I don't score an anime until I've completely finished watching it. That's just because I try to look at an anime holistically; there have been so many times where I thought I had an anime totally figured out, but then a single episode completely changed how I feel, and put the previous episodes into a new perspective. Or made me invested in a way that I just wasn't, before.
It's just personal preference, but I'm in no hurry to try and score an anime on the basis of the first episode (or even the first three), and I'd much rather wait until the dust has settled and I've had more time to consider the anime as a whole. And I try really, really hard to utilize the full scale that MAL offers, so that my scores are reflective of my own subjectivity and whatever objectivity I can figure out, while watching. It's nice when my personal feelings relatively coincide with the score that I comfortably feel an anime 'deserves', but a lot of the times they just really don't, and I think that's okay, too.
So that said, I absolutely do go back and change scores frequently, and I think it's really healthy to do so! I always want my scores to reflect how I feel + and what I think about an anime in the current moment. If an anime has had lasting impact for me, I'd like to show that, and if an anime has fallen out of favor with me over time, I'd like to show that, too.
I'm not at all married to a score, so I'll change things based on a few factors:
- I've just watched an anime of a similar concept and realized it just did everything the other show did, but so much better.
- I watched the OVA for the anime and it gave me a new perspective on the main series itself.
- I've rewatched an anime and realized it doesn't quite deserve the score I originally gave it.
I do try to be careful about changing scores after a rewatch, though, because I realize that the impact of your first time watching an anime can't really be replicated, and it's not always fair to an anime to change the score based on that alone. (For a lot of them, that 'first time watching impact' is key!) But in a lot of cases, it just has to do with understanding that the anime just doesn't hold the same place of importance to me, as it did when I first watched it ages ago. Generally I'll only move scores up or down by 1, unless something super glaring makes me feel that it should have a much higher or lower place in my list. |