Growing the Beard/Anime and Manga

"Prussia: Stupid animation department, not letting me be in the anime just because I'm not an official country any more..."
 * While the first arc of Naruto was well-recieved, the series started growing with the Chunin Exam Arc. We're introduced to the Big Bad of part 1 as well as many Ensemble Darkhorses, and characters such as Naruto and Sakura start showing their signs of Character Development.
 * Regarding the Shippuden anime, after the tragedy that is Episode 167, and after the subsequent Filler Hell duo, the series started picking the hell up. First was Naruto vs. Kyuubi, an incredible climax to a lifelong battle. Then came Naruto's birth story, which had movie-quality animation and a new OST to boot. After that came the Fourth Great Ninja War, complete with new CG rendering in scenes (due to the tens of thousands of people/Zetsus).
 * In the case of the Oh My Goddess! manga, it's "Growing The Ponytail". The series began somewhat crude and crass, and the main cast was comprised of only Keiichi and Belldandy, who then had long, silvery hair. As the series evolved and more characters were added, Kösuke Fujishima started making her (and her sister goddesses, Urd and Skuld, when they joined) look less Asian and more European. By the time Fujishima had gotten a firm handle on the character designs (with Belldandy in blonde hair in a bun and ponytail, with some dangling for good measure), the series had more or less become a light-hearted romantic-comedy.
 * Interestingly enough, the OVA (which debuted while the manga was still Growing the Beard) and the TV series (which debuted well after the manga had settled down) have Belldandy in a more European-style blue, gold, and white outfit the first time she appears, and with blonde hair in a bun and ponytail, and both series follow the light-hearted romantic-comedy formula to a "T". In other words, the "beard" had already been grown.
 * Magical Project S: Although it parodies the magical girl genre, never takes itself seriously and taking into account that this is a subjective trope from episode 19 you can see that besides the ever present jokes, there is an actual change of the status quo thanks to character development. It goes beyond being a parody show and adds psychological complexity to some characters (particularly Misao/Misa) that lead and from this point the characters were taken seriously beyond (but retaining) comic relief.
 * Noir. The first few episodes were basically filler. The sixth episode "Lost Kitten" was a truly touching moral dilemma. After that it was crime thrillers and ancient conspiracy and female gunslinging action to the climax.
 * The first four episodes of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha often scare people off, as it looks like your usual Magical Girl fare. Girl gets powers, fights Monster of the Week, rinse, repeat, and the animation style jumps about quite a bit. Then the plot does a turnaround, removes the Monster of the Week entirely, and adds the Dark Magical Girl and the space battle cruiser staffed by military-uniform garbed mages.
 * The trend is continued in the following seasons, A's and StrikerS, as the story transforms into a psychologically complex, multi-dimensional saga.
 * Gantz, for the first nine volumes (and the whole anime series), consists of senseless killings; gory, horrific violence; Fan Service; and sex scenes. Thanks to the introduction of Tae Kojima and impressive Character Development for Kurono, however, the manga has since improved immeasurably.
 * Digimon Adventure started out as a fun, if typical, Trapped in Another World Mons series. Things picked up at around episode 21, but it wasn't until the introduction of Vamdemon/Myotismon (an incredibly iconic villain for children's anime, even after a decade) that the series really hit its stride.
 * Digimon Tamers: After some slow, character-building episodes, the show grew it's beard with episodes 13 and 14, becoming basically Digimon taken a few lessons from The Iron Giant and Neon Genesis Evangelion to give a whole new kind of Digimon anime that's heartwrenching, terrifying, and awesome.
 * Digimon Savers starts off as "GeoGreymon victim of the week" series but starts to pick up with the introduction of Falcomon. Then Kurata shows his hand and the fun begins...
 * Digimon Xros Wars showed great improvement by the introduction of DarkKnightmon and began to really hit its' stride with the commencement of the Death Generals arc, the reintroduction of traditional evolution and the conflict with Yuu Amano.
 * Witch Hunter Robin was rather blah through its first twelve episodes or so, featuring a rather episodic plot involving the protagonists hunting down random witches in an almost Monster of the Week format. All that changed during "Loaded Guns", when Since Witch Hunter Robin was a single-season show it's probable that this was deliberate.
 * Blue Gender. The first ten episodes or so, out of twenty-six, are set on Earth. They're relatively lackluster, feeling more like a rip-off of Starship Troopers with a touch of Mobile Suit Gundam than anything else. They're also very episodic, and you can easily skip most of the first half... then Marlene and Yuji get to Second Earth, and the series takes a sharp turn towards fucking awesome. The introduction of Yuji's Evil Counterpart,, helps. The introduction of Newtypes B-cells helps too.
 * Fans of Mai-HiME believe that it grew its beard at its eighth episode, with events that kick off an Ancient Conspiracy's intervention and cause a breakaway from the hitherto-formulaic plot.
 * For the first 20 or so episodes, Gao Gai Gar was not particularly impressive and seemed to be a simple, poorly constructed Transformers ripoff like its predecessors... around episode 26, however, the first Big Bad reveals his hand, the truly epic fights begin, and the animation budget grows notably more robust. Then episode 31 occurs and the handbrake is removed from the wheels of badassery.
 * Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle changed from a lighthearted series full of ShoutOuts to past CLAMP series into a much darker story once the group arrived in Acid Tokyo and several startling character revelations took place. Main character Fay also physically exemplified this trope by allowing his hair to grow out after this story arc. IF you consider Darker and Edgier to be better. Some fans were put off by the unrelenting gloominess of the next three arcs, but the complexity of the plot and characterization certainly mushroomed.
 * Some argue that the complexity of the plot mushroomed a little bit too much.
 * Jubei-chan had about 7/10 comedy and 3/10 action. Then the sequel came, improved animation quality and turned that ratio on its head.
 * Trigun's first few episodes can be accurately described as "The Wacky Adventures Of Vash & Friends". That all changed in the twelfth episode, which set up an overarching plot to a previously fillerish show.
 * Arguably long before that. As early as the end of episode 2, we see evidence that Vash might not be the incredibly lucky but naive fool that he's appeared to be up to that point, and by the end of episode 5 any remaining shreds of doubt are removed. (Granted, the Brilliant Dynamites Neon episodes do occur after that, but it gets better again.)
 * Eureka Seven was a quirky but tepid mecha anime for most of its first half, and most of its watchers were rather ambivalent towards it on its first Adult Swim airing. Then came the first-season finale, which, along with a marked increase in animation quality, set the stage for the rest of the show and was a wonderful Crowning Moment of Heartwarming in its own right. Then the real fun began...
 * Some saw the improvement of the series purely in the fact that Renton wasn't beaten up every other episode anymore.
 * According to the Word of God and That Other Wiki, this was planned by the writers in advance: first give us a Shonen-y love drama and then without a warning, turn the whole show into an epic of mind-blowing proportions.
 * Though the episodes before it had had their highlights, the conflict at Narita in episodes 10 & 11 of Code Geass marked the point at which the plot hit its stride and entertaining plotlines were produced both for Zero's rebellion and Lelouch's life at Ashford.
 * The Akira manga picks up a lot of steam at the point where, transforming from an edgy cyberpunk story about unravelling the mystery behind a group of psychic kids to an intricate, psychologically and politically riveting  . The animé ends just at the point where the manga gets much richer and more involved. This may have been a wise filmmaking choice, since it would have taken what, four, five hours to even dent the plot of the last half of Akira?
 * The Mahou Sensei Negima manga does this around volume three, when it begins to switch from an Unwanted Harem comedy to an action series with the arrival of Evangeline. It really hits its stride at the end of the Kyoto Arc, around volume 6. Unfortunately, the anime adaptation didn't get that far.
 * Katekyo Hitman Reborn had a basically stagnant plot until Volume 9 with . The story and plot got a lot more interesting, hitting its stride during the   and kept getting better from there. Even the art got better.
 * Gun X Sword starts a bit slow and episodic... and then at the end of the sixth episode, That moment starts the show's momentum going, and it never loses it until the end.
 * R.O.D. The TV starts off very slow and episodic, with only the most superficial of connections to Read or Die and a strange amount of time spent on Anita going to school. Then the show gets a kick in the rear.
 * Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure begins as what could best be described as Fist of the North Star with vampires for its first two arcs (Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency). With the Stardust Crusaders arc it really comes into its own with the introduction of battle spirits called "Stands" and does away with the Hokuto Shinken-esque martial arts used in the previous storylines. And in Part 4, the art noticeably begins to shift away from looking like Fist of the North Star and develops a completely unique style. Not to mention that, in Part 3, Joseph literally grows a beard.
 * Mobile Suit Gundam SEED is rather slow-paced for the first 30 or so episodes (basically, every episode generally follows the ZAFT-attacks-Kira-saves-the-day routine; that these episodes are more or less a R Emake of the original Gundam series doesn't exactly help), but after a few Wham Episodes SEED finally escapes this routine and sets off on a path to its own original, epic Grand Finale. To its defense, the first episodes do a good job of familiarizing and endearing the characters to the audience.
 * People had mixed views about the first tweleve episodes of Gundam AGE. While not necessarily as bad as the Fan Dumb was predicting it would be, it seemed that AGE would be a kids version of Gundam with battles that were nothing to write home about. Then Episode 13 aired, which packed loads of action and Crowning Moments Of Awesome. The series followed that up with Episode 14, which proved to be a massive Tear Jerker to even those who loathed the series. And after that, Sunrise brought us Episode 15, which revealed that the Unknown Enemy's identity in what could be the biggest Wham Episode ever for an AU Gundam series. Add the sudden shift in the series' tone and you have what many fans are now calling a strong AU installment.
 * One Piece was always fairly unique as a shonen manga with its blend of action and humor. The first few arcs are decent, but not terribly notable. This changed with the Arlong Arc, combining great action scenes, suspense and character development that captivated the audience and made them really want to see Arlong rightfully ground into the dirt. And it's only gone up from there. This is the source of a common advice for people considering if they want to read it or not is "Read it up to the Arlong Arc. If you don't like it after that, it's not the series for you."
 * Don't forget how throughout the series the Big Bad  himself has been growing a beard.
 * Candy Boy turns more and more into an emotional Slice of Life series with each subsequent episode, especially from the introduction of Kanade and Yukino's little sister Shizuku onward. Not bad for a show that was originally a one-time affair based around the gimmick of twin sisters who like each other much more than average.
 * Last Exile spends the first three episodes with next to no plot development, only going into high gear around episode 4. Some fans push this ahead further to episode 7, when Dio is introduced.
 * The Axis Powers Hetalia was always a light hearted and cute Anime, but the third season (Named independently from the first three as "World Series") has a distinct Darker and Edgier feel, with darker colouring, more visible lines, better quality and more fluid animations, along with more original plots to go alongside the ones from the manga, it's also much funnier than the first two seasons.
 * Not to mention it now contains PRUSSIA! Which probably adds to the humour department.


 * Princess Tutu is a good, but fairly typical Magical Girl series -- until Kraehe shows up.
 * And if THAT doesn't convince you, wait until after the Happily Ever After ending of episode 13. It doesn't stay that way for long.
 * Transformers Armada started out as a sub-par Gotta Catch Em All series, not improving at all until midway through the show's run when they did a heel-face turn with Starscream (who became a much more shades of grey character as far as honor went) as well as introducing Armada's surrogate Starscream, the villainous, backstabbing Thrust.
 * The improvement first began with "Rebellion", when Sidways really starts to manipulate. By Starscream's Heel Face Turn, the beard is full and bushy. By his SECOND Heel Face Turn, it's like the show's face is one bristly hedgehog full of beard hair.
 * Then Unicron showed up.
 * Also giving us the first Unicron toy ever to reach mass release.
 * Also applies to Transformers Cybertron. After Armada had finished its run and been replaced by the dismal series known as Transformers Energon, fans were pleased to see humans who weren't annoying, a plot that made sense while staying strong throughout its run, a decent dub and enough CMOA's to make a very decently sized page.
 * The original Getter Robo manga, despite being an influential and important series for the Humongous Mecha genre, is still a fairly typical shonen action comic with some shaky art. When the series was revived 15 years later in Getter Robo Go, now under the full creative control of Ken Ishikawa, things really started to take off.
 * Nurarihyon no Mago started off as a fairly average shounen manga, about a quarter-youkai boy who's meant to be the next head of a youkai clan but just wants to live a normal life. But once much of its sparse fandom agrees that the story took a sharp turn upwards.
 * Muhyo and Roji gets quite a bit more interesting than a Ghost Of The Week series when Enchu is revealed as a Big Bad, but the series truly gets interesting after is revealed as a traitor, when the plot shifts to the war against the evil Ark organization.
 * Okay, Kannazuki no Miko is a Twelve Episode Anime, but it still grows a definite beard halfway through. Be patient with the silly mechas and shonen anime clichés -- when Chikane's issues take centre stage, that's when things are about to get way the hell more interesting.
 * Monster really takes its time setting up its characters and situations, so that for its first 20-some episodes it appears to be a warmed-over Fugitive knockoff with a doctor on the run from the law helping people he meets while trying to find the real perpetrator. Then we get a complete shift in focus to Dr. Reichwein and some other new characters being affected by Johan's plans, with the series taking on a much stronger focus on uncovering Johan's backstory rather than simply chronicling Tenma's travels.
 * Clannad was always a decent high school romance comedy, but it arguably REALLY proved its depth at the end of episode 18 when the other girls realised they had to give up on Tomoya because he loved Nagisa, and in episode 19 when Tomoya ran away from his broken home and moved in with Nagisa's family.
 * Similarly, after ~After Story~ trimmed its beard by falling back into high school filler for the first eight episodes, it came back with a vengeance in episode 10 when -get this- Tomoya graduates and gets a job! Not the kind of thing normally seen in high school romance comedy, is it? The beard grows even longer in episode 12 when and by the end of episode 16  this series has the kind of beard you expect to see in The Guinness Book of Records.
 * Rurouni Kenshin's first season, while mostly good, is more episodic, occasionally silly, and bogged down with filler. The drama and character development ramp way up with the onset of the Kyoto Arc.
 * Which starts with episode 28, so it's actually quite a lot of silliness and villain of the week that you're being asked to sit through before you even get a whiff of the real plot.
 * Berserk: around volume 9 where stuff starts hitting the fan.
 * The Manga's first arc (wich looks like shallow tortureporn at first) starts to grow the beard when  It's the first sign of the layered storytelling that the manga currently is known for.
 * Speaking of Berserk, the anime had a well-written but very slow start. It really gets interesting at episode 15.
 * Fist of the North Star starts off as a series of loosely connected story arcs where one thing leads to another. It isn't until the introduction of Kenshiro's three honorary brothers in the ways of Hokuto Shinken and their dispute over who will become the successor is where the main story truly begins.
 * Queens Blade probably scares potential viewers off with its Hentai-inspired character designs, Fan Service up the wazoo and copious amounts of Fetish Fuel. After a few episodes it begins presenting a rather gripping story and compelling characters, even though a lot of people may still be distracted by the show's huge focus on well-endowed female bodies.
 * Chocotto Sister makes an almost seamless transition from a Fan Service-laden Moe-vehicle to an emotional rollercoaster-ride, leading to some very well-executed tear jerkers near the end.
 * Bleach grows the beard as soon as Rukia gets captured as the first true arc begins.
 * Prétear starts out as a rather stereotypical and average Magical Girl Show, at least until shows up. Afterwards it
 * Ghost in The Shell Stand Alone Complex has a few rather unremarkable episodes at the beginning, basically introducing the members of Section 9 and the technology they use. With the fourth episode, the Laughing Man story arc kicks in.
 * Umi Monogatari starts rather formulaic, with a fair amount of fanservice (especially surrounding Marin) and a Monster of the Week pattern--until the Mood Whiplash halfway through, when the story becomes much darker and laden with symbolism about intimacy and separation. The excellent music helps too.
 * There are several things about early episodes of Urusei Yatsura that make them less well liked by fans of the series than subsequent ones. The art style is very primitive, the scripts contain primarily simplistic slapstick humor, and the majority of the episodes consisted of two separate stories (each occupying half of the episode's running time). After about 20 episodes, the drawing style began to improve noticeably, the two-part episode structure was dropped, the humor became more subtle and sophisticated, and there were occasionally more serious stories.
 * Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: The end of the first part with.
 * Some people believe that  was the moment the show started Growing the Beard, because it stopped being   and started focusing a lot more on Character Development, and how everybody was affected by , and how the characters became much more likable with more personality implemented, not that they didn't have any before.
 * Some believe it was the fact that after, the comedy and action stopped intertwining during the episodes. While the comedy was still there, the action took center stage during a battle, and it slowly but surely became the kind of mecha series it was parodying.
 * Shuffle! really got better and more dramatic with the beginning of Nerine and Lycoris' arc.
 * Itazura Na Kiss does this in tandem with They Do - the  of the first season is in many ways the real beginning, because it drops most of the exaggerated Rom Com Dead Horse Tropes in favor of a more grown-up plot.
 * Ouran High School Host Club does this in the manga. It starts off as an Affectionate Parody and slowly begins to grow the beard as we learn more about the characters and their past. As the story has gone on we've seen considerable character development, particularly with Hikaru and Kaoru. Tamaki also matures a bit (while still remaining the lovable idiot), and . Despite the story turning more toward drama, it hasn't sacrificed the humor.
 * Full Moon wo Sagashite does this in the anime. It takes a good 30 episodes of happy fluffy fun times (if you forget the protagonist is going to eventually become mute due to a throat tumour or, alternatively, die) before things start getting serious and very emotionally hard-hitting. The second half of the anime is very nearly unrecognisable from the first.
 * Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood did this when it departed from material covered already in the 2003 series, but particularly in episode 19 when
 * The manga itself did this quite early. The manga's first book seems to set the series as a Mystery of the Week format, where the two brothers journey around and solve various problems via alchemy. As soon as Edward and Alphonse reach Central and meet up with Mustang, the story turns into a longer single arc.
 * The 2003 anime also started off as a very high-quality though fairly typical Mystery of the Week series where Adventure Towns were the main source of the plot. However, around the time of, it finally started to evolve into a truly dark and compelling drama. By the time Ed fought Greed, its beard had grown out to roughly ZZ Top proportions.
 * Macross 7 picks up around episode 17, with the separation of City 7 from the fleet, and picks up once again in episode 27 with the creation of Sound Force.
 * After numerous false starts, Kiddy Girl-and manages to find its stride halfway through the series. True, it never reaches the emotional heights of its predecessor, but the story becomes much more serious and digestible--although Ascoeur's perpetually childish demeanor remains an ... uhm ... acquired taste.
 * Blood Plus gets a bit better around the time Saya grows her hair out. It makes sense since so many things happened right before her hair style changed: . Not that there wasn't more angst, but the second half of the series was both more entertaining and more memorable.
 * Rosario to Vampire started as a lighthearted, Monster of the Week, Unwanted Harem comedy with relatively little depth to the characters. Starting somewhere around the Witch Hill arc and introduction of Ruby, the series had already started to develop a more realistic artistic style and more dangerous villains. With Witch Hill, the series took a huge swerve by entirely chucking the whole Monster of the Week thing in favor of significant character development, the ongoing backstory of Tsukune's ghoul transformation, multi-issue story arcs, blurring the line on how "evil" many of the bad guys are and focusing on some truly depressing subjects. Season 2 is flat-out Seinen with little resemblance to the series start.
 * The first season of Fushigi Yuugi leads one to think it will be a typical Happily Ever After Magical Girl story. It's slightly violent, a few deaths of Mooks and the like, but the main characters always survive unscathed... until the first season finale, where From that point on, the series takes a much darker turn,.
 * The end of the first season of Revolutionary Girl Utena doesn't quite mark the point where the series becomes dark ... it's just the point where the viewer realizes how dark it's been. Getting people to sit through the first arc can be a challenge.
 * Tenchi in Tokyo's low point has to be the thirteenth episode, 'Moon Mission'. Starting on the next episode however, the series takes a turn for the better, going exploring the family dynamic as the girls go their separate ways due to Yugi's plans.
 * Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ has one of these somewhere around episode 20. Up until then, the show had been incredibly light-hearted and silly, to the point where enemy elite mooks were painting roses in the sky with their mecha before going out to get shot to death. But Mainly considered to be Cerebus Syndrome, though.
 * The Yu-Gi-Oh manga originally is a fairly episodic series where Yami Yugi plays various dangerous games against one-shot bad guys to punish them for their evil natures. However, when former one-shot bad guy Seto Kaiba returned as a Big Bad and started an Amusement Park of Doom, it resulted in a story arc in which Yugi's friends finally learn of Yami Yugi's existence. From then on, things became much more story-oriented and dramatic.
 * Puella Magi Madoka Magica starts off as a fairly standard, if somewhat ominous Magical Girl series. Then, come episode 3, viewers were left screaming, at which point it became clear just what sort of series they were dealing with.
 * Starting about halfway through the series (roughly around the 14th episode), the legendary anime Neon Genesis Evangelion abruptly swaps over from a light -hearted scifi Shonen series about super robots fighting towering, nightmarish creatures, with special focus on its characters' relationships and insecurities, to a noticeably more Post Modern, existential, and psychoanalytical work of character drama and art-text-mystery play. The robot-vs-creature fights, fewer and further between, become substantially darker and more traumatic (one might even argue grotesque), increasing emphasis is placed upon disquieting mysteries seemingly surrounding everything, and beloved characters who had been shown to be emotionally fragile and dependant are gradually revealed to be downright psychologically broken, or are emotionally tortured until they break. Eventually, around the last two episodes, the series grows its beard out to truly impressive lengths and abandons all its own narrative precedents to become a kaleidoscopic investigation into the psychology of the main character, thereby codifying the Gainax Ending. It ultimately becomes an experimental deconstruction of Shonen anime and escapist fantasy fiction, exploring the symbolic relationships between the Humongous Mecha, the characters, creatures they fight, the organization that created the mecha, and the audience and creators of the show itself. It was these changes in tone that would provide Evangelion with much of its most rabid and enduringly massive fanbase, and bring it unprecedented levels of cultural respect both generally and, especially, within the humanities crowd, which at the time was extremely rare for a Shonen anime.
 * The anime version of Lucky Star suffered from a very poor director in its first four episodes. It was bad enough that the producers actually canned him and had him replaced, after which the series takes a noticeable turn for the better, with the sixth episode being a Beach Episode. Unfortunately, this is like many other cases in that it's hard to get your friends into it when the first episode spends twenty minutes talking about how to eat a pastry.
 * Saint Seiya Omega Grew a beard in episode 8, when the bearded Iolias, Golden Saint of Capricorn revealed himself as a Villain and a traitor, he is pretty damn badass for his age beating the snot out of Pegassus Koga.
 * The later chapters of Kodomo No Jikan tone back the overaggressive lolicon antics in favor of much darker storylines deconstructing the reasons behind Rin's behavior, as well as changing the relationship between Rin and Aoki such that the latter is actually concerned for the former rather than annoyed by the unwanted attention.