Which long-running semi-obscure manga do you want to check out but every time you can't get past the beginning because it's a slog?

[GipoScribantino]

From time to time I see in the list of recently updated titles, these works with over 60 or even 80 chapters that have been going on for years, even decades sometimes.
So, I'm like, let's check them out, I'm free right now, and if it went on to get this many chapters it should be a little interesting.
But, every time I try to start them, something at the beginning really stops me from enjoying it, so I give up and have the little read marker up to like chapter three; then, the manga pops up again a month or later and I try again, because I forgot why I didn't go further, so I reread the last chapter with the marker, get hit by the total slog it is again, and close the reader again, never able to go past it.

I always try to give them a chance because I have met a lot of works that start a bit wonky but get better as they progress, so when I see latest chapter is 87 I want to believe it's such a case.

Have you ever experienced anything like that? Any slog you want to recommend? In the title I wrote semi-obscure because the popular stuff is boring to suggest.

As a practical example to start the discussion, for the past six years or so I tried to give Magi Craft Meister a chance every once in a while, sometimes I even manage to advance if I grit my teeth, because the characters are so insipid and the story so boring there is no way a publisher would keep it going for so long if they didn't know it got interesting at some point. But reading the unfolding of convenient circumstances through some of the most generic dialogues, spoken by non-characters whose only goal is to agree with the protagonist, who barely posseses the concept of a generic personality, is really, really hard and that's merely up to chapter five.

 

[Angry_Panda]

the characters are so insipid and the story so boring there is no way a publisher would keep it going for so long if they didn't know it got interesting at some point.

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Coming at this from the side - so many shonen series start off with really good premises and an interesting core group of characters, and then the first big bad shows up and the pacing... slows... to... a...

...

...crawl. I call this 'shonen creep,' but it shouldn't be confused with power level creep - it's strictly a pacing thing.

(I personally first saw this watching DBZ waaaay back in the day, specifically when Frieza launches an attack that will destroy Namek in five minutes, and TEN. EPISODES. LATER. the planet actually blew up. That was the end of me watching DBZ.)

Your 'high barrier to entry' is a related animal in some respects, and comes in a couple flavors. One is trying to jam too much world-building in up front rather than having that happen organically. This seems to be a sign of an inexperienced author and/or a premise that is so far-fetched that it would be rejected out of hand by a lot of people. Thankfully this is almost always a webcomic thing, since editors exist to deal with these kinds of structural problems, particularly up front when there's a bit more time to sketch out the flow of the series before the regular deadlines start coming.

Another is the 'MC is an asshat/doormat/one-dimensional caricature/otherwise unsympathetic waste of paper' problem - there's plenty of room for character growth, but not if I can't get through the establishing material. This is greatly compounded when the supporting cast is also asshats/etc. I want to say this is a big part of what kept me from taking AoT seriously while it was still running (as opposed to the ending, which is what keeps me from taking it seriously now). Death Note strikes me as being another example.

Yet another is repeated tonal/genre shifts trying to pander to the audience - if something goes from school comedy to rom-com to rom-drama, I'm out. Oddly, while I can't think of any good examples of this off my head in the mangasphere, Cerebus the Aardvark is an epic example of this and one I personally recommend despite all the shifts (and the creator Dave Sim gradually losing his mind toward the end, IMO).

Finally, there's always the sheer intimidation of 'this has been going for how long???' This is what keeps me from getting into JoJo, despite several people telling me I'd enjoy it. I ain't readin' allat.

 

[KATCRX]

The Ravages of Time. It's not easy to read and understand because the plot is too complicated, most of the characters look similar, and their names are hard to remember.