Death Note is a popular answer, and I also agree that its ideal stopping point is…

Death Note

L’s death

Bocchi the Rock is another show that I felt would be at its best if it stopped at episode eight. If the upcoming compilation movie stops there, I may consider it superior to the TV series. It’s not unheard-of. Violet Evergarden’s film-length recap stopped at Episode 10.

I want to see more of Bocchi-chan's rock!

The title drop + roll credits is its peak and climax. I hoped its finale would be amazing. However, episode eight overshadowed episode 12. Everything after E8 felt like a lede for an S2.

What are yours?

  • wjs018@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    There are a bunch of long-running series that make (or made) heavy use of filler content of, let’s say, variable quality (Naruto, Bleach, etc.). Other than those, I have a couple that spring to mind:

    • Recency bias might be factoring into this one but Ryza no Atelier. I just watched the final episode literally within the past hour and it feels like such a let down compared to the penultimate episode. We go from a huge boss battle to a peaceful scavenger hunt. It just seems like you had an obvious place to end the show on a climactic moment in which the protagonists overcome adversity and realize the beginning of their heroic ambitions; but instead we devote the entire final episode for some kind of moral lesson about farming and friends? Don’t get me wrong, just cutting the final episode won’t make this show actually good, but it would at least be improved; meeting the requirements of the post.
    • Carole and Tuesday: I really liked this show, but I feel like the story could have been more focused. In the final third or so of this series, I feel like it rapidly expanded the scope of the show to the detriment of being able to focus on the main cast’s story.
    • Planetes: I might make some people mad with this one, but I really liked this show when it focused on the space garbage disposal bits and much less so when it forced a romantic relationship between two main characters. It didn’t really feel earned and, frankly, the relationship focused a lot on reinforcing traditional Japanese gender stereotypes and left a bad taste in my mouth.
    • Clannad: If I didn’t make people mad with Planetes, I have certainly made some mad with this one. Full disclosure up front, I have not fully watched this series, so if some Steins;Gate level twist makes all the rest of the show great, then so be it. I just felt like the story would focus entire episodes on people/things that just ended up never mattering again going forward. I remember after a couple episodes just thinking, “What was the point of all that?”. It has been a couple years since I gave it a shot, so I don’t really remember specifics, but this one could really have used some editing. I imagine the movie version helps this problem, but I haven’t seen that after what I experienced with the show.
    • ram@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      People generally[1] like Clannad for After Story, exclusively.


      1. GENERALLY, don’t @ me if you’re different, you’re not general ↩︎

    • Faceman🇦🇺@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      I loved Clannad, but I do tend to enjoy slower shows quite a lot, I see clannad as a sort of protoype of Bunny Girl Senpai, they’re extremely similar if you think about it.

      Afterstory is a totally different beast and more or less comes out of nowhere to hurt you, but only if you actually connected with the characters in S1.

      • wjs018@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        The comparison to Bunny Girl Senpai is a really, really good one actually since they do have an extremely similar storytelling structure. I watched that show+movie just recently, so it is fresh in my mind. I think the main thing that kept me engaged with Bunny Girl as opposed to Clannad is the characters. I really enjoyed the characters in Bunny Girl whereas in Clannad, whenever certain characters showed up (iirc, mainly the guy friend that keeps challenging a girl to a fight), I just found it annoying and took me out of it.

        I think there is a lot you could compare/contrast between these two shows and it is making me think critically about what made one work for me and the other very much not work. Thanks for the food for thought!