Hello dear readers and welcome to Shoot the Rookie! Today I’ve picked out five anime to talk about that are all shows that I’ve given up on. Why not join me for a look at these unfortunate shows and why I chose to quit each one.
There are of course a huge number of shows that I’ve dropped. Usually this happens after one or two episodes when I decide I simply don’t like the show. But what makes these five special is that I dropped them midway through after putting a significant amount of time into each one. This means that unlike the shows I dropped immediately, I feel that all five have something to offer, but for various reasons they just didn’t do it for me.
Let’s jump right in and take a look at what shows I’ve included shall we!
Arpeggio of Blue Steel
This is a show about impressive looking boats that have scantily-clad lady personas. Or something. Ok so I didn’t watch enough to really understand why this is a thing and I also don’t think it was my idea to watch it, but you know what? It was better than I just made it sound. The protagonist seemed pretty likeable and the story was kinda interesting. However, the weird combination of scantily clad boat-girls and detailed naval-engineering schematics left me wondering what weird niche I’d fallen into and I quit it after four episodes.
Theatre of Darkness: Yamishibai
I wacthed a whole 11 episodes of this before dropping it, but since each episode is only about five minutes long maybe that doesn’t mean much. Yamishibai is an excellent show. Completely unique and absolutely terrifying, it is one of the best horror anime I’ve ever seen. So why did I drop it? Well, although I would definitely recommend it as perfect Halloween viewing, after watching five or six episodes I began to realise that they are kinda all the same and from that point it lost the thing that made it scary. Nonetheless I’d recommend it in a heartbeat to anyone looking for some horror, even if you just watch the first few episodes.
The Promised Neverland
Another horror genre show for the list, and I must say that the first season of The Promised Never is completely excellent and I never dreamed I would ever drop it. In fact, it took me until eight episodes in to the second series to decide to call it quits. Sure I’d heard the rumours about the second season, but I thoroughly enjoyed the first six-or-so episodes. Then it changed. Then it became an over-the-top mess which was impossible to believe or care about. And just like that it was over for me, which is a huge shame considering how much I like the world and the characters.
Ancient Magus’ Bride
This is undoubtedly a classy show. It looks great and is great at creating a suitably unsettling atmosphere. But nothing happens. I watched nine episodes. Nothing happened. I thought, OK I’ve watched nine so I may as well just finish the series. But when I discovered the series had 24 rather than 12 episodes I just quit because I couldn’t imagine spending that much more time in that world if the pace wasn’t going to pick up. I know this is a popular show but it just didn’t reel me in, which is a shame because as I said at the start it certainly had a lot of quality.
Fruits Basket
Similarly to The Ancient Magus Bride, pace was the issue here. From the 11 episodes I watched, Fruits Basket seemed funny, charming and at times deeply sinister. But for me they needed to move the story on faster to keep me hooked. Although I loved the comedy elements, the sinister stuff was my favourite part of the show, but they would introduce something in one episode and then not refer to it again for four episodes. After looking at how long the show is I decided that I simply didn’t have the time to keep going with it when there are so many more exciting titles out there to watch. I do kinda miss Kyo tho…
So there we go – I have admitted five animes that I’ve dropped halfway through! But what about you? Do you think I’ve made a mistake dropping any of these shows? Do you have any animes you’ve watched a lot of and then just stopped? Let me know below in comments and don’t forget to join me next time for more anime and video game shenanigans!
Thanks for reading,
Pix1001 x
Shoot the Rookie 
This is an interesting idea for a post! I like to binge watch shows, so I tend to watch an entire season of something once I’ve started it even if I’m not fully feeling it. I’m quite surprised to see Fruits Basket here though. It’s one of my all time favourites and although I agree that it’s quite slow, I’d recommend trying to stick with it until the end of season 1 before completely writing it off as that’s where it takes a different turn! 😁
LikeLiked by 1 person
Promised Neverland feels like such a common one to drop after the 2nd season lol
LikeLiked by 1 person
There are two that come to mind for me:
Sword Art Online, because the execution just didn’t live up to the potential of the concept. There wasn’t much exploration of it, even though that was what interested me the most, so it became just a generic action-adventure anime series, which I think is a shame.
Attack on Titan. It actually has one of the best premiere episodes I’ve seen and the first few episodes really got me hooked. But then in about episode… seven(?), the plot took a sudden turn that was supposed to be dramatic but undermined what had come before, so I stopped caring. A bit like what you said about The Promised Neverland.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah what you said about both of them makes sense. I stuck with Sword Art and I found some bits great and other bits not so great but I’m still undecided on watching whatever happens next in the series. I didn’t get passed episode 1 of Attack on Titan though, just wasn’t my cup of tea!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Apologies it’s taken me nearly a month to reply, my brain has really switched off 😅 maybe I will try and pick Fruits Basket up again based on what you said. I dunno though, I feel like it should have had me gripped by now if it wanted me to keep watching!
LikeLiked by 1 person
No worries! 😊 At first, I expected Fruits Basket to be quite light-hearted and a fun anime to watch judging by the synopsis, but it gets super heavy and quite dark in places the further through it gets – it just takes a while to get there 😅 S1 is mainly about understanding the characters so it only really takes off during the last few episodes and leads into S2, which is the best part (imo). I understand that it’s a bit daunting though with 3 seasons and a film, so no pressure!
LikeLiked by 1 person