This week's poll was suggested by Karonhioktha. At what point do you decide to give a series a rating? Do you do the metaphorical judging the book by its cover?

You can submit poll ideas here: https://www.mangaupdates.com/topic/kilkdnn/site-manga-poll-suggestions

Previous Poll Results:

Question: If the original is R19 (i.e., rated R), is it okay to adapt it into R15 (i.e., rated PG-13)?

Choices:

• Yes - votes: 703 (29.6%)
• No - votes: 1156 (48.6%)
• No opinion - votes: 519 (21.8%)

There were 2378 total votes. The poll ended: March 29, 2025

But sales are better when it's a broader audience...

A just ruler amongst tyrants

My first rating is After reading the first few chapters but I continually revaluate the series while I read it. It usually gets a worst rating as I continue reading.

Internet Lurker At Heart

I'm not fully awake and I accidentally misclicked and voted for "halfway through" instead of "after I finish" 😅

But anyway, it really depends. Sometimes I can get a pretty good feel for how good/bad a series is early on, while other times it's less clear how well things will be handled and you just need to give it more time to see how everything plays out.

I usually personally prefer to wait to rate a series until either it's finished or there are a good number of chapters out unless I have strong feelings about the series just so I can be reasonably confident in my rating and I won't worry too much about misleading people, however that's not a hard and fast rule, it really just depends on the series in question and how I feel about it.

In general, I think it's useful to have ratings and reviews on series that are still ongoing because it helps people decide if they want to start them or not. If I've rated a series that's still ongoing and my opinion changes on it, I can always just change my rating to reflect that, it's not like my rating is set in stone.

And if I drop a series after only a few chapters and dislike it enough to give it a negative rating, it's probably because I think it's so bad that I highly doubt there's much of a chance of the series improving or making up for how bad it was at the start. Series that are very obviously badly written right from the start rarely have a sudden drastic increase in quality.

Usually after completing the whole series (or dropping it), but sometimes after catching up to translations too. In the second case, it's usually when the translations already have many chapters so I already have my general opinion of the story or when I have very strong feelings.

After finishing... With those three options in parentheses... I don't always rate but when i do i am usually either dropped it or all caught up...

I am envoy from nowhere in nowhere. Nobody and nothing have sent me. And though it is impossible I exist. © Trimutius

I'm so so glad for the clarity on "After I finish reading it"

Because I first read just that, and was like "well... I do sometimes give ongoing series ratings..." and then I saw that you included "catching up to translations" which perfectly captures when I have given series ratings.

So yeah. That one.

Quote from kurotaito

My first rating is After reading the first few chapters but I continually revaluate the series while I read it. It usually gets a worst rating as I continue reading.

If your rating usually goes down over time it sounds like you are abysmally bad at evaluating manga early on and should probably stop doing so.

While I took this poll to mean "a rating you assign on this website", my INTERNAL rating is always ongoing, and very very rarely changes unless either there's a major, long-lasting quality shift or the manga has an ending that ruins what the author seemed to be building towards.

In my experience, most manga stay relatively consistent. An 8/10 manga on chapter 10 is usually still an 8/10 a couple hundred chapters later, unless either the author runs out of ideas and refuses to end their series in a timely manner (which does reduce the rating, like Bleach) or the author needed time to build up some absurd worldbuilding that opens the reader up to a new way of experiencing the series (which increases the rating, like One Piece).

The only exceptions to the above are manga that start out 10/10, because maintaining that standard is extremely hard (Death Note, the last 1/3 was not as good as the rest... aside from chapter 107 which was insanely peak), and manga that start out garbage but the author listens to feedback (from both editors and audience) and improves something fundamental to their storytelling. The latter category usually gets canceled before it can be improved but some webmanga, which are extremely cheap to publish in comparison to print manga, fall into that category where they are initially bad but get better for reasons other than worldbuilding.

If your rating usually goes down over time it sounds like you are abysmally bad at evaluating manga early on and should probably stop doing so.

In my experience, most manga stay relatively consistent.

Have you considered that maybe your experience (which sounds based on your example mostly limited to popular shounen manga) is not universal? Like I don't want to be rude, but you certainly don't seem to have that same compunction.

There are other genres out there, and while this site is "mangaupdates", for a long time now manhwa and manhua have been included, and they've dramatically grown in global popularity over the years (especially manhwa), so just because your typical shounen manga usually stays consistent doesn't mean that's the case for everything out there.

I can definitely say from personal experience that it's extremely common for the art, pacing, and story to suffer and fluctuate over time with rofan manhwa for example, especially ones that are novel adaptations. I'm sure a lot of it has to do with how brutal the deadlines are in the manhwa industry and how companies don't treat their artists well, but that's a whole other discussion.

I wait until I've finished the series, or until I've read all the translated chapters.

There are a ton of factors in the second half of a series that can impact a rating: a fantastic or bad ending, shifts in tone/themes, plot twists, pacing, art improvements, etc... I don't pay attention to written reviews where the person states that they've read only a few chapters, unless they're talking about a specific event within the first few chapters that would cause me to throw the manga in the bin.

I very rarely rate anything; I do so usually when I particularly love or loathe a work — basically, only when I have strong feelings and some proper basis for said feelings. I never rate something for simply agreeing or disagreeing with my preferences; as much as possible I try to restrict my ratings to discernment of quality (which is related but not the same thing).

When ever I bother to rate a work, I make sure that I have finished it, have read a significant portion of the work before dropping it, or have read everything translated (if the work has been dropped by translators for quite some time).

Once I catch up to the translation, or unless the story breaks my suspension of disbelief before then. This usually results in beyond the first few chapters but definitely not half-way through.

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

Quote from HikaruYami

I'm so so glad for the clarity on "After I finish reading it"

If your rating usually goes down over time it sounds like you are abysmally bad at evaluating manga early on and should probably stop doing so.

In my experience, most manga stay relatively consistent.

The only exceptions to the above are manga that start out 10/10, because maintaining that standard is extremely hard.

Fully agree with this. Unless you're handing out ratings with only 6 chapters published or something, edge cases where a series' quality drops significantly are rare. (Although I'm preemptively excluding Korean-style manhwa seasons, the kind that should definitely be a different entry just like animes. Compare the situation between Solo Leveling and SL Ragnarok vs Villainess Reverses the Hourglass and its retcon-filled season 2)

I give series rating after first 10 to 20 chapters, which is like prolog, just getting idea what is manga about. Of course this rating can change down the path.

I totally back this up as another rofan reader. I honestly think its somewhat important to rate early, because that's how you can tell other people how the series is going at the present moment. Do you wait to start a series when its finished and the rating is settled OR do you start while the series is ongoing? If its ongoing, what do you use to evaluate if you should start it?

Internet Lurker At Heart

I'll rate something after the first few chapters, and then if my opinion on it changes as I continue reading it, I'll change my rating. Simple as that.

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::End of Transmission::

I tend to forget to do ratings, but when I do...

Of the poll options, "About halfway through" is the closest.

The cover/synopsis/first few chapters might encourage me to start/continue reading.

After I've read what feels like a significant amount of it, I'll assign a rating - which I'll periodically update as necessary as the series gets noticeably better/worse until its completion.

If I write a review/comment, I'll usually include my progress at time of writing and a rating and I'll update the text as well to reflect significant changes as required.

First few chapters or earlier is too soon as there are some series take a while for the plot to unfold, and others that start off strong and then it's all downhill.