Next time, do it slower. Start with a toothbrush to clean up the interior & remove dead twigs without damaging young foliage growing close-in so you can see the structure better. Use the toothbrush to expose the nebari. Stop at that point for a few days and visit the tree whenever you are having a soda break and rotate the tree so you get a clear view of not only what you think is a good view supported by what is, but what you hate, want to hide, and what ain't there. The front is a trade-off in every case and a couple degrees one way or the other can make all the difference in an rectangular pot.
The difference between you and John Naka is he could look at a tree for 3 minutes and see all the possible and impossible. You need time, alcohol, friends, the occasional enemy, books, videos, photos, etc. The longer you take for the process, the happier you will be with fewer cases of finding the tree in a pot where the best view is from the right-hand corner.
There are at least 78 different factors you need to consider before removing what used to be your best option. Ultimate size: if you remove all the tiny twigs in the interior close to the trunk you can kiss goodbye to mame. Remove that one scrawny, wild branch that's flopping around and in the way and bunjin disappears. Not what you wanted when you bought the tree? Those are two designs that are more happenstance than creation. The big shooters don't impose a design upon stock, they make the best of it, and so should you. The reason you see so few credible mame and bunjin is that they are the product of starting with a good candidate and then applying the process to accentuate what is. A small tree is no more a mame just because it's small any more than a meal is good just because there's a lot on the plate. Bunjin and mame have good bones or they don't fly. That's easy to see, but the same logic applies to all the other design, too, they are just not as demanding of good bones, or so some think. The world is full of Nothing Trees. Trees that someone said, "I'm going to make a formal upright, I'll take this one." John is good enough to look through the rows of stock and choose the right one, but until we get to that level of having, The Eye, we need to approach the game with more modesty. For the first many years most people should say, "I'd like a Yew, I'll take this one." Then accentuate the design of what is, rather than forcing it to become as close to what we can to that formal upright, or whatever. I've been doing this 20 years and I'm still in the Not John Naka group.
So, we take our time and stretch out the process to avoid missing something because we weren't looking for it. You can suck on a piece of candy for 15 minutes, or you can bite down and chew it up in under a minute. The longer you take for the process, the longer you can enjoy the taste in your mouth. Try to proceed so you get that extra 14 minutes of pleasure.
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