When it comes to watching anime, it’s essentially impossible to have any hard and fast rules. After all, just like any other artistic medium, everyone views things differently, as any form of art has and always will be a highly subjective experience. However, one particular informal ‘rule’ of the anime community has been around for many years now: the three-episode rule.
In essence, the three-episode rule is intended to gauge whether a specific anime series will be to a viewer’s liking within the span of three episodes. Supposedly, this is because it takes approximately three episodes for the viewer to gain a firm understanding of the plot and characters, give the anime a chance to reveal any surprise narrative twists or shifts in tone that may suddenly change their mind, and allow any necessary setup or exposition to properly play out before they make a final decision on whether they want to settle in for the entire show.
Why Anime’s 3-Episode Rule Might Have Once Mattered…
While it’s impossible to track who exactly started this ‘rule’ or when, various online forums and blog posts would suggest that it’s been around for at least one to two decades. The rule might seem incredibly arbitrary at first glance, but there are a couple of reasons why it could have stuck with some viewers. The first is that there are indeed some anime that start slowly, only to reveal by Episode 3 a major plot twist that completely turns the show on its head or finish with its setup and get into the real ‘meat’ of the story. Titles such as Steins;Gate, From the New World and Madoka Magica are great examples of this.
The second reason is that, particularly pre-2010s, it was a lot more common for anime to run for two cours (equivalent to 24-26 episodes) or longer. The initial Naruto anime, for instance, began in 2002 and lasted for 220 episodes, and the original Bleach anime started in 2004 and went on for 366 episodes. However, even anime outside of globally popular shonen titles commonly lasted two cours (or more) around this time, regardless of genre, from Cowboy Bebop and Trigun to Ouran High School Host Club and Toradora!. In theory, it could take these shows more time to fully set themselves up than those running for only one cour — approximately 12 episodes — the latter of which is far more common for seasonal shows today.
… But Why It Doesn’t Matter Now – And Probably Never Really Did
Despite these above reasons, anime’s three-episode rule is becoming less and less relevant as time goes on — assuming it ever really meant anything to begin with. Generally speaking, anime hasn’t only gotten shorter in runtime from about the 2010s onward, perhaps negating the need for longer setups; it’s also dramatically increased in terms of quantity. Simply put, the number of anime titles being released per season and per year has been steadily rising ever since anime first appeared on TV.
For example, according to one Reddit user, the number of televised anime released in the year 1990 was just 29. In 2000, it was 59. In 2010, it was 124, and in 2020, it was 179. In other words, the number of anime per season is now somewhere around 40+, whereas it used to be far smaller — and the more choice of titles people have, the less time they will have (or want) to spend on watching three episodes of something that first catches their eye via a summary or trailer. There’s now simply too much anime to do this with every potentially decent show.
In addition, access to all this content is far easier than it once was. Gone are the days when most fans needed to have cable TV and stay up late to be able to watch anime at all without renting it out at a video store. Viewers likely tended to be far more lenient on a series — watching a good chunk or perhaps even the whole thing, even if they didn’t love the show — if they didn’t have the opportunity to see much else. After all, when access to anything is limited, people aren’t inclined to be as picky. However, with faster internet, the rise of fansubs and the introduction of major streaming sites like Funimation and Crunchyroll, access significantly improved; people could now choose from a much wider variety of shows rather than simply tolerate whatever happened to be airing on Toonami/Adult Swim.
Still, perhaps the most compelling argument for why the three-episode rule lacks relevance is that people are capable of deciding for themselves if something is worth sticking with, whether they’re three episodes into an anime or three minutes. Just as it may sound unreasonable that audiences should stick with a book or live-action film for over an hour if they didn’t click with the material before then, it’s equally unreasonable to expect them to stick with an anime for that long before choosing whether to continue. In the end, any story will ideally engage its audience in some way from the very first moment — if not, is it really the viewer at fault, or the story?
