Anime Blog Carnival round-up post

For the final part of the Anime Blog Carnival that I posted earlier this week, here are my concluding thoughts on some things I got out of the project…

After writing my post for the carnival’s topic of what makes a 10/10 anime, I read through other participants’ posts, many of which brought up points that I found intriguing:

Sam brought up the point of an anime’s age. Obviously older anime can’t be judged by the same technological standards as the anime of today. Also, one should take into account the anime’s target audience when examining its writing. Even if the genre isn’t your cup of tea, are you able to take a step back and look at it through the eyes of the target audience? (I guess this would be part of the head scoring I mentioned). Of course, not everyone would want to base their scoring systems on this, I just thought it was a good suggestion.

Marow brought up the idea that establishing exactly how a reviewer uses scoring is essential. After all, two people’s 10/10 scoring, or even 9/10, 8/10, etc., could be for very different reasons and mean very different things. He also brought up a great distinction in one’s viewing experience that could determine an anime’s rating – whether one simply watches an anime or experiences it. I’ve found that for all of my highly rated series, I did indeed experience them and was not simply entertained by them.

Nopy opted to make three criteria for determining a 10/10 anime: decent production values, likable characters, and constant attention. Like Sam mentioned, I believe it’s important to take the year the anime was produced into consideration when looking at its production values, but certainly an anime with good production values for its time is more likely to get a higher rating. If we see a lot of care put into the animation, setting design, music, etc., we’re in turn more inclined to care about what we’re watching. The constant attention criteria is interesting, as Nopy uses it to override “story” for how much the show is able to keep our attention. And with that, even slice-of-life anime that lack a story could get a high rating.

I felt that Nopy’s other criteria, likable characters, was expanded on a bit by draggle in his post. He uses the anime Simoun as an example, saying that, while he doesn’t love every character, what’s important is that he’s never indifferent to any of them. I agree that a great cast of characters brings out emotions in the audience, whether for good or bad. “Likable” to me doesn’t necessarily mean a character we’d want to be our best friend – since this is fiction we’re talking about, having a character that makes us invested in what happens with them is where the appeal comes from, not always that they’d be a worthy person in the real world.

Acerailgun mentioned that it’s rare for people to give “middle ratings” for anime, such as 4s, 5s, and 6s. Usually it’s 7-10 if they liked/loved it or 1-3 if they disliked/hated it. I do give 6s on occasion, and 5s rarely, but most of my ratings are in the 7-8 range. I’m pretty good at avoiding anime I know I won’t like, nor am I fussy with anime to begin with, hence I’ve never given a below 5 rating. Does anyone else feel that people tend to rate either in an extremely positive or an extremely negative way, rarely in between?

Hoshiko briefly mentioned how one can experience an anime differently watching it weekly as opposed to marathon-style. I can certainly agree, as I often see an anime’s 10/10 qualities better via marathon than weekly, as the story becomes one cohesive whole rather than pieces of it. However, watching weekly could have the advantage of prolonging suspense when we have to wait another week to see what happens next, and it also makes the viewing experience last longer, giving us more time to get attached to the story and characters.

Leap250 brought up the unique criteria of whether an anime ends with “open-ness” or not. Though some may feel this means the series is open in terms of being able to have additional OVAs, movies, etc., my take on that is how much the anime leaves itself open to continually existing in the viewer’s mind. For example, it leaves just enough things open-ended in its finale so that we can still forever indulge in the fates of certain characters or certain plot points that were never fully explained, but we’re otherwise satisfied with how the series ended.

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To sum things up, I’d say this first Anime Blog Carnival was a decent success. It’s not something I’d want to do all the time, as I don’t like having obligations and deadlines in my blogging. But if it’s a topic I’m interested in and I don’t have many other posts planned, I would do it again some other time. Thanks again to du5k for organizing the project and inviting me to join, and to everyone who commented and participated in the discussion ^_^ I’ll be back to regular posting in a few days~

No Comments… read them or add your own.

  1. Adziu says:

    I never give a score to an anime, and would find it very difficult to do so when I write up my impressions, so it’s really interesting to me to see the thought processes that inform those who do. Thanks for this useful summary.

  2. Salion says:

    I agree with AceRailgun that people tend to grade between 1-3 or between 7-10. In fact, I’ve quite often seen pages of ratings that are entirely 9s or 10s, on shows that couldn’t possibly be everyone’s ultimate favorite show. Until I realized it one day, I myself used to grade in this way. The reason I wasn’t too comfortable giving a middle score is that I wasn’t sure how others would interpret it. If most people think that even a moderately decent show deserves a 9, would other people interpret my 6 as a 2? If I rate something as a 5, does that mean that it’s entirely mediocre but not bad, or does that mean that it’s bad with only some redeeming value?

    The ambiguity in what numbers mean has caused me to invent a new rating system that I use among friends. Instead of grading from 1-10, my system goes from -10 to +10. This allows me to differentiate between shows which are good, shows which are bad, and shows which are boring. Shows which score around 0 are pretty boring, but aren’t necessarily bad shows. They may be worth watching once, but no more. A +10 means it’s one of my favorite shows, something I would consider the pinnacle of entertainment, which has impeccable head and heart scores both, and which I would want everyone I know to watch even if they’ve never watched an anime. I’ve only had 2 shows which I’ve given a +10.

    A negative number means that I shouldn’t have bothered watching the show (or my friends really owe me for wasting my time). The plot is nonsensical, the premise and setting keep changing in bizarre ways, the characters are irritating and irrational, the script is terrible, the music and voice acting grate on my nerves, or the art was so lousy that they should have tried releasing it as an audio tape instead. The lowest I’ve given so far was a -6, but a -10 would be the epitome of everything vile in human nature. It would be so disgusting or otherwise horrible that I would vomit. There have been live-action movies like that; movies where I’ve had to leave the theatre after 10 minutes, and then later find out from reviews that it only got worse after I left.

    I like this system because it takes all of the ambiguity out of the numbers. Did you like it? How much? Did you dislike it? How much? Or did it not evoke much response from you at all?

    • Yumeka says:

      That’s actually a very good rating system. I don’t know how much use I personally would get out of it, since I rarely watch anime I find truly detestable and most I’m at least neutral too. But I can see how it would work for others and how ambiguous a 1-10 rating system could be if not properly explained by the rater beforehand. So, excellent idea!

  3. AceRailgun says:

    I think your head and heart scores was on of my favorite ideas from this carnival. it makes sense too because it really is divided by people who rate entirely with what they like and people who break it down into categories and percentages.

    • Yumeka says:

      Glad you liked it. I could probably take the concept apart even more but I didn’t want to make the post too long ^^ As a fundamental rule of rating, I feel everyone has some degree of head and heart scores ;)

  4. f0calizer says:

    I was intrigued by how everyone defaulted to MAL’s 1-10 rating scale, which I find very limiting. This kind of rating system seems more designed for number crunching and rankings rather than a comparison of quality or content. I’d love to see MAL let us rate anime according to more descriptive categories like Humor, Suspense, Action, Cuteness, Visual Effects, etc. on a kind of Least to Most scale, rather than a single numerical score. After all, rating 9 for Cowboy Bebop and Azumanga Daioh mean very different things.

    • Yumeka says:

      You definitely have a point. I think MAL’s rating system is just meant to give a quick, easy, and very broad idea of how we feel about the anime we watch. With the 1-10 system, we can tell whether someone loved, liked, was okay with, or hated a certain anime, but nothing more. Since not everyone is going to write reviews of exactly why they gave every series they watched a certain rating, they use numbers. Like you said, it’s not the most telling system, which is why I have the blog so I can write my full thoughts on anime I watch ;)

  5. Nopy says:

    I have the same thoughts as you, the carnival was a success and I enjoyed it, but it’s a bit of a strain when you place deadlines on something like blogging.

    • Yumeka says:

      The most deadlines I’ll have for blogging is wanting to have a new post out every few days, but having to work a specific post amongst others I want to write in a certain time fame is a bit straining. Which is why, if I were to do the carnival again, I’d want to do it at a time when I don’t have other posts planned.

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