What is that show, movie, or game that came CLOSE to perfection?

[Friendly Allien]

Yeah, what was that piece of media in your mind that just needed one change, one edit, one little addition or removal of something large or small that would have turned something good or even "okay" into something excellent or even perfect?

I leave it to the floor.

 

[Doctor Manhattan]

Rings Of Power. >.> It was pretty awful in my opinion and if they'd just followed the story that Tolkien laid out about Sauron's disguise (in the book) and how the rings were formed I feel like it owuld have been vastly better. Perhaps the rest of it couldn't be saved but it would have been worth trying.

 

[Friendly Allien]

I found RoP to be a misguided venture from the beginning.
Make a Lord of the Rings prequel, but fail to get the license to the Silmarillion, and still do a story about Numenor?

Eeeehhhh...

 

[Revelations]

Game: Legend of Mana. Not sure if it counts as 'one' edit though. The game has so many fun/unique mechanics (Blacksmithing, golem crafting, pet raising, farming, music/magic) that are all some degree of incredible in depth-ness but they are wholly unnecessary to the game as the combat is piss easy. If the gameplay were actually harder and those systems useful, it would easily be an 11/10 game for me.
Show: The Venture bros. It just needed a proper final season to be one of the best animated shows of all time. The movie alleviates some of the sting though... If it gets released.

 

[Mint]

Game(s): Fire Emblem Three Houses, fantastic story and themes. Only held back by a few handful of lackluster characters, and certain plotlines not having the same impact as others. Also if they added a proper 'ending picture' with all the couples who got together by the end of the war that would have made it perfect to me.

Tales of Arise, so close to such a perfect game, fun combat and great characters. Just lost it's way a little near the end of the game and definitely needed a much stronger and believable main villain than the one it got.

Show: Avatar the Last Airbender, only thing holding it back in my personal opinion, was the rating and having to keep everything kid-friendly-- and the ending with Aang sparing the fire-lord being one of my least favorite decisions in the show.

 

[SoleAccord]

Primal completely shit itself in the last episode, and I blame Genndy using one of his ten episodes to create a one shot story that had nothing to do with the main characters. I liked the one shot, but he needed the additional time to wrap up his main story. As the season ended, I wasn't satisfied. The final ten minutes were rushed, the final villain didn't get a satisfactory defeat nor resolution to his own story, and it ended on what I believe to be one of the most uncomfortable, forced sex scenes I've ever witnessed before. It was so good before that last episode.

Dragon Ball Z should've ended with the Cell Saga and I'll die on this hill. Toriyama just did it for the money after that arc concluded and it showed. Mediocrity became acceptable for him. If you cut everything beyond Cell Saga, Dragon Ball Z is as close to perfect as you can get.

Book of Boba Fett would've been more tolerable despite the mediocre dialogue and action scenes if they didn't allow Grogu to return to Din in the finale and completely undo the weight of what happened in The Mandalorian S2 finale. If Grogu will inevitably return, at least let it happen in S3 of their own show. Disney is SCARED as FUCK of letting a big decision matter and returned the show to the status quo in a spinoff ASAP. Shameless and stupid, but safe, and that's all they're really about.

 

[Strange Days]

Bioshock 1&2 come to mind. Remove the entirety of Infinite save Burial At Sea (the only good thing to ever come out of the game) and we're golden. The duology - because yes, that game does not in fact exist to me - stands as a milestone in my love of gaming, adore just about everything from the atmosphere, to the gameplay, to the details the devs put into Rapture feeling alive despite being long gone and decayed.

Perfect games? Nope, such a thing doesn't exist, they have their quirks and shortcomings. But they are high up for me and I love replaying them.

Edit : Should also mention SH2 and RE2. Enough has been said about these games, but my only qualm is being unable to play either in their original format on modern hardware in the EU.

For manga, Slam Dunk. The story should have went a less bittersweet route with Shohoku's last match actually being shown instead of Inoue giving us a half-assed explanation as to why things went like that. It is a very solid series to breeze through.

Malcolm In The Middle is my favorite show, but I really do think the grown-up seasons were less entertaining than the earlier ones. IMO it should have ended a bit sooner, before more kids came into play. That was when I began struggling with its' writing.

Blade Runner for movies. The fact it's been 40 years and a new Ultimate Workprint Ultra-Deluxe Director's Cut still keeps resurfacing is getting tiresome. Just give us a real definitive format, that movie's amazing without five additional seconds of Harrison Ford eating a bowl of noodles or staring into L.A.'s polluted sky.

 

[Triss Merigold]

It needs far more than one or two edits at this point but Netflix's version of The Witcher universe had so much potential, I get that they didn't want to just make the show just like the books to a point but it still just fell flat. CD projekt red added to the books story and it was awesome, the world is nicely set up for all kinds of cool new stories but the writers seem more interested in rewriting the source material than coming up with additional stories, which I thought was the whole point of buying franchise rights was to build on what was there, not rewrite what you just bought.