What anime did you like the first season of, but not later seasons?

[Sheep]

Many of us have probably watched an anime that we liked the first season of, but when we watched the ones after they weren't so good for whatever reason. What anime did you feel this way about? Why?

 

[CynthiaLover]

For me, out of recent memory, it would have to be The Rising of the Shield Hero Season 2. Granted, I didn't hate Season 2, but I can acknowledge that it was a drop in quality compared to Season 1. However, I don't blame it on the arcs that were covered (even though one of them, the Spirit Tortoise arc, is largely hated, even by the author). Rather, I blame it on the episode count. It only got 13 episodes compared to Season 1's 25. That is not nearly enough time to go over the events that took place during the two arcs that Season 2 did, as a lot happened during that timeframe. As a result, a lot of content that could've really helped the anime had to be cut and/or condensed despite it being pretty vital to the story. If Season 2 had gotten at least 21 episodes instead of this stupid 12-13 episode trend that's been going on with anime lately then that would've upped the quality of the season by leaps and bounds. Hopefully Season 3 will have more than just 13 episodes and will get better treatment than Season 2 did.

 

[toastghost]

the promised neverland, oh my fucking god the promised neverland. look how they massacred my boy. the promised neverland s1 was flawed cough cough krone but i still thoroughly got invested and the finale is honestly one of my favorite episodes of all the anime i've watched. s2 was an absolute mess, trying to cram in so many story arcs with super vital information just so they can have the finale match up with the ending. i can sometimes excused anime being rushed and too fast-paced, but this was absolutely egregious. like, emma literally met god, and they spent actually 5 seconds on it. it was absolutely ridiculous. just read the manga.

 

[Tactician Karina]

SAO and Tokyo Ghoul had started off pretty great, but later releases weren't really my top favorites even though I still liked them. The former I just felt really captured what SAO was originally about in the beginning, other seasons just introduced characters I either wasn't too fond of or were just added to Kirito's harem just because. For Tokyo Ghoul, I think it deserves a FMA Brotherhood treatment, to really follow the manga.

Initial D was pretty solid all around, but I thought the 3rd Stage movie, 4th Stage, and the Legend trilogy movies were just meh. Not for any real major reason except I just liked the other Stages of the series better.

Black Butler in it's earlier release of the anime I thought was fine, and I'm saying this as someone that still likes the manga. But the second season was just, okay. I still liked it, and found it interesting with characters like Alois and Claude, and even the triplet brothers surprisingly appealed to me, but I felt it could have been fleshed out more as an anime only season. Later releases like Book of Circus, Book of Murder, and Book of the Atlantic were million times better imo, since they started following the manga better.

Kind of reverse of the question, but I thought Hetalia had slightly better later seasons compared to early Axis Powers. I still love the early adaptations, but later seasons introduced more countries and funnier and more wholesome skits.

JJBA is similar to the above as well. Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency are still amazing, but I thought Golden Wind (yes, even before it got it's anime adaptation) was slightly better purely because of the characters it introduced and the setting it take place in. Same with Steel Ball Run, and I tie it along with GW as a bit better compared to other parts (which will most likely stay the same once it's anime adaptation comes out, whenever that is).

 

[Insanish Danish]

This is stretching it a bit since I don't actually dislike any of it, but I liked season 1 of Aggretsuko far more than the rest of the show (although I still need to watch the final season).

 

[Giri]

This is an opinion I don't talk about much but I actually like OG Dragon Ball more than Z

 

[Zexy]

Death Note is the one that immediately came to mind. All is good until

Spoiler

L dies

 

[wanderist]

Surprisingly not very many come to mind. Usually if I liked the first season I like the second just as much if not more.

I think Sword Art Online is probably a bit iffy. First half of first season was mostly good (and was actually...SWORD ART ONLINE), but hated the second arc with a passion. Then second season was the reverse where I disliked Gun Gale but loved the Mother's Rosario arc...so it kinda evens out. I did like both parts of Alicitization, but it wasn't the "if you hate SAO, this will change your mind!!" arc that everyone claimed it would be imo, especially when it started repeating some of my irritations about the series.

Think I also agree with CynthiaLover about the Rising of the Shield Hero. The first season was better just for being longer and having more time to develop things. I did like the second season and I didn't even really hate the turtle arc like everyone else seems to, but it feels like it could have been so much better with 24-25 episodes the first season got. Then again, upon rewatching the first season I didn't really enjoy it as much as I did before anyway.

Sucks to see so many shows in general get screwed by the 12-13 episode limit when they need so much more than that.

Shakugan no Shana (if I'm remembering the name correctly) also somewhat comes to mind. I did love the third season more than the first, but really didn't like the second season. Tbf I think a lot of that may have been because of all the attention on the love triangle though.

 

[Zexy]

Steins; Gate is another one.

0 (the sequel) is... okay-ish but not as good as the original, and it does not have that much suspense either, because of how you kinda know what it will end up as

Unpopular opinion but I do not mind SAO, ok ALO and GGO were not as good (that is the popular part I agree with), but the entire concept of Alicization is better than the original could ever hope to be.

 

[Daenerys]

Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V. The first ~50 episodes which make up the first season are great, but then the quality declined in later episodes and just kept going down. By the final 10 episodes I was just eager for it to be over.

 

[impervious_gakko42]

I remember starting Blue Exorcist S2 with my mum and being so off-put by the bizarre retcon that we went out of our way to make sure we were watching the show in order. We finished the rest of it and liked it well enough, but boy am I glad they're going back (a decade later, mind you) and fixing whatever the hell that decision was.

 

[Palamon]

The Promised Neverland. The second season literally just ruined the entire anime. Just read the manga. Do not watch the second season of the Legend of Neverland. They removed an entire character, and that's just...no. And skipped a lot of stuff. It's just really bad. The first season was great, but they just had to mess up as bad as they did.