The 3 Episode Rule…. again

I feel conflicted about doing another 3 episode rule post, I often repeat myself on this subject and yet still feel I haven’t fully made my point. I even talked about it as recently as my Miyu from Prisma Illya post.

To start with, let me clarify that it’s not an absolute.  You don’t have enough time to watch at least three episodes of every Anime that exists because you don’t even have enough time to watch at least one.  I don’t even watch one episode of something unless I expect it to potentially interest me in some way.

And I’m hesitant to tell people absolutely to watch at least 3 episodes once you decide to try something.  For one thing if what makes the first unwatchable to you is its visuals, if you think it’s badly animated and/or the art style you find unpleasant to look at, well those things are likely to only get worse, lots of Anime front load their Animation Budget to the first episode in order to get people’s attention.

However I already did a post on how a lot of shows front load their Fanservice into the first episode the same way they do their Sakuga.  And frankly with some shows it’s the same for their Edgy Shock Value quota.  90% of Goblin Slayer discourse is still just about what happens in its first episode. I didn’t finish that show and don’t think of myself as one of its fans, but I saw enough to say its overall tone is not like that at all.  A show I am somewhat of a fan of is Skeleton Knight in Another World which likewise had a gratuitous rape scene at the start the likes of which won’t happen again in future episodes.

And also if you just don’t understand what’s going on, some shows have specifically in the third episode some key exposition that maybe should have been provided up front, like Engage Kiss from 2022.

Even shows that are highly episodic with a Monster of the Week or Case of the Week structure will still have only 1 of the first 3 episodes actually follow the structure of most episodes because they also need to provide an origin story for our protagonist, or how the team got together.  That will often be the third episode for more chronological shows like Detective Conan aka Case Closed or Pokémon, but others like Princess Principal will have the first be a flash forward so it can start with an episode like what most will be like, however with that show you need the context of the chronological first two episodes to appreciate the dynamic seen in those one offs.

Part of the reason for this structure is frankly economic.  The Anime Industry doesn’t make most of its money off the Anime itself, and back before the streaming era part of that was the Home Video releases were more important than the actual TV broadcast.  And back in the 90s the standard operating procedure for VHS releases in both Japan and the US was 3 episodes per tape. So a lot of Anime was written so that its entire first tape could serve as an extended pilot.  And as one of many who still fondly remembers renting Pokémon VHS tapes I recall distinctly how well Pokémon's first three episodes worked together that way.  Once they got in the habit of writing shows that way it was hard to break out of.

One bad take on the three episode rule I saw in a YouTube video once was that it’s called the 3 episodes rule because most Anime have 12 episodes and that a longer show should obviously take even more, 6 episodes for a 2 cour show and so on.  That logic would lead to thinking you need to see 20 episodes of Kanto Era Pokémon before you know if it’ll appeal to you or not, that’s obviously absurd.

The Three Episode rule exists because of what it takes 3 episodes to do, especially when you only have 20ish minutes per episode, not being a fourth of the total.  A lot of my favorite potential case studies in how the 3rd episode specifically completes the set up are shows longer than a single cour. From Revolutionary Girl Utena where episode three is the first Nanami episode, to Code Geass where the third episode more fully explains who Leleouch is.  

Critics of the 3 episode rule often frame it as just an attempt to defend bad shows by slandering the pilots of good ones.  But I don’t find the first episodes “bad” for most of the shows I mentioned above, just incomplete in communicating what to expect.  It’s more like I want greater appreciation for what specifically the 3rd episode does, or how the first three work together to set the stage.  And I don't need to find a first episode bad to be unsure the show will be one I want to complete, I find few works of Art truly Bad but even with Anime am only interested in watching certain kinds that personally appeal to me.

If I do dislike the 1st and/or 2nd episode of a show I have no hesitation recommending people skip them entirely. For the 90s Sailor Moon Anime I absolutely advise just starting with the 3rd episode (which was the second in the DiC Dub where it was titled Talk Radio).  For A Certain Scientific Railgun I advise skipping episode 2.  

I’ve also personally experienced a sort of inversion of the presumed general purpose of the 3 episode rule.  Times when I really liked the first episode of a show but once episodes 2 and 3 made clear what the show is more generally like my interest is actually killed off.  Examples of that include Tower of Druaga: The Aegis of Uruk and Dance in The Vampire Bund, I still recommend both of their first episodes as stand alone shorts but the shows overall couldn’t appeal to me.