This week's poll was suggested by how_d_i_get_here. Why do you start a series and not finish it?

You can submit poll ideas here
http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?tid=3903

Previous Poll Results:
Question: Do you think the quality of manga is currently declining?
Choices:
Yes, everything only gets worse - votes: 217 (7.1%)
In general, yes, but there are some really good works lately - votes: 1057 (34.5%)
No difference at all - votes: 647 (21.1%)
In general, no, but some new manga are really bad - votes: 958 (31.3%)
No, the new manga are a lot better than older ones - votes: 183 (6%)
There were 3062 total votes.
The poll ended: May 13th, 2023 10:55am PDT

Pretty middle of the road in terms of results

A just ruler amongst tyrants

Plot mostly.
Like with Blood Alone. Art declined dramatically too, but boring plot is the main reason to drop it.

Bad or boring plot. I won´t bother with a proper ongoing if only the art is good and I don´t mind if the art quality drops (fill-in artists became a plague in US comics) as long as I still know what I am looking at. HxH really pushed that and the "fixed" Chimera Ant arc in the tankoubon releases remains an issue in places. The plot 100% carried that manga but it can look good. Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt´s art took a hit for about 2 volumes and never fully recovered due to the artist needing to switch his drawing hand and retraining himself as the manga went along. Neither of these ever stood a chance of being dropped though and HxH´s Jump releases from the 00s are about as bad as it gets! Look it up. Even the unfinished art of Historie in the magazine releases is nothing by comparison.

The so-far least-picked character death option can be a plus for me. Consequences and all that. JoJo Part 6 really picks up once the bodies hit the floor around the 60% mark and remains a blood bath till the end. Even my favorite character from the original universe bites the dust via head split. Metal AF.

I also read EU/US comics and am a librarian.
Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb

Different answers for finishing vs catching up. Barrier to finishing a completed series? Bad or boring plot (including meandering plots! I hate it when a series drags on, esp when it started good). Barrier to catching up a series that's ongoing? Like falling out of an exercise routine, I missed a few chapters and never got back into it. Usually because the plot wasn't compelling enough to begin with but it doesn't mean it's bad.

http://i.imgur.com/LxhWm.jpg (will reformat this some day…)

Like the freakin Energizer bunny, it just keeps going on and on and on and never reaches any conclusion. Seriously HOW many times can one high school kid and his band of plucky friends save the world?!

Some other reason.
Mainly badly executed tropes and consistency. A good example of both would be Eleceed, it's so formulaic it hurts, chapters feel like a checklist destroying any hope of consistency and ruining many tropes.

It's mostly what keeps me from reading most shoujo and josei; I can't stand a the shoujo trope of making the lead intelligent done wrong; and most redeeming qualities for which I judge joseis are the conclusions, but it's really frustrating to see how inconsistent some are after lots of chapters (many tropes involve acting out of character). I mean, the deception hits me unusually hard on those genres.

I don't care how surreal a series is (I find trying to read the intentionality on those especially entertaining). I mean I've read some terrible series. For me, as long as there's some redeeming quality, it's enough to not drop it on the first chapter. If I get bored, but the series still has what I liked, I just write a review and leave it gathering dust on my lists ... Also many manga's have serious issues setting the scene, the tropes involved usually bother me more than a bad plot.

I will regularly drop a series for having bad writing, but I don't consider that a reason for not finishing ones I like but don't finish. I catch up, miss a few releases, life happens, I come back and think to myself "not yet, I'm not feeling it" and then I've not finished it. Same reason I wait over a year to watch an anime I bought that I ended up enjoying.

I'm hoping Pumpkin Scissors gets a proper conclusion before I go back to that one.

I'm a jack of all trades but master of none. Too many jars and not enough hands.

I just fall off for a bit then its hard to jump back into it. What do you mean I'm 100 chapters behind on One Piece?

Most of the case is "Like falling out of an exercise routine, I missed a few chapters and never got back into it." (Though, sometimes it's simply because the plot is boring.)

I usually put this series on hold in my mangaupdates list, like Akagami no Shirayukihime, The Ancient Magus' Bride, Ao no Exorcist, and D.Gray-Man for me. I promise myself to re-read it someday.

Some other reason

The main reason I quit stories nowadays is because they were just so unoriginal.

So many stories nowadays, feel like the author were just following a template, and did not bother to try to put any twist in the story.

Bad or boring plot / characters (I like character-driven stories) (lack of interest isn't always a quality issue) > fell out of routine / lack of access to next chapter or long hiatus / busy with real life, never got back to it

It's easier to have the mental energy for simpler plots, so good-but-complex series are more likely to fall victim to the latter.

I voted some other reason because I also sometimes stop reading a manga when there's only a few chapters left. The reasons vary. I'm more likely to leave it off too long (perhaps waiting for the 'right time' or expecting to recap myself), endings can be dissatisfying, and my attention often drops off before I'm finished something regardless.
Manga is among the easiest media for me to finish, though. If it's a video or non-linear, I'm very unlikely to get through it. (anime, webseries, visual novels, videogames)

Trying to give harsher ratings to series on my lists.

Bad or boring plot, definitely.

my reason is that, sometimes i keep starting new manga when i already have a lot lol, then i forget to read my other manga, but i dont really forget plots much tho

rapid success in unlikely scenarios
you'll happily binge a dozen chapters of world building but then the MC becomes OP and you're sick and angry because there's nothing more to look forward to except more copypasta arcs

I’d say for me mostly when I fall off of a manga is because it’s not being scanlated anymore or taking forever to be scanlated.

I’d generally love to finish out a series especially if it’s been done for years, but nope. Scanlation groups fall off. 😞