Most of the greatest Japanese series start sloooooooooooooooooow. Have you ever tried to watch Golion, Zeta Gundam, Macross, Escaflowne, Gankutsuou, Fullmetal Alchemist, Dragonball, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Gundam Wing, and One Piece? All of those start out very slowly.

That doesn't really change the fact that it's slow and maybe they'd be even better if they weren't slow to start?

Hey, a guy can guess right?

Den-O 9 and 10-

this is probably my favorite episodes so far :lol

Outside of Ghost in the Shell SAC, you can't get much better than those series I listed.

My problem is less with the slowness and more with the time wasting, when you tell me a show gets 'good' x episode in, it usually means it STARTS there. Like as said, most of the stuff introduced before Date in OOO is completely throwaway and although we do get some good character moments the character arcs don't really kick in til Date appears, nor does the plot. That basically means almost half of the show can be skipped. And that isn't mentioning all the shows that people have said kick into gear thirty episodes in or beyond, it's nuts. It's nuts and it's even crazier that the community just seems to accept it.

With the way American TV works, I can kinda understand why it has filler even if I don't like it but when working on these series they know from the get go they are going to have fifty episodes (unless something major happens) so you think there'd be no filler, no wasted episodes, it'll all be completely focused....but it isn't and it's so frustrating.

Dude, you are talking about series that would work best being like 30 episodes but have to be 50 episodes to fill out an entire year. We have no choice but to accept it. This happens to ever series that is that long whether it be Sentai, Kamen Rider, or Gundam. However, I'd rather have 10 filler episodes than 10 clip shows.

I'd rather that the creative team knew they had fifty episodes to work with and worked out a creativity map for their series so no episode is wasted. The attitude of 'well we have fifty episodes but we've made enough for twenty and we'll just pad out the rest' is unacceptable and the way that Toku fans just accept it is really shocking to me.

It's odd that the internet bitches and moans about the smallest of things and yet other injustices they simply accept.

I wouldn't call it an injustice....but then again, I don't mind filler as long as it entertains me.

I suppose I'm more lenient with certain types of filler, particularly the overly comedic kind.

Sure I'm not so much of a fan of it now, but when I rewatched MMPR it was clear those kind were the kind of episode I remembered and enjoyed the most as a child. I just assume a similar situation applies for the Japanese audience.