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I remember reading about an exam marker who (supposedly) used to mark his papers by throwing them all down his stairs and giving the ones at the bottom the best mark and then grading them in the order they fell. Maybe this is a good way of doing your My Anime as well? Try it out, just lob your DVD collection down the stairs and take it from there.

Seriously though, I think that psychologically, everyone will by nature have different mental ranking techniques - seeing as this is all subjective anyway (If you rate AnimeX as so-so, there is no way another person can come along and say you are wrong to rate it that way.) I mean, I consider 7/10 to be average, whereas I'm sure some people consider 5/10 average. For example - one3rd rating 2 masterpieces out of 200+, and abunai rating 31 out of 400 (and abunai considering his ratings to be conservative.)

I mostly feel that the main way to rate anime (or anything,) is on a gut-instict. If you feel that Eiken is a masterpiece for some reason, apart from possibly getting your head examined, go with it. Luckily the trustworthiness indicator apparently keeps lunatics at bay from the ratings...

My Anime

I rate anime not for the sole benefit of the encycopedia, but more to quickly remember my impressions of a show. My rating is for my opinion of the show AT THAT POINT, which is why I'll rate an anime very early (I try and watch at least two episodes of a show, but sometimes I don't make it that far).

When it comes to rating, my rating is focused on the impact the show had on me. I don't really dive deep into what the show contained for ratings. I also think the explainations for the ratings (i.e. "Very Good, Don't miss it!") also helps me decide what I think of a show.

My default rating is good and very good. Unless I'm really blown away or really unhappy with it at first, it will start as a good or very good, and I will adjust accordingly. I'm generally very easy about ratings, so I'm not shy about using high ratings. Regarding Masterpieces and Worst Evers, I believe if an anime impacts you on that level, use the rating. Out of my 296 anime, I've only rated 19 masterpiece, and 1 worst ever (although I hear the rest of Amaenaidayo!! isn't THAT bad - but I remember specifically hating this show's guts).

I give out a lot of Excellents, however, but I have a differenciating system of excellents, where there is anime that I felt was barely excellent (Evangelion) to anime that is just plain excellent (Haruhi Suzumiya) to anime that was just one step shy of Masterpiece (Millennium Actress). I think an Excellent can exist on different levels, since I feel that once a series is that good, the gaps between the quality can become very large, so I don't mind handing out Excellents.

Quick question about the trustworthy system. I change my votes a lot based on how I feel about the show. Do these practices affect the trustworthiness of the account?

I agree with avoiding the "worst ever" ratings - any one user should one have ONE after all, right?

First and foremost was whether or not it elicited an emotional reaction, positive, negative, or otherwise. If it's powerful then I'll enjoy it, and I'll rate it highly.

Characters are alomsy as important. It is unlikely to elicit an emotional reaction from me if I don't care about the characters.

Quality, and COMPLEXITY of the story comes next. But again this tends to go hand in hand with the two factors above. But a plot without twists and turns... Well who wants to see interesting charatcters doing boring things?

The one factor I don't really consider (or rather, am just not that picky about) is the art. Don't get me wrong I appreciate GOOD art highly. It's just that BAD art doesn't bother me if the three factors above are strong. (I liked Negima! despite that fact that I can draw better than that.)

Sound is important, especially music, but I don't consider it directly... It just influences how moved I might be, which is really what I based my rating on.

And since I have a failry short "Have Watched Some/All" list it's pretty easy for me to say "This one was as good as that one, but not as good as this other." So I just tend to group several together and keep my own rankings consitant. My ratings will probably change over time, as I see more and get more discriminate tatses, but so far I haven't rated anything lower than "Very Good." Hey - if I don't like it I probably won't watch enough to warrant an opinion. I like to see almost all, if not all, of a series before cementing an opinion.

So I can't say I HATE anything I've seen. I'm just indifferent about certain ones, and didn't see enough to feel that I should vote.

I'm a bit more lax when it comes to rating anime highly it seems: http://animenewsnetwork.com/MyAnime/?=user=RDespair - Of the 38 series that I've ranked, I've given 9 masterpieces. And well, if the series is well done and I really enjoyed it, why not? I'm looking at the list of series that I've given masterpiece to - Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni, Grave of the Fireflies, Haibane Renmei, Only Yesterday, R.O.D. (OAV), R.O.D. the TV, Serial Experiments Lain, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and Trigun - and I think it's a pretty defensible list. All of those series/movies are fantastic in at least one area (and often in many areas).

I tend to watch anime that I think I'll enjoy so it's only natural that my ratings would tend to cluster towards the more positive scores. Moreover, I'm more likely to remember to vote for a series that I rather enjoyed than I am to remember to vote for some random series that a friend showed me when I was half asleep that I didn't care for.

The worst rating I've ever given is bad and I gave it to FLCL. I know it's a popular series, but something about it just rubbed me the wrong way.

Here’s some additional comments.

How do I first choose an anime (non-hentai) to watch?
I’ve been using ANN’s encyclopedia for awhile, and the absolute first thing I look at is age rating. If an anime is rated MATURE, I will watch all of it, regardless of theme. I know with certainty that I can expect something somewhere that is raw and outside accepted norms. Next, is TEENAGERS, which a majority of anime I watch is rated. I want my bloody violence, bad language, and nudity. I rarely will watch any anime age rated for older children or children as I consider it an affront to my sensibilities.

My Anime

I'm pretty basic for how I rate my anime. Basically, just how badly I wanted to watch the next episode as I was going through it. And I do that once I've finished the show so that I'm not constantly changing the rating. I can enjoy a series for a variety of reasons and usually I'm not looking for anything specific. Most of the time it just comes down to if I was in the mood to what that kind of series at the time.

I use the ratings only as my 1-10 scale with 5/so-so being average. I'm (slowly) working on my comments, but I just use that to point out a few things I liked (or disliked) about the series. Not quite the mini-reviews I've seen in other people's lists. Like I said, the rating has more to do with how much I enjoyed the series and not so much an objective opinion on the quality of the show.

I only have three Masterpieces: GTO, Berserk and FMP? Fumoffu. And the only reason I gave them that rating was because they are my three favorite series and I wanted to seperate them from the next "tier" of series. Not becauseI thought they are perfect 10/10s.

My worst rating went to Jungle De Ikou (awful) and that's only because I hated it was a passion. I'm not sure I'll ever give a worst ever ranking. I have some weaks mixed in there, but for the most part, my ratings are "decent" or better. And I think that's fair, with a lot of the shows I watched, I had to grind through some bad episodes at one point or another.

My way of rating the shows is really simple. I just think back and see if i felt bored or disapointed enough times during a series or movie to lower the rating and only one show really disapointed me which was vampire princess myu. If i was drawn into or was excited or happy more often the rating goes up. One thing that i find really important is the music. That is very crucial to the anime that i watch.

For me,
1. There has to be good character development so that you can go along with the characters and not think of them as sissies.
2. Storylines are an important part, as to keep me from not wanting to cut off and not finish the show.
3. Soundtracks will matter. There just has to be the right one to actually match what's going on in the story and good for opening and closing themes.
4. What else but the ending? What is a good way to close and say goodbye to characters you've come to know and love? Something like spoiler[Berserk], that's what.

A lot of the ones I've seen weren't quite there to warrant a Masterpiece rating, but most have gotten either Excellent or Very Good. Could've been the elements of the anime or my mood at the time I watched it.

I tend to take the names of the ratings at face value, so I give very few Masterpiece ratings, and I never rate an anime below "Weak", since I believe that no matter how awful, all anime have at least a few positive things about them. I tend to split 50/50 between how much I enjoyed a series, and how good I think the series is (and there is quite a large difference). For example, I enjoyed watching Futakoi but thought that it was a weak series overall, so I compromised between enjoyment and hard judgment and rated it a "Good". Conversely, I did not enjoy Haibane Renmei that much, but I do think that it is a beautiful series, so I gave it a "Very Good".

As I mentioned before, I give very few "Masterpiece" ratings. I make my rating system out of 100, and most series fall in between 60 and 80. Any series above 80 is one I would not hesitate at all to recommend to others, and anything below 60 I got very little enjoyment out of. In my MyAnime list, I list all the positives and negatives I found of each series, and that plays a role in how I will rate the series. I see whether there are more positives or more negatives, and how much each positive and negative play a role in the overall quality of the series. I also look at each series from a general perspective, looking at animation, voice acting, music (OP/ED and background), storyline, characters, etc. I don't really have a "_______ makes up ___% of the overall rating and _______ makes up ___%"; I look at how each aspect affects the series overall. Though, this only makes up about 50% of my rating, and the other 50% or so goes to simply if I enjoyed the series or not (taking fatigue, distraction, and possible pacing issues into account).

I try not to take hype and buzz into account, but sometimes it might just make my ratings slightly biased... Wink

A breakdown of the ratings in my MyAnime list -

Masterpiece (97-100): 5 series
Excellent (90 - 96): 17
Very Good (80 - 89): 25
Good (70 - 79): 37
Decent (60-69): 24
So-so (50-59): 0
Not Really Good (40-49): 9
Weak (30-39): 12

I have 5 criteria for rating anime, each being rated with a letter grade system (or a scale of 1-10, whichever you prefer) as follows:

A+ = 10/Masterpiece
A = 9/Excellent
A- = 8/Very Good
etc...

Art: Things like character design, coloring, lighting, CG, backgrounds, etc. I don't need great art, but misproportional/awkward character frames or oversaturated colors tend to bug me. I prefer more handrawn artwork as opposed to the digital stuff. GONZO is the biggest perp, though I think it fits well with a lot of their science fiction titles. I didn't like it so much in PMK.. Art is the second least important.

Animation: I'm not too big on it, actually, and I'm not very keen at picking up on the bad stuff. I figure, if animation really mattered, all the oldies like Zeta Gundam and below would be crap, which is simply not the case. Even stuff like Lupin and the old Mobile Suit Gundam seem pretty decent. This is probably my least important factor.

Music: I would rank this to be the middle factor of importance. It should be obvious to anyone that a great score can do wonders for enhancing the feelings and emotions of a scene. Whether it be some catchy J-Pop tune in the opener to set the mood or an electrifying jazz piece in the middle of a fight (*cough* episode 1 of Bebop), I always find music to be a great way to express a lot of things than can't normally be expressed through dialogue or actions. So long as the melody fits and the quality isn't too synthetic (PMK again), I can live with that.

Plot/Characters: I group the two in same category and regard this aspect as THE most important factor. Be it something like Monster with it's engrossing story (and characters, coincidentally) or Azumanga Daioh with its fun and loveable characters, I always try to look for something or someone that can leave a lasting impression on me. Personally, I lean more towards character development and interaction (a la long shounen series like Rurouni Kenshin or Hunter X Hunter), but I also don't mind the more subtle titles like the Sekai series or Mushishi. It just depends on how well it's presented.

Voice Acting: Second most important factor. In order to bring the characters to life, you must have a good voice behind it. Dialogue should flow well, the proper inflections must be delivered, and so on. I prefer most of my anime in Japanese, simply for aesthectic purposes, but do enjoy dubs every now and then (mostly titles that don't take place in Japan). I've become familiar with a lot of voices in both language and can be swayed to lean towards one another depending on the casting and company (ADV = subs.. always). And yes, I've had my fair share of bad seiyuu as well, though it's usually the result of just a bad series, overall (Jubei-chan, Samurai Girl Real Bout High School, and Mika from Gungrave).

Overall: Basically, it's the average of all the scores, and I guess if you want to call it that, the "overall enjoyment."

I currently have 84% of my Seen All rated Decent or higher. Frankly, it's either because I'm not real picky on content or I just keep happening to pick the good stuff.

I generally rate things based on personal enjoyment, while taking into consideration what genre it might've been intended to be or the demographic being aimed at.

The only Worst Ever I have is Samurai Showdown: The Motion Picture. I loved the games way back when and was excited to hear they made an anime. Unfortunately, when I bought the DVD it was dub-only and extremely bad (*hint* it's ADV). Although, the story was so bad, I don't think even an all-star Japanese cast could save it. In fact, I didn't even watch the whole thing and went to pick up a friend while it was still playing. I returned the DVD the next day and redirected the money towards a preorder for Madden 2004 (which was a lot more fun that the crap I saw).

It ticks me off that people would spam the ratings by voting to the extreme with multiple Worst Ever. "Worst Ever" implies you feel one, and only one title is the worst ever, out of everything. Anyway, I'm typing this on 4 hours sleep and am beginning to get groggy, so there you have it.

Mine is pretty much the same as Tony K's, except the grading. For the animation and artwork I tend to go with how well it was done for the time period the anime is from, and storyline will almost always overpower bad artwork (xXxHolic TV is a decent example, the artwork isn't really as great as anything these days, but the artwork somewhat fits the feel of the story and helps pull out the storyline somewhat). So far my lowest rating is Tekken: The Motion Picture with a not-so-good ranking. I tend to give out a decent amount of very goods, but since I've been catching up with my seen some/all list I've been giving out more goods. I also have a somewhat high amount of Masterpiece ratings, but that's mostly because I felt that they really deserve it. One of the other differences between my rating system and Tony's is that I factor in how well it fits the genres, which I think is very important for any series. If something was supposed to be a romance and turns out to be mostly action, I feel like that would be misleading and deserves a lower rating than it would have if it sticked more to the main genre (let's say the anime for Fruits basket was mostly action instead of drama/romance like the manga, since it's not being true to the storyline it wouldn't deserve a good rating [of course this isn't the case, but a lot of people know of Furuba :p]).

Well, that's pretty much it for my rating system, here's my anime lists:

Want to see
Seen Some
Seen All
Top Ten (you'll see that this actually has more than ten, but this is only because if something has multiple entries (such as Air) and they have an equal rating to the main entry (Air TV, for example) then I'll consider those as one series)

Edit: Also forgot to mention, the reason I have so many high ratings is that I don't really watch bad series, if something actually has the ability to turn me off within the first 2 episodes I tend to not watch it (and thus not give it a rating, it's not really "fair" to rate something you haven't watched). A good example of this would be Nana for me, for some reason I couldn't stand the first episode and couldn't keep watching it, but that doesn't mean that I will give it a rating it clearly doesn't deserve.

I base the ratings on My Anime on how much I enjoyed watching the anime.

The most important aspect of my enjoyment is the characters, even if the show has a poor plot and bad animation if it has great characters that lifts it up a few ranks.

That's part of the reason why I only rated NGE as Very Good because I just couldn't like the characters even though everything else about is was fantastic. In a similar way I rated Patlabor on TV as a masterpiece because even though it had poor animation and no real plot the characters were some of the most interesting and real I have seen in an anime and they just had that extra something that made me care about them.

I will also take into account the storyline, if the anime does what it's meant to (comedy should make me laugh, alot) and how much I want to see the next episode while I'm watching it.

It's the characters who set the final rating though as I'll think of a rating then adjust it based on them because if I don't care about the characters I don't care about what happens to them either.

Seen All
Top 20
Just looked through the distribution, and man, I need to downgrade a few series, perhaps by establishing a waiting period after finishing to rate them.
Distribution in Seen All:
10: 16 - 7.4%
9: 21 - 9.7%
8: 41 - 19.0%
7: 61 - 28.2%
6: 40 - 18.5%
5: 26 - 12.0%
4: 10 - 4.6%
3: 5 - 2.3%
2: 0 - 0.0%
1: 0 - 0.0%
0: 0 - 0.0%
(out of 216 total) I don't use the lowest levels, because any anime that I've seen all of has to have some redeeming qualities to make me want to sit through all of the episodes. I've got a few Bad's and Awful's in the "Will Not Finish" category, but generally that's reserved for entries like the One Piece dub. Obviously, the 7 (Good) rating is my median point, with the actual average score being 7.08 or so. (I'm not versed in statistics, so forgive me for misusing these terms Embarassed

)
I rate with 2 main evaluations --
1: How much I enjoyed the series on "base" levels, like cute factor, emotional junkie crack factor, funny-cause-it's-so-bad/clichéd/silly factor, fanservice, and inner 12-year-old "this is so cool!" factor. Subjective rating, you could call it.

2: The actual merits of the series, observed more critically outside of my own perception. Plot, character development, artistic quality (I'm willing to forgive stills and recycled footage if the series looks like a "great story on a low budget" anime), music, voice acting, and one quality that helps prop some series up in the ratings, "How well does it achieve what it set out to do?" I don't have a problem with endings, since on average, they're not that exceptional in the first place. The only endings that irk me a bit are the blatant "Go buy the manga!" endings. This would be the objective rating.

I don't actively say, "Subjectively, Shuffle! gets an 8, but objectively, it gets a 6, so the final rating is 7." I just keep both in mind when setting the rating. This way, I don't give overly high ratings to titles that genuinely aren't great, in spite of my own liking for them. And, if a title's objective merits are at one level, but I really like or dislike the series, I can move it up or down a notch or two.

The Top 20 list is much more subjective, as numerous titles like Love Hina get ranked above series which are better-rated or simply better overall.

I've heard about ANN's heuristic system before, and I'm glad it exists to fight spam. I'm sure my trustworthiness isn't anywhere near the 94% top value, but I "trust" that it's good enough. Finding those ratings sounds like a job for the elite hackers, as I'm sure Dan42 won't care to answer PMs on the subject, not that I blame him for it. Zero Cool? Acid Burn? Anybody?

Heheh, Hackers, gotta love it. Yea, I think it would be better not to ask your trust rate, but rather try to figure about how close it is on your own, I'd say mine is "probably" in the 80's, maybe 70's. This doesn't really matter to me though since I only give a series what I think it deserves in my opinion. Each persons' ratings system will be different even if it's similar because one person might grade harder on some things than the other. I say if you think something honestly deserves a worst ever, give it, but don't do it just to try and make it look bad. That being said I've started looking for the anime that I simply hated and have seen some of to balance my trustworthiness (dubbed Pokemon and Super Milk Chan anyone?), but I still have that worst ever rating reserved for the one title that truly deserves it.

Edit: Also, for some reason I can't get my Will Not Finish folder to show up in the folder list, will I have to make a new one or is there a way to get it to show up?

Tony K. wrote:

Voice Acting: ...I prefer most of my anime in Japanese, simply for aesthectic purposes, but do enjoy dubs every now and then (mostly titles that don't take place in Japan). I've become familiar with a lot of voices in both language and can be swayed to lean towards one another depending on the casting and company (ADV = subs.. always...).

I concur about watching anime in Japanese (I watch with English subs) as I enjoy the Japanese intonations. Frankly, it seems almost "sinful" to watch it dubbed in English. Given the choice of watching in English and understanding or watching in Japanese and catching 1 word in 10, I'll opt for the latter.

The only caveat is hentai but WITH the subs on. Talk about comedic relief since the English dub never matches the subs. I have literally wept with laughter listening to the ridiculous, wooden English translations while reading subs that did not even come close what was being spoken in English.

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