So, /a/, let's say a manga has 100 chapters total: The first 50 chapters are absolute DOGSHIT, the worst of the worst, but then the second half is as kino as it gets, and on top of that, it has a genuinely good ending.How would you classify it? Good? Bad? Would you recommend it while warning people that it takes a long time to get good, or would you simply not recommend it because half of the manga is terrible?At what point does a great second half and ending make up for an awful first half?
>>290784884>The first 50 chapters are absolute DOGSHIT, the worst of the worst, but then the second half is as kino as it gets, and on top of that, it has a genuinely good ending>How would you classify it?A masterpiece.
>>290784884At some point, being so extremely back-loaded becomes a massive problem. This is especially true if the first chapters are required reading to understand the plot, characters, or context. Just imagine something like 1000+ chapters, and seriously it gets good at chapter 875. But you really did need to read the first 800 chapters of boring uninteresting tedium to get the context. Would you be eager to start?If we're talking about a handful of episodes or chapters before it really takes off, or if the first half can be skipped entirely, then it can be fine. But I wouldn't recommend 50 chapters of dogshit even if the ending is pure writing mastery. You can get good writing elsewhere, and it would still require eating 50 chapters of dogshit.>How would you classify it? Good? Bad?Awful, but with an excellent ending if you can stomach the complete garbage it takes to get there. This is the kind of stuff that just watching a few clips on Youtube would be ideal, if it was an anime.Consider: The best scenes of Escanor from Seven Deadly Sins (around 20 minutes of three Youtube videos) compared to actually watching Seven Deadly Sins. Which is the preferable experience?
>>290784884Bad. And it'd probably be canceled before reaching the good part, in practice.
>>290785285S;G is not a masterpiece, lol
>>290785831Depends on the publisher and label, I would say.Like, there have been titles in Mangapoke, for example, that were selling absolutely nothing for the most part, not even getting physical releases anymore, yet continued to be published for a while before the axe. Like Yankee JK no Ijou na Aijou, for example. That said, this mangas awful from start to finish.
>>290784884>The first 50 chapters are absolute DOGSHIT, the worst of the worst, but then the second half is as kino as it gets, and on top of that, it has a genuinely good ending.>How would you classify it? Good? Bad?Average/Decent because I appreciate a good payoff and series that reward your patience. But I wouldn't recommend it to others cause I know everyone is an ADHD retard that wants to get jerked off right from episode 1.
>>290785285Where is the masterpiece? Are you going to post it?
>>290784884A good ending is way harder and therefore more valuable than a good start, not to mention that it leaves the viewer in good spirits unlike the opposite which makes you feel like you wasted your time.>How would you classify it? Good? Bad?Probably a 6 or 7 out of 10 because of what i said above, even if the second half is great the first half must be considered, though the latter half weights more on the score overall, if you want a word i would say "mixed", "ok" or "it only gets better as you go".>Would you recommend it while warning people that it takes a long time to get good, or would you simply not recommend it because half of the manga is terrible?If i really love it just say its starts rough but it gets really good later.>At what point does a great second half and ending make up for an awful first half?Always i would say, there is plenty of things with great starts and shit endings, but the opposite is pretty much non-existent.
>>290784884If the ending is good enough to justify having to go through the first 50 chapters then sure I'd probably say it's good for the most part. Ending on a high note can salvage a story that would otherwise be absolute dogshit. A really garbage ending can kill a series easily however.
If it's that dogshit, who would even read it for 50+ chapters in the first place? And why would you trust someone who read that much dogshit to have enough taste to be able to tell it actually DID get very good?
>>290784884I would say that the 'consensus' is probably wrong and it's either not as bad in the first half or not as good in the second.re-reads will show how good the whole thing is when you have the benefit of hindsight.
>>290784884Bad. The people that sat through 50 chapters of shit are retards and their opinion cannot be trusted, so I don't believe the second half is better and never read it.
>>290784884Sometimes the dogshit part is the pleb filter, that’s what makes it a masterpiece.
>>290784884If a story has a 10/10 arc the story is a 10/10 unless the ending is so dogshit like beastars and attack on titan but even in those cases it drops the rating by like 1 or 2/10 overall at most for me, and even then it's for irrational reasons>>290785611>would you be eager to start?completely and utterly irrelevant>But you really did need to read the first 800 chapters of boring uninteresting tedium to get the contexti would have been deterred from several great VN and manga if i didn't go through a slightly less exaggerated version of what you describedand the importance of endings is overrated on this site. each arc has its own endings after all and those form a complete story if the author is not shit
>>290786101>GX
>>290786514>A good ending is way harder and therefore more valuable than a good startNot necessarily, excepting perhaps cases where you work people to death at a weekly serialization over a decade and they lose the ability to create>not to mention that it leaves the viewer in good spirits unlike the opposite which makes you feel like you wasted your time.That's a very irrational way to rate a work>>290788681>If it's that dogshit, who would even read it for 50+ chapters in the first place?you have not read anything truly great then
>>290789351True greatness requires a dogshit first half? Is this some kind of expectation management trick?
threads that wouldn't exist if you faggots read novels
>>290789434Huh?
>>290789434What
>>290785961It's better than an average anime but hugely overrated exactly because of the issue OP describes with how its pacing goes.
>>290789434This guy gets it
>>290784884I reject your hypothetical, it just doesn't happen.
>>290784884It's better to start shit and get good than to start good and end shit
>>290789323>importance of endings is overrated on this siteI disagreeHaving many extremely good moments can easily be nullified with an unsatisfactory "the journey continues!" ending
>>290789705The pacing isn't the only problem with it, the real problem is that most of the characters are junk. Fixing the pacing still wouldn't make it a masterpiece or whatever most people make it out to be.
>>290784884Bad. I prefer to love my manga wholeheartedly and I'd probably drop it before finishing it anyway/ Assuming I did finish it'd probably have to change me for me to recommend it to anyone
>>290784884It would be good filter for causals and normalfags
I liked the whole of Kaguya Sama manga
>>290784884A good beginning is far more important than a food ending precisely because your hypothetical scenario is unrealistic. A stord which gails in the first half won't make you care about the characters, plot and stakes, even when theoretically it is "good" in the 2nd Half. I can tolerate a bad chapter (not a manga, but one of my favourite live action tv shows had a horrendous first episode), perhaps even 5, 10 or 20 if the setting catches my interest, but 50 is just too much and if the story doesn't manage to make me care until then it won't make me care in the other half.
I would have believed it to be bad before I watched pic related, but I would say it's great, but...
>>290784884your premise is very rare. can you name any examples?
>>290790726it's a thought experiment
>>290790780I get that, but it's kind of hard without any real examples. What I will say is that IF a story, whether LN or manga or otherwise, is able to retain its audience through the dogshit first half through some miracle, then the peak-end rule will almost certainly make the series memorable and great if the second half and the ending is really good.
>>290790540I think it peaked around ~170-ish, so just after confessions and reconciliations and all that. Everything after was good as long as it involved the main couple, the rest was unnecessary melodrama and idiotic, and you could feel Aka getting bored with his own story.
I would rate it highly.I love new beginnings even if they're not good, because they have so much potential I can't wait to see what happens next.Even if it's "boring" or "nothing happens", if all the boring stuff gets used for later plot, then it's wonderful.The only note I would stress, is that, for light novels, I really can't stand poor writing quality. I'm fine with bad characterization or nothing happening, but if it reads like it was passed through chatgpt, I can't do it.I recently had to spend weeks or months finishing 50 web novel chapters because it wasn't good (long hyphen) it was bad. Torture.For everyone saying they would drop it: Muv Luv
>>290790726There are a few I can think of that are split evenly between either halves or even thirds (though not the quality aspect of the premise).Death Note was in two parts, and Sengoku Youko was in three. The former had a quality difference of sorts, while the latter was a little different in tone, so I could see how people could like / not like different parts.
>>290790726Not 50 chapters, but Hokenshitsu no Shinigami is a dogshit battle shonen that gets a lot better once it switches genre to comedy 20 or so chapters in.
>>290784884I'd call it okay overall if someone asked about it but warn that the first half kind of sucks. I probably wouldn't actively recommend it even if I end up liking it on the whole.For me a bad ending can totally ruin a work I thought was good up till then, but a strong ending, if not actually saving/redeeming something otherwise weak, will at least make me feel like it wasn't a waste of time. So this scenario you're describing actually sounds like something I'd want to check out
