Do you think that sequels can change your rating/opinion on its prequel?
For instance, if you watch Attack on Titan season 1 and give it an 8/10, but then by the time you finish the show you’ve grown a greater appreciation for season 1 (perhaps even upon rewatch), then do you think it’s justified to adjust your rating for the earlier season?
For me, I hesitate to adjust the ratings because technically, nothing has changed about that piece of media you’ve watched. however much you enjoyed it at the time of watching it is how good it is in your mind.
However, I do feel like it prompts a rewatch and makes more sense to adjust ratings after a rewatch.
An anime like Tower of God though (which is what made me think of making this post) would have the opposite effect for me. I really liked season 1 and gave it an 8.5 at first, but after watching season 2 and not enjoying how they expanded on the plot. Not even the animation, I didn’t like the writing choices. It makes me wonder if my 8.5 was justified or just provisionally hopeful that I’d seen a good start to what would hopefully become a great anime.
What ya’ll think?
For me, I hesitate to adjust the ratings because technically, nothing has changed about that piece of media you’ve watched. however much you enjoyed it at the time of watching it is how good it is in your mind.
However, I do feel like it prompts a rewatch and makes more sense to adjust ratings after a rewatch.
An anime like Tower of God though (which is what made me think of making this post) would have the opposite effect for me. I really liked season 1 and gave it an 8.5 at first, but after watching season 2 and not enjoying how they expanded on the plot. Not even the animation, I didn’t like the writing choices. It makes me wonder if my 8.5 was justified or just provisionally hopeful that I’d seen a good start to what would hopefully become a great anime.
What ya’ll think?
Commentaires
Much more common for me to wind up raising a score of a show in this case based on a sequel than lowering it though. Can really only think of one time I lowered a show because of its sequel whereas the opposite happens frequently enough.
For me maybe the only time a sequel can lower the rating of it’s predecessor is when it makes you realise you had too high hopes for what you assumed would come next, and maybe makes you realise that most of what you thought was good about it was provisional and dependant on them following through well
I don’t have all that many 10s so a case like this is rare as normally I can just put the sequels on whatever the higher score would be.
For me, all ratings only make sense by being comparative to each other.
Also, I adjusted my Konosuba ratings after enjoying S2 more as well I believe!
Talking about season 1 of attack on titan, without watching further you have no idea how much foreshadowing and set up there is. How much annie, reiner and berthold are seen together, how Erwin realized that the armored and colossal titan are inside their ranks and he acted to reveal them (this is easily missed but it's kinda explained in season 2) or how the whole basement and mystery of the walls is developed. Not adjusting your rating after finishing the story is doing a disservice to the anime
- if seeing further seasons make you appreciate the first season more then raise its rating
- if seeing further seasons make you appreciate the first season less then decrease it's rating
There's no rocket science, i don't understand what you're struggling with
i’m essentially saying that you could argue that it’s unfair bias and rose tinted glasses to say that a finished season is automatically better just because you enjoyed the future season more.
I actually agree as whole that it is justified for future seasons to change a rating of a previous season if you grow a greater appreciation for it.
Just saying that there is a fair counter argument to that being that once a 12 episode season has finished airing, your opinion of it at that point is what it is. To change it based on something entirely separate may not always be accurate
But you can't argue that because that's not what we are talking about. The quality of a future season doesn't have any bearing on the rating of the previous season. What does have a bearing is seeing the payoff of the things that were set up and noticing the foreshadowing that was always there but you didn't catch it.
like not AOT S1, AOT S2, AOT S3p1, AOT S3p2 for instance but just rating ‘AOT’?
I think watching latter seasons of AOT made me genuinely appreciate S1 more so I upped the rating, but to a degree, that only became justifiable after I actually rewatched S1.
Like S1 didn’t change, the video file is the same file so in other cases I would hesitate to adjust ratings because it wouldn’t be a greater appreciation for what came first, it would be more of a ‘i enjoyed season 2 more than season 1 as two separate entries’. Like Uzaki chan for instance
You're putting on an anime as background while you're playing on your phone. You finish it and you give it a 5/10 as it didn't seem that interesting. Some time later you watch it again but without playing on the phone and you find the anime to be great.
Your take is literally that you cannot adjust the rating you gave when you were on your phone because it's the same anime...
My take is that is if a sequel season of an anime changes your perception of its earlier instalment, then it’s fair to adjust the earlier season’s rating. If you just enjoy a future season more without it justifiably changing or influencing your opinion of its predecessor then you might consider whether it’s just recency bias to up your rating for its prequel without at least rewatching with your updated hindsight of watching its sequel.
If you’re on your phone during watching something then don’t bother giving it a rating at all
If a whole season is ass in a long running show, I may stop there forever and never come back (fairy tail was this for me and the first 12 episodes of bleach weren't great either)
If season 2 is trash and season 1 was great I just remove it from memory. Some examples:
-Tokyo ghoul only has 1 season.
-Death note ends in episode 27.
-Opm only has a season and half.
-When are we going to get a tsukihime anime?
I am just a bit mad that they skipped a couple of sections of the manga ending, like misamisa being the only real survivor... After she halved her lifespan TWICE.
It's especially painful when it starts good but you can feel the moment they were told they didn't get picked up for a new season so they rush everything toward *an* ending that ties everything off like a touriquet.
(And *especially* especially painful when some time after that they get greenlit for another season anyway.)
But that's not really what the question is about, is it?
Everyone still think the first few seasons were 10/10!
The butchered later half of the show doesn't make people think the first half was bad.
That atrocity they did some years back can crawl to a hole and let time do it's thing...
To answer your question, no, sequel doesn't change my opinion on previous seasons. I have revisited a season and changed my mind on it, that definitely happened. I have even changed my mind just simply looking at the other anime with the same score and decided they shouldn't have the same score. But what happens in season 2 won't change my mind on season 1. It would change my mind on the entire show, sure, but not specifically season 1. Of course, this only applies with different seasons having different scores like MAL.
So yes every sequel will impact my rating on the show as a whole which you could then interpret as changing my rating if every season but its not that i am literally reanalising and rerating a specific other season.
As a consequence, one of my biggest complaints with sites like MAL is that their top 100 is seasonal, not show based. For example Frieren, gintama, aot etc are good shows and they deserve to be at the top but they don't need to be there several times, that just pollutes the list.
Like if I go to my list now and sort by score, I should be able to choose if I want it to show every instalment or just ‘Attack on Titan’ there
For example some of the lore drops in later seasons of AoT made me better appreciate the way they were set up in S1, which made me improve my rating of it.
On the opposite side, Season 2 of Uma Musume being one of the best Sports Anime ever made, did nothing to change the flaws in Season 1.
But I dont think i ever adjusted a rating because of a sequel season
Its often when i rewatch a show that it makes me think about if i should change the rating
Unless it's something like later reveals that you can appreciate more on a rewatch like Steins;gate but that's 1 season so it's 1 contained entry (not counting the specials and movies). Re:zero imo would fall under this perfectly.
The promised neverland seems to be the biggest example, yeah 😂
totally agree regarding steins gate and re zero too
For me it's actually easier to use averages because math lol although sometimes I do struggle with the overall rating too - I shock myself!
I also try to rate anime according to how MAL lists the score (5 being average) and I know most people when they see a score less than a 7 they think the anime is shit but in reality to me if it's a 5, it really is just a painfully *average* anime, nothing bad but nothing special, purely average. I found myself being more and more tough with my ratings the longer I watch haha.
It is sad about Promised Neverland but the manga makes up for it and is a solid read, so it's worth reading if anyone ever wanted to only watch S1 to appreciate what the anime could've been.
I'm waiting for the day that Re:zero completes so I can rewatch it in all its glory (I'm not even a big rewatcher lol).
and man you know it, next season of re zero is out in april or july i believe. can’t wait
YES it comes out in April and I'm so excited as well!
Because Fate/zero definitely elevates Fate/stay night. It’s a prequel in that it’s set before fsn but it was released later.
I meant more along the lines of a piece of media that could be seen as a future instalment or has some sort of relation that could serve as a catalyst for the previous anime to get better or worse after watching the new anime.
I think the instalments from the fate series may always keep changing the more you watch and the more context/lore you get. Contrarily though, each part is specifically its own thing, so it depends on what kind of viewer you and how much you lean into the lore and shared story points at that point I guess
Cultural phenomenon to no one cares over the course of 4 episodes.
I mean, if a rewatch makes you appreciate the first season more, then rate it higher, but it's not really about 'the sequel'!
For it to be about the sequel, in my opinion it would need to recontextualize something in the first season.
Say, if a sequel retcons something (in good or bad) or create plot holes or something in the first season, I may consider changing its rating.. But maybe not even then. Because when I watched it, I didn't notice the problem so it's all good.
So, short answer: Probably not. Promised Neverland S2 was shit, but it doesn't make me like S1 less.
Or maybe The Promised Neverland fans.
But with After Story, it becomes the greatest anime I have ever watched.
(similar cases are K-On, and Non Non Biyori - where, to a lesser degree, further parts enhance the experience)
Change your rating as often as you like for whatever reason. It's up to you.
E.g.,
Violet Evergarden | 50 (84 , 55 , 7).
It's not bound by seasons though. Sometimes the separate score is just for the ending. Like:
Wonder Egg Priority | 9 (68 , 4).
I also am trying to consider things without endings as though they don't have endings at all. So my score for Frieren S1 was as if it ended the way the season did. This is because many anime don't get complete adaptations, and if I have to use a manga to finish a story then it's no longer an anime score and it jumbles everything up.