On dropping anime or watching anime after it has aired rather than while it's airing
Last week, I decided to drop Shield Hero from the anime I currently watch. I watched it for 20 episodes before I decided to drop it, and I did so because the last 4-5 episodes – heck, the entire 2nd cour of the series – was really subpar in comparison to the 1st. The other anime I had been watching since last season, Dororo, also had its ups and downs, but at least the quality is more conistent there. Before I started watching these 2 anime last season, I had up until that point watched anime only after they finished airing, and, after Kimetsu no Yaiba (which I started this season out of curiosity, apparently not having learnt my lesson from Shield Hero – here's hoping it doesn't fall in quality as well), I will return to watching anime after it has finished airing. Here's why: 1a) If I don't mind getting spoilered, I can look up the entirety of the plot in order to judge if I want to watch it in the 1st place. This helps a lot with anime whose ends up going in a different direction than what the viewer imagined. For example, this helped me avoid Madoka Magica and the most-definitely-not-to-my-taste twist it had. It also helps with anime whose plot sounds a little bit interesting, but the viewer is not sure if they want to commit it, either watching episode after episode after it has aired (as I do), or watching it while it's airing. And it probably also helps to see if the quality of an anime is going to go downhill after a certain point. 1b) Also user reviews are more available and present a fuller picture if they're written after an anime has finished airing. Anime aggregating sites also show reviews of the anime, but when an anime hasn't finished airing, these reviews are going to be either non-existent or incomplete, given that they would be based on just a few episodes. 2) Having to wait a week to watch a new episode of an airing anime gives more to the viewer to think about what they just watched, thus exposing the episode's warts and giving them a worse impression of the anime than if they had watched multiple episodes in succession after it had finished airing. Sometimes one might watch an action movie and only after an hour or so think about all the plotholes the movie had, because while watching, they're immersed and don't have time to think about such things. Similarly, while watching the episode itself, unless it's really crappy and immersion-breaking, the viewer isn't going to think about the warts of the episode until after it finished. However, if the viewer has a week to think about such things, this might drop their satisfaction with the anime. For example, there was a filler episode in Little Witch Academia that, well, was slightly enjoyable but a waste of time otherwise – and I say that having bingwatched said series, and having thus immediately jumped to the next episode. Imagine having to wait a week to see this and then another week to see the next one! Things are even worse when there are several crappy episodes in succession. For example, the latest 4-5 episodes of Shield Hero were mediocre to say the least (and one of them was spent with the 4 Heroes doing nothing other than talking!). If I were watching the episodes in succession after the series would finish airing, I would still think that these episodes sucked, but since “only” 4 episodes (about an hour) would remain, I'd continue watching just to get done with it. However, since this series is currently airing, 4 episodes equal one month, and I don't feel like wasting a whole month to see the ending after all this mediocrity. At least now I know why people on forum theads about currently-airing anime seem so sour: having to wait a whole week only for the episode to be crappy, and then another one only for the next episode to also be crappy could indeed make people sour. I'm glad I got this off my chest. Thanks for reading.