Forum - View topicREVIEW: Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha DVD
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Brians9824
Posts: 281 |
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I'm saying when you can only list in your negatives that adult's won't like a kid show then something is kinda off. I mean I can write a review on silent movies and say the blind won't enjoy them.
I mean your summary of the pro's and con's is + Fine for kids − Bad for adults That's not a review, its common sense. As far as ANN goes with reviews when reviewers clearly have dislikes for genre's and rank them lower simply for having elements they don't like then something is wrong. I mean whats the point of having someone review a series when he just gives it bad marks because he doesn't like the genre? If reviewers have a history of reviewing shows poorly simply because of their genre then they shouldn't be doing reviews. |
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Brians9824
Posts: 281 |
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i get what your saying, ideally you need someone who is impartial or able to keep his personal feelings out of a review. My concern is the people who see a bad review and decide they have no intrest in this series based off a review of a single person which I have seen several people post in this thread alone. That's one of the reason's i'd love to see 2 people review a series. 1 writes main review and gives score and the other writes his opinion on a score and the reason he agree's and/or disagree's. You get a more impartial voice if reviewer A gives it a D and reviewer B gives it an A. Last edited by Brians9824 on Mon Dec 15, 2008 1:47 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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braves
 Posts: 2309 Location: Puerto Rico (but living in Texas) |
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Um, that's what the rest of the review is for. Ya know...the other 4 paragraphs that he wrote. |
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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But Carl backs up all of his points with examples and illustrates his opinion; you may be focusing a bit too much on the scores and the simple one-line sum-up at the end. For the record, most critics - myself included - hate having to use scores. They're oversimplifications of what is usually a fairly complex opinion, but readers demand them, so we have to use them. If Carl simply said 'I don't like moe, so this show sucks' then it would be a bad review. Instead, he wrote a very lengthy review that backs up and explains his opinion on the show.
I'd love to have two opinions on every show, but there are two major hurdles here - one, reviews cost money, and we already have four dedicated critics on the staff. Two, we usually only get one copy of whatever show is being reviewed, and it's not like we work out of an office. Having the critics pay to ship anime all over the country to eachother would be yet another expense, and it would delay the publishing of the review even longer. |
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Brians9824
Posts: 281 |
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Other parts in the review he mentions the same thing about parents noticing marketing ploys, not enjoying it etc. I do see your point Zac, i have no problems with shows i like getting bad reviews. Carl's Disgaea review is a perfect example. I enjoyed the show greatly but as a standalone anime it falls short. His review just comes off feeling like a personal attack on the people who made the show accusing them of having pervasive loli fetish's, being obsessed with S&M due to a single 10 second clip and in general being a bit uneven. He compares Nanoha to Cardcaptor Sakura saying how Cardcaptor Sakura is better, yet he forgets that Cardcaptor had MUCH more pervasive lolicon tendencies with incest, students in love with teachers, magical pets, and many of the same problems he mentions in Nanoha. It's those statements that really make the review feel biased. Plus stuff like saying it has mecha action when by US standards their isn't a single mecha in it. |
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DmonHiro
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Frankly, we should not be surprised. Just the fact that Carl hates it should tell us it's good. He always gives bad reviews for moe shows that have a huge fanbase. And since he does not, he sees the need to bash it every chance he gets, so as to not seem "out of the loop" so to say. Basicly, lots of people like something, he does not, so he sees the need to justify the fact that he does not like it.
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HitokiriShadow
 Posts: 6251 |
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No one said there were mecha in it. It's that the fights play out more like a super robot show (or the Super Robot Wars video games) than a magical girl or shonen action show. |
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Brians9824
Posts: 281 |
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Well his quote is
In the context he's using he's classifying the show itself, and not the combat. It might just be poor wording on his part but it doesn't even come close to saying the battles are mecha styled. That's really a description of the show genre and not of the fighting style. |
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Joichiro Nishi
Posts: 163 |
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Finally a good ANN's review, usually their reviews are lame.
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grgspunk
Posts: 136 |
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Well if that's the case, if you guys love watching anime, then that must make you biased in your reviews of anime titles and therefore you need someone who is not an anime fan to do the review. ...Doesn't make any sense, does it? I mean, what's the point in reviewing something if you have no interest or aren't open to what it might have to offer? It feels like you're just giving the title to a random person and he just wants to "get it out of the way" in reviewing it. |
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MorwenLaicoriel
 Posts: 1617 Location: Colorado |
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On the "good for kids, bad for adults" review: As someone who considers herself a fan of animation in general, I think it's frustrating to assume that it's alright to make a bad show because it's for kids. There's a ton of shows for kids out there that are intelligent and can entertain adults as well: Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends, the majority of Disney and Pixar films, Invader Zim, etc. The fact that an adult would notice a bunch of things that makes the show bad makes the show worthy of a bad review. Particularly since the audience for this site is, from what I can tell, teen and adult fans of anime. Most people aren't coming here to find things that are good for their kids to watch, they come here to find things that are good for them to watch.
If a show's a really, really good show, then even people that don't normally like the genre should be able to see the quality in it, as long as they generally have an open mind. (Which I think Carl does--he's pointing out good things about the show, he's not bashing it like some sort of troll.) Princess Tutu is an excellent example of this. It has a ton of fans that *don't* normally like Magical Girl shows or even shoujo in general, and normally wouldn't even think of touching a show with that sort of title in general. But it's so well made, the characters are so greatly developed, it does such a good job of avoiding problems of the Magical Girl genre, that it's gained a lot of fans. From what I can tell, Nanoha isn't one of those shows. People that like magical girl shows might like it, people that like moe or shows with a lot of references to other anime might like it, but it seems like people that don't fit within those small categories of fans will probably have issue with the things Carl addressed. If you're a moe fan, you're probably already going to watch the show, what do you need a review for? The people here who are saying "I probably won't like this" are people that don't like moe and don't like magical girls, so what would be the point for THEM of having a reviewer that likes moe magical girls? It wouldn't really change anything. |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4433 |
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Something you need to consider is that if the staff always simply said, "Hey we've got show ABC, who wants it," then we'd probably get the same person reviewing everything from a particular genre. Especially if someone were designated as the "mecha reviewer" or what have you. That would make for a very bland site. And I completely disagree with DmonHiro. I sincerely doubt if Carl goes around looking for what is popular or has any type of fan base and decides to drag it down. Somehow I think he has better things to do, and I doubt if ANN is involved in some sort of conspiracy. Last edited by Greed1914 on Mon Dec 15, 2008 3:51 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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grgspunk
Posts: 136 |
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To assume that everyone who actually likes moe will jump for the show is a case of generalizing. There are plenty of people who have an interest in moe that have found certain moe shows to be disappointing and not worth their purchase. What, you think they don't have limited budgets or prefer to make informed decisions too? There could be such thing as a moe "fan" reviewer is capable of seeing what may or may not interest fans and non-fans alike: It's just a matter of deciding whether he's capable of writing a professional review and can look at a title with a more critical eye. However, if a reviewer doesn't have at least some sort of interest in what a title has to offer, then he's essentially wasting his time and risks writing off the genre it belongs to as a flaw in his review or make flaws sound like they're worse than they actually are. Although we might not agree on the "objectivity" part, The Great Bear from AoD pretty much sums up some of the suspicions of biases in this review, as well as some other reviews on this site:
Last edited by grgspunk on Mon Dec 15, 2008 3:06 pm; edited 4 times in total |
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Miitan
Posts: 117 Location: Gensokyo, UK |
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This review is just another example of Carl using his classic formula for reviewing anime
If anime = "moe" Then show = "for lolicons" rating = "worse than if it wasn't" End If Sure, I'll admit Nanoha isn't the best show ever, but when the synopsis is an undisguised attack on the show in question, you should realise that you're not going to get an unbiased review. The last time I checked, a synopsis was meant to be a brief summary of the plot, not a personal opinion because that's what the review is for. Yes, the show is for anime fans and otaku, but considering the mass of shows that are out at this moment catering for this group of people which have gotten high ratings such as Haruhi and Lucky Star to name but two, using this as an excuse to dig into a show is just bad form. It's disturbing to read about the lengths the reviewer has gone to find every single instance of fan-service in this show for a series that, barring the gratuitous transformation sequences, has very little compared to other shows currently on sale. I'm not even going to comment on how the brutal torture of Fate could be considered fan-service simply because it can't be, unless you're just looking for something to condemn a series for. The fact it's referenced twice just seems like a poor excuse for giving a lower score. I'm personally amazed we didn't get a poor attempt to reference Kodomo no Jikan in there somewhere. While the reviewer does raise some good points such as Nanoha sounding too old and the fact that it borrows from other series (not always a bad thing) and references it's previous incarnations, the rest of the review just seems like an excuse to bash moe and any show containing it. Overall I believe we have a show that would probably have been rated higher, despite it's faults, had it not been moe. |
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Brians9824
Posts: 281 |
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Actually getting some good comments here. I would be curious to know, how exactly does the review system work? Are reviewers randomly assigned shows to review or do they have any say in what type of shows they review?
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