You get settled in, enjoy whats shaping up to be a great series, look forward to seeing what happens with the characters once they’re introduced … aaand the writing trips over it’s own feet and faceplants into the ground like so many defeated enemies.
What’s the worst one out there, and what happened to it?
This is probably far from the “worst” example, but the most prominent and notable example for me is anything from the FATE series–Stay Night, Apocrypha, Zero… Really, pick any of them. I don’t know if they’re “bad,” but the drop in writing between the first half and the last half (and last handful of episodes particularly) is so consistent across the series that I just go into any FATE show expecting that it’s going to fall off to varying degrees by the end.
That’s so odd, one would hope the writers could learn from their mistakes … but I’ve felt like this is such a recurring problem that I wonder if written narrative structure simply isn’t a big deal in Japan
In fairness to the FATE series (not that it particularly deserves it, it was just important to me growing up so i feel the need to defend it lol), it is adapting a visual novel that takes 30 hours for the first route alone, with more if you count unlimited blade works and heaven’s feel. A lot of what gets cut out is internal dialogue that provides the MC’s actual justifications/logic for his actions, making him a lot dumber in the adaptions. Additionally, there’s a lot of VERY JUSTIFIED censorship near the end of basically every fate VN route adaption which is why we get CGI dolphins all the time.
That said, neither Zero nor Apocrypha have this excuse, they were adapted from a light novels and not visual novels and to the best of my knowledge they’re pretty straight forward adaptions.
Totally unrelated but Zero and F/SN mutually spoil each other, which i’ve always thought was pretty funny. There’s no correct entry point because you’re literally incapable of watching both shows without one spoiling the other.