The thing I most lament about how Streaming is becoming the standard way all TV shows will be watched going forward is that younger generations are going to miss out on the magic of getting into a show because you stumbled upon a random episode flipping through channels.
I've talked on this blog before about how the first episode of Buffy I watched was This Year's Girl from season 4, an episode more then halfway through the show's middle season that brings back a character from the prior season. Internet discourse about continuity lock out suggests an episode like that should be the absolute worst kind to start with, but I dug it, all the references to history I didn't actually know the context of just piqued my curiosity.
I've been thinking about this lately for a number of reasons. I decided to watch The Devil Lady Anime Dubbed on Tubi even though I have still seen no Deivlman stuff. But that's perhaps a bad example because from what I've heard this isn't necessity the same continuity as anything else.
But I also thought about it when watching the first two episodes of Ahsoka. This show is arguably really meant to be Rebels season 5, but I only watched the first two seasons of Rebels, this show has clearly mentioned a lot of stuff from the latter seasons of that show. And here's the thing, I may wind up not liking this show but that won't be why, I am following everything just fine, some stories start with characters with history being reunited but it isn't actually a sequel to anything that's just part of the set up. Just like how my having never seen Bo Katan in any of her animated show appearances didn't hinder my ability to enjoy her in The Mandalorian seasons 2 and 3.
It's not surprising that Star Wars can work this way, because that's what it was going for from the beginning, George Lucas always intended for the original movie to be called Episode IV because he wanted it to feel like jumping into an old Saturday Matinee Serial in the middle. Clone Wars went even harder on that aspect.
I also recently watched yet another AniTube video about the Three Episode Rule. And this guy's take was that it may sometimes take more then three episodes especially for a show that's more then one Cour because he doesn't understand the Why of the Three Episode rule, it's never that the 3rd is the earliest that sells the show's full potential but that it often takes three episodes for the premise to be thoroughly set up, one of my favorite examples to demonstrate it with is actually Pokémon. But that's besides my point here.
Much of the video was him talking about the difficult situation of convincing someone to sit through maybe 20some episodes to get the one that they feel really sells the show. And the possibly of recommending to just skip right to that episode(s) never crosses his mind.
Even most of my earliest Anime memories involve watching something not from the beginning because I stumbled upon it on Adult Swim or that old AniMondays SciFi Channel block or even watching random episodes of a show On Demand when it only had the most recent 2 or 3 episodes, Noir, Madlax, Code Geass, Gundam 00 ect. But I mainly don't try to recreate that experience today because....
1. I'm a MAL addict now and on MAL how many episodes you've seen is supposed to be from the beginning unbroken.
2. The randomness was the magic of it, I didn't start Buffy with that episode because it was what someone recommended, probably no one would have ever recommended to start there, I just happened to flip by the WB a night they were airing it. And I had similar experiences with many other shows from Xena Warrior Princess to House M.D.
However in the last 2 years I have given myself a similar experience via Detective Conan aka Case Closed.
I first got into it watching some of it's non-Canon movies, ironically the set of movies I now consider among it's weakest but they were good enough to get me hooked. When I started watching the actual series I did start at the beginning, and then used an online filler free guide for some of it. But it wasn't long before I mostly decided what to watch pretty randomly. On MAL I'm listing myself as having seen only 134 but that's only unbroken from the beginning, I've probably seen over twice that actually. And even those first 134 I didn't watch in order.
That is a pretty episodic show most of the time so naturally it does have plenty of good places to jump in randomly. But honestly I feel even most episodes about one of the ongoing plotlines do a good job at being accessible to new viewers. I'm still far from seeing all the episodes and I probably never will but this experiencing older stuff almsot on a randomizer feels like what it was like watching old Procedurals via random Syndicated reruns.
Right now if I did have to recommend a jumping on point I'd say it's among the 50 episodes currently on Tubi.TV (the Subbed and Dubbed are uploaded as if they were different shows) but not quite the first of them. It's Makoto Kyogoku The Understudy episodes 993-995, it's not filler it actually does tie into a lot of ongoing plots but strictly not the main one, yet I still think it's a great first impression of the show.
But if you're a more Retro Style Anime fan who'd rather get into a show from the 90s in it's classic 90s look then among the first 123 episodes (which are on Filmrise and Crunchyroll but not Dubbed) I'd recommend The Kamen Yaiba Murder Case or The Locked Bathroom Murder Case.
Unfortunately the many good jumping on points that exist between episodes 123 and 754 aren't available on any official streaming sites. There is also a Dub of the first 123 (numbered as 130 via longer episodes being split up) that isn't officially streaming anywhere.
Stan Lee once said that every Comic could be someone's first, but that didn't stop him from telling stories heavily budling on earlier ones, what he did was tell readers where to go to get that context. And now we have all kinds of Wiki and Fan websites that help catalogue all that trivia.
So if you think episode 8 of season 2 of some show is the best episode to get someone hooked with, just tell them to start with that episode, or a few sooner if you feel some emotional set up is necessary.
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