Disagree there, Miles. There's easy to construct reasons why certain series succeed and others fail, it's not a random number generator. Saiyuki, for example, failed simply because of its slow start (it wasn't until Chapter 9 when the manga left the protagonists house) and heavy use of exposition over action. Also Ryunosuke's dad putting him in solitary confinement in Chapter 1. That...wasn't something readers took kindly to.
I believe you can find quite a few examples where something had average or mediocre early chapters, that still managed to survive.
During Black Clover launch round, most ppl predicted that, assuming any of the 4 series survived, it would be either Cyborg Roggy or Ultra Battle Satellite. While Black Clover was the obvious series that was going to be axed. But here we are now.
Plenty of that started off as “nothing special”, such as Kimetsu No Yaiba, Jujutsu Kaisen, and We Never Learn, that were predicted to be clear axes, but now they’re staples in the magazine.
A lot of examples where series were positively received for the most part, And didn’t make it. Shuudan, Double Arts, UBS, School Judgement, Noah’s Notes, etc.
There are tons of petty reasoning why some series can possibly fail, that has no direct correlation to the quality of the series.
Such as The Cover not interesting people so they never read it. Readers skim through it and don’t bother to read it because of a personal artstyle preference. People just not reading because they simply don’t feel like it.
Point is/TLDR I think most series don’t lean too far on either the “this is trash” or “this is amazing” said. Once in a blue moon we’ll get something that’s amazing out the gate, or hot garbage right out the gate.
