I have a mental exercise that I would like you to participate in. Imagine that you are talking to one of your friends (if you don’t have friends imagine that you do) about an anime that you’ve recently dropped. You’ve spent the last few minutes listing your grievances and summarizing to them why you don’t feel this particular show is worth watching. After listening to your argument, your friend asks you a question:
“How many episodes did you watch?”
As a burning sensation builds behind your eyes, you tell them you only watched one. They then torpedo the conversation and possibly your friendship by saying you should watch at least two more before making a decision. Exercise over. Wasn’t that fun?
What your imaginary ex-friend has done here (you’re better off without them) is invoke the specter of the 3 Episode Rule. This rule dictates that you really need to watch the first three episodes of an anime before you can accurately judge its quality. The idea being that a show “hits its stride” during the third episode. After all, that’s how many episodes would be on a disc when anime was distributed via DVDs so that’s how many you should have to watch, right?
I do not cop to this notion and, in fact; I reject it on principle. My main problem with this rule is that it makes a show’s premise the most important factor in determining quality. The community may not refer to it as the Premise Rule but in practice, that’s what it actually is. This is due to the general structure of writing a fictional story: you establish the setting, identify characters, then give those characters something to do in that setting. That last part is the premise and it tends to crop up in the third episode of an anime. This rule drives me insane because it implies that the least important part of a story is actually its most critical element.
I’m not saying that the premise doesn’t matter at all, stories need to have a plot, it just doesn’t matter as much as other elements. When people talk about Cowboy Bebop, are their discussion points about space having bounty hunters? No, it’s about how much we love Spike, or how complex Faye is, or how believable this depiction of the future looks. Neon Genesis is literally about “teenagers fighting big monsters in equally big robots,” but what we actually discuss is Shinji, PTSD, and how everyone in that show is a terrible person. Characters and setting can save a weak/stupid premise but I have never seen the opposite be true. No amount of psychic drama is ever going to make me enjoy Shin Sekai Yori because the setting is flaccid and I wouldn’t so much as piss on a single member of the cast if they were burning to death in front of me.
People that support this rule often claim that it will prevent you from missing out on the next great anime like Madoka or another show with a “crazy reveal.” This doesn’t resonate with me either because that show’s intentions were very obvious from the first episode for those that were paying attention. A well-constructed piece of media made by skilled creatives is usually going to be good and the 3 Episode Rule did not save Madoka from obscurity. This rule also doesn’t take into consideration that an anime might look like shit and not be worth watching because the presentation is so awful. There’s nothing to support it, yet it keeps cropping up.
I despise the 3 Episode Rule. Its continued existence in the anime community disgusts me. Any value that it once had, and I’d argue that it never had any, has long since expired in the era of streaming and simul-casts. It’s a bizarre thought experiment masquerading as helpful advice that really only serves to waste more of your limited free time. It’s pigeon-holing the way people consume anime and holding the community back in how they engage with the material. You should only stick with a series for as long as you feel compelled to do so. No “rule” or peer shaming should drive you back to something you have already discarded. Nor should it serve as a silver bullet against criticism because “you didn’t watch enough” or “it gets better later.”
What I’m really trying to say here is that if the 3 Episode Rule was an anime, it would already be on my Dropped list.