HomeAnimeSo The Sun Sets on the First Anime Blog Carnival.... Roundup Post

So The Sun Sets on the First Anime Blog Carnival…. Roundup Post

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So The Sun Sets on the First Anime Blog Carnival.... Roundup Post 1

and so sunset falls on this carnival

For those who missed the original posts for the event, the first ever Anime Blog Carnival brought a together a number of the most active writers and reviewers of anime releases around and had them answering questions in relation to their writing or the anime industry in an attempt to come to some sort of consensus or showcase the diversity of opinions between different writers. For the first ever carnival, the question “What makes a 10/10 anime release?” was asked and focused on both when writing reviews on their own pages and when using a service such as MyAnimeList. This post is my own personal summary of the event and the varied responses between the participants which will hopefully provide an incite on how we review. Before I go on any further, I would like to include the five points I consider when writing up a review:

  1. The criteria to review anime needs to be extended as the seasons progress, especially as one becomes more knowledgeable in other genres of anime they might not have watched before. Considerations also need to be taken into account for older series. For example, Figure 17 might not have the most visually impressive designs, but given the year it was released and the work taken in detailing the environments… it is something worth considering.
     …
  2. The plot must improve upon the genre and not rely on too many of the same old gimmicks to push the story forward or  get some laughs from the viewer. Don’t get me wrong… a series could still get reviewed high for things like that, but not up to the “10/10 standard”.
     …
  3. Who cares if it is too childish or too adult? A proper reviewer looks at the series as a whole rather than taking everything as being aimed at their age and gender group.
     …
  4. Design, Sound and Opening/Ending Sequences at least decent.
     …
  5. At all costs… it must be enjoyable.

So The Sun Sets on the First Anime Blog Carnival.... Roundup Post 2

The above comment was posted on my AniBloggers Choice Anime Awards 2011 nomination page, coming from someone who for the last week seems to have taken an interest in trolling certain posts of mine (With vague unintellegent comments such as “shit site” and posting under very “friendly” *coff* email addresses… sad but it is reality) but it got me to thinking that this comment might actually come in handy for explaining a point. When it comes to reviewing certain series, you will find that everyone has their own preferences and ways of giving their scores, leaving it almost critical for you to use the actual written content (Which usually details both pros and cons) alongside the number or letter score to determine what series you consider purchasing over series you will leave on the shelf (Hey, some of my review are 2,000+ words so read them as well!).

After reading through the other fifteen or so carnival posts, the following points need to be highlighted:

Alia from Mainichi Anime Yume mentioned in their article and in a comment on The Otaku’s Study about how they based their grade on two different scoring distinctions, a head score which is their “rating for an anime based on how good we feel it is in terms of the usual things – story, characters, pacing, narrative flow, logicality, creativity, etc” while their heart score pertains to how they felt about it personally and what they found entertaining irrespective of other factors. This corresponds quite well to my five points with #1-2 being defined as head score and #4-5 being heart scores and #3 perhaps being a mixture of both. I would like to thank them for pointing this out to me.

Marow from Anime Viking provided a view that it is not necessarily possible to consider a 10/10 the same for every person – as while two people may find a series equally enjoyable they may grant it different scores or on the other hand, give something the exact same score for two very different reasons – which also highlights a benefit of running this. Out of 182 completed shows they only gave the perfect score to eleven of them and if the MyAnimeList site only allowed them to use a 5-star system then perhaps more shows would have been given a perfect score in that sense. However, they base his reviews on “experience” rather than just simply watching it alongside purpose of the show. It is an interesting viewpoint which I suggest reading more into on Anime Viking.

Fellow Aussie reviewer AceRailgun came to the conclusion that a number of reviewers don’t seem to vote things averagely (4, 5 and 6) but instead will rate things more with either high scores (7, 8, 9, 10) or with low scores (0, 1, 2, 3) and provides a chart outlining what to think if the score is not accompanied with an explanation (Eg. MyAnimeList). Of course, when it comes down to the matter people are more likely to watch something in a genre they enjoy rather than something they know they will dislike – thus affecting scores and diversity of titles reviewed – personally I try and at least cover some less familiar genres every month. However when it came down to reviewing series, he shared the sentiment that quite a few anime bloggers had which was that entertainment value trumped most other things including design and music… a sentiment shared by a number of other writers. Both Yi from Listless Ink and du5k from One Minute of Dusk both shared this opinion among the other reviewers and I encourage you to read their opinions on the matter.

So The Sun Sets on the First Anime Blog Carnival.... Roundup Post 3

While each had their own justifications of their scores, some also revealed their specific criteria such as Nopy who broke down each numerical score into a different definition such as a Score of 10 would be “Perfect” while a Score of “5” would be “meh”. This goes along well with Anime Viking’s claim as it is not necessarily possible to consider one score the same over every site. Personally I use a normal grading system that you should be familiar with if you have been at school over the last couple of years at the very least – with A being Excellent, B – Good, C – Average and so forth. Nopy also broke up their classification into three separate criteria – Production Values, Likable Characters and Constant Attention which I will let you read more into on their site, but seems to be effective in encompassing everything an episodic and series anime reviewer would require. Draggle from Draggle’s Anime Blog further extended upon this thought by focusing on Simoun, the only show on their list of anime series that earns an A+ and justification for the decision. Leap250 also shared the idea of choosing specific details alongside enjoyment which were different from Nopy’s including repeatability, economy, mensuration, consilience and heuristics… all of which can be explained on the post itself or through a simple google search. These ideas were also discussed in Ephemeral Dreams and World of Yamaguchi Hoshiko, although just like those already mentioned had slight differences in their criteria.

Mira on Hachimitsu while detailing the systems used on their site back in the day which was based on averaging (Which I used on my very very old original reviews as well) also discussed their anime reviews which now for the most part do not seem to include a numerical score. While I would not go as far as not putting a grade on my reviews due to ease of access to those who really do not have the time to read the entire reviews (Yes people have told me I write a lot… even the original Carnival article was supposed to be shortish), for the reviews they deal with I think it is a better way of covering individual episodes and series. However they do apply their own theory of 10/10 to a number of titles which proved to be an interesting read.

Rather than describe the key aspect of their review marking, SnippetTee from Lemmas and Submodalities chose to go one step further and reveal their justifications for each grade from 0-100/Letter Grade which proved to be an interesting read although I have never been a big fan of giving anything under 50% an E/F grade. While my system does spread out the letters with a wider variety of percentage points per grade – it does does give a better indication of just how bad a below average score is… but this is perhaps me being a bit too critical. But I do agree with their grading system and how the percentages were distributed across a number of criteria – and approve of their final sentences:

Although I came up with this system, I’m not really fond of reviewing and scoring an anime because writing this is boring and tedious.

And of course, it’s really up to us on how we’re going to measure the level of our enjoyment. After all, judging an anime is just all about our own preferences.

So The Sun Sets on the First Anime Blog Carnival.... Roundup Post 4

Another interesting viewpoint comes from Marina from Anime B&B which I fell is an extension of my first point which I don’t believe I mentioned in my original article. Nostalgia is something that I feel is coming more and more common in the field of anime, especially as we are going back and noticing that series such as Digimon, Card Captor Sakura which we may have brushed off after years of watching as “childish” are becoming more in demand as English companies struggle to obtain licenses for the series – for example Card Captor Sakura and Sailor Moon have proved near impossible to license for several years however Madman Entertainment managed to acquire Digimon: Digital Monsters for the Australian market. The way we percieve titles change as the years go on so I could see this being a valid argument.

But Let Me Pose a Question!

Is there a perfect review system, and if not is it justifiable to rely on numbered or lettered reviews to base my purchase decisions on?

In the end, a review is only ever going to be a detailed description of what someone thought of the various elements of a series. Going back to that lovely comment I posted at the beginning of this article, everyone holds their different opinions, leaving it up to the person who reads the review to take that number or letter and use the hundreds to thousands of words of text that build up the review to make their decision on if it is worth their time or not… a sentiment that looking through the articles now a number of the reviewers share. However as the recent AniBloggers Choice Anime Awards showed, consensus is also a powerful tool, and if a series gets  a number of high reviews than it does have a higher possibility of being great than something that gets 1 or 2 out of 10’s…. but check the body of the review for further details

In summary, I hope the above 1,800 words makes sense and my appologies if I left anyone out or misquoted your post. I have thoroughly enjoyed taking part in the Anime Blog Carnival and I look forward to hopefully bringing you an article for a second one in the future.

Other Participants

Ace Railgun by AceRailgun (Article)
Anime B&B by Marina (Article)
Anime Viking by Marow (Article)
Draggle’s Anime Blog by Draggle (Article)
Ephemeral Dreams  by Ephemeral Dreamer (Article)
Hachimitsu by Mira (Article)
Leap250’s Blog by Leap250 (Article)
Lemmas and Submodalities by SnippetTee (Article)
Listless Ink by Yi
Mainichi Anime Yume by Yumeka (Article)
Nopy’s Blog by Nopy (Article)
One Minute of Dusk by du5k (Article)
The Otaku’s Study by Sam (You are Reading it!)
World of Yamaguchi Hoshiko by hoshiko (Article)

Sam
Sam
Founder of The Otaku's Study. I have been exploring this labyrinth of fandom these last fifteen years, and still nowhere close to the exit yet. Probably searching for a long time to come.

1 COMMENT

  1. After reading all the different posts on the subject I doubt there is a perfect rating system. Everyone rates anime so differently it’s not really possible for it to exist. I feel that the best rating are accompanied by an explanation as to why the score was given

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