride until after the Avengers. Phase 1 was just a little too unfocused in the early days and spent a little too much time playing catchup in the second half.
With Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World and Captain America: The Winter Soldier it seems they've acclimated themselves and their audience to a point that they don't have to do quite as much hand holding.
 

Sean Hollyman

New member
Jun 24, 2011
5,175
0
0
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (2012) and Breaking Bad both took a little while for me to really get into. I think it was halfway through the first season I got hooked.
 

Queen Michael

has read 4,010 manga books
Jun 9, 2009
10,400
0
0
From Eroica With Love. Let me explain to those of you who don't know about this series:

It's a manga series that starts off as an adventure series about three young people, all of whom have a super power. In the very first episode, they encounter an art thief called Eroica. Now, the thing is that in the second storyline, a NATO agent named Klaus is sent to capture Eroica, and very soon the manga creator starts putting all the focus on him and Eroica, completely phasing out the three youngsters. From book three and onward, they don't appear at all and the manga turns into a realistic Cold War spy adventure/comedy. And that's when it gets truly good and turns into my favorite manga of all time.
 

Leemaster777

New member
Feb 25, 2010
3,311
0
0
Transformers Beast Wars didn't really start hitting it's stride until the second half of the first season, but moreso in it's second season.
 

MisterGobbles

New member
Nov 30, 2009
747
0
0
TheRightToArmBears said:
I'm probably the only Protest The Hero fan that thinks they've been getting better each album as well, Kezia is my least favourite by a long way (although it's still pretty good) and Volition is a fucking masterpiece (although I don't think Chris Adler is as interesting a drummer as Moe was).
It does seem to be an unpopular opinion, at least from the more outspoken internet folk. My thoughts jump around a bit: Volition is far and away their best, and I like Fortress the least of any of them. Kezia is second best, and Scurrilous would be third IMO. I got a chance to interview Rody Walker back in December; I'm glad he's taking the lyrical reigns and giving them a more punk feeling.

OT: I thought the anime adaption of Sword Art Online was shit until its second arc...BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I can't even post that sarcastically on an internet forum with a straight face.
 

cojo965

New member
Jul 28, 2012
1,650
0
0
Finnish rock group Lordi really found their stride with the albums Monsterican Dream, Deadache, and To Beast or Not To Beast. Unfortunately, the albums Get Heavy, The Arockolypse, and Babez for Breakfast, were inconsistent due to attempting to find a balance between the more metal sound of the first albums I mentioned and the more Hard Rock sound of the latter albums.
 

Scarim Coral

Jumped the ship
Legacy
Oct 29, 2010
18,157
2
3
Country
UK
I pretty much had a netural response when watching the first episode of Kill La Kill, that is until this happen during the fight scene-


It pretty much the "don't lose your way" that got my blood pump up!
 

Silvanus

Elite Member
Legacy
Jan 15, 2013
11,028
5,796
118
Country
United Kingdom
I think The Venture Bros got into its groove at the start of the second season. Same for Community.

Most of the other shows I watched and loved/love, like The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad, had my favourite moments in their first seasons, I think, though BB was (of course) glorious throughout.
 

bartholen_v1legacy

A dyslexic man walks into a bra.
Jan 24, 2009
3,056
0
0
Muse got IMO into gear when they released Absolution, and it's been a ride from there.

I like Supernatural, but it got really rolling in season 4. Seasons 4 and 5 were both great, and the previous ones compared to them seem kinda... meh. The stakes were much higher and it just kept building and building.

It's kinda hard to pinpoint Avatar: The Last Airbender's real boost phase, but when Toph was introduced, the show really became great.
 

Mangod

Senior Member
Feb 20, 2011
829
0
21
bartholen said:
Muse got IMO into gear when they released Absolution, and it's been a ride from there.

I like Supernatural, but it got really rolling in season 4. Seasons 4 and 5 were both great, and the previous ones compared to them seem kinda... meh. The stakes were much higher and it just kept building and building.

It's kinda hard to pinpoint Avatar: The Last Airbender's real boost phase, but when Toph was introduced, the show really became great.
General concensus on Avatar seems to be episode 13, when they slug you with the "we're at war" thing for real.