>>279867671
>They are disjointed, long, dry, and not funny at all.
This is how I felt about the early episodes. Many of them felt like fever dreams of disjointed events. Especially the ones where Ataru is taken to another planet or the episodes where they parody folk tales/samurai soap operas (which is like every other episode for a couple seasons).

Having said that, the appeal of the show to a lot of people is the absurdist/off the wall style of humor. And episodes where they purposefully don't have a conclusion. And it's just not my kind of thing. This is why when the show started focusing more on character arcs and more traditional plots for that one season, I really liked it. But I understand why so many fans of the show ended up not liking these episodes and movies like Beautiful Dreamer. I probably would have never watched the show if I had just started the show. But I ended up seeing Beautiful Dreamer first and so I went in hoping for more like that. And I got it. But only sparatically across the show. Like 1-2 episodes every season or so. And then that one season where almost every episode was like it. So of course I liked those ones the most.