Forum - View topicAm I the only one bothered by the general "reviewing template" of most MAL reviewers?
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louis6578
 Posts: 1861 |
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Most people on My Anime List who review anime do the following:
Break the anime down into 4 or 5 different sections. Story/Plot, Characters, Animation/Art, Music/Voice Acting, and occasionally, personal enjoyment. They rate each category, give brief thoughts about them, and add the scores of all 4 or 5 up then divide by 4 or 5 to get the average, which they use as their "overall rating." This always bugged me for a couple of reasons. First off, aren't the characters just part of the story? I mean, sure, a narrative can have flaws without ruining the characters, but how often are the ratings for character writing and narrative presentation THAT far off? The same person writes both things. Can you think of a show that you think had a stellar plot but abysmal characters or vice-versa? Second, and more importantly, how do you rate "characters?" Is it by how much you liked them? How well they were written? How realistic they were? If I thought everyone in Monster was well-written, but I also thought Eva was annoying, should that bring my score down even though she's intentionally written as a petty, vindictive person? Third, what if a show doesn't have an ongoing plot? Should a slice-of-life show like Welcome to the NHK be given a failing grade in plot because it doesn't really have one? Should comedies be considered terrible unless they have a myth arc? Going back to characters, movies often don't leave you with enough time to get to know the characters well. I can't remember the names of most characters from anime original movies when I'm not actively watching them. Should Your Name be given a way lower score because the characters were standard, despite them working very well for the story that was told? Animation? Most TV anime have their flaws, but what about really old anime? Should the pre-90's era of anime be considered inherently worse just because the animation isn't great? Are the only 10/10 anime in this category feature films and TV anime from the current decade? Finally, what about shows where the main point of it is simply to evoke powerful emotions? An emotional experience can easily outweigh flaws in a narrative or technical presentation. Should Excel Saga be rated lower for not having great animation and story? Should Trigun be rated lower because the animation is relatively bad? In the end... isn't the only category worth rating the enjoyment one? |
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wcsinn
 Posts: 186 |
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Good points, and this is exactly why IMHO rating anime is useless. Ratings are entirely subjective and as such there is no way to avoid the issues you have just pointed out.
For instance, 'how do you rate characters' -ask ten people and your likely to get ten different answers. 'Are they written well' - I'm sure some will disagree, but in my opinion this is also subjective. My guess would be most folks would rate on how much they liked/enjoyed that particular character. Many don't know what 'well written' means, many will disagree on what 'well written' means, and IMHO most just won't know or care what it means. Anime is entertainment and most fans don't care to evaluate and rate characters or series, they just want to be entertained. |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9841 Location: Virginia |
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I don't personally use My Anime List. I looked at it briefly awhile back and decided that it was too much like work and that I would have to fake all the information about stuff I watched up to that date anyway. Since then I don't think I have heard a good word about the site. However, I think I can understand what you are asking just from your post.
There are two basic approaches to evaluating entertainment. Reviewers, film school graduates and people who can see further into a brick wall than others feel it necessary to pick a show apart into its various elements and criticize each element. At the other pole are people (like myself) who are only interested in how much they enjoyed the show. Most people fall somewhere on a continuum between these two positions. My feeling has always been that when you pick a show apart you take all the fun out of it and risk completely destroying the magic with which it was constructed. This is especially true of animation and stage shows which are a step further from reality than live action TV or movies. To me good animation is anything that doesn't take me out of the moment. I don't care if characters are "stock" or if I've seen the plot before as long as it is believable for the duration of the show. As far as recycled settings, such as magic school, just because one show did it first doesn't mean they did it best. The devil is in the details. That said, I don't think there is a right or wrong way to evaluate shows. Lets face it, this is anime, not rocket science or brain surgery. If you enjoy picking a show to pieces and trying to figure how it was made, have at it. I won't get in your way. If on the other hand you just want to sit back and enjoy it, welcome friend. I'll take this one step further. I don't believe in all these letter grades with pluses or minuses or a ten step system. I think that is spurious accuracy. Any evaluation is subjective, most of these systems are rather deficient as to criteria to assign specific evaluations and language is sufficiently imprecise that it is almost impossible to maintain any consistency from show to show, from person to person or in various times. Adding up a bunch of SWAGs (Scientific Wild Ass Guess) and dividing to get an overall evaluation is just silly. I evaluate anime into four categories. Excellent shows I really enjoyed and hated to see end. Watchable Good to OK, I enjoyed what I saw and it wasn't a waste of time. This would be the big category. No Shows I didn't like and probably didn't finish. Not interested This includes shows where I don't care for the setup, or have heard enough to realize I will not like how it comes out. This is a largish category and includes most mecha shows, anything serious about the end of the world, anything which includes both magic girl and dark in the description and stories with a bad ending. I don't attempt to watch these. I also don't rank shows within a category. |
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Joshua Zarate
Posts: 2061 |
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I think the two people above me already said it best about this topic and I agree with them on basically everything, but if I may, I would like to add to it. I believe that something entirely complex as an opinion cannot be represented numerically or by letters either at all. Plus, numbers and letters themselves will not always tell the whole story of how an anime presents itself. I can somewhat see why some people would like to use letters and numbers as a ranking because they can be relatively simple/basic. But those who do that may only want to watch shows within a certain ranking and miss out on shows that they could have enjoyed as well. For example, if someone were to use MAL and only watches what their community has ranked between 8 and 10, then they would miss out on anime such as Texhnolyze and Shiki and I consider that happening to be extremely unfortunate. Rankings via numbers/letters by themselves can make or break an anime for some people is what I’m trying to say and I don’t think that’s a wise decision at all. It’s entirely possible for some to really enjoy what’s ranked “bad” and dislike what’s ranked “good” on MAL and that’s perfectly fine. It’s all a matter of personal preference and not everyone is going to like the same thing. MAL should not be used as the be all, end all of anime quality as some people may like to use it as and you are definitely not the only one who has a problem with that website, louis6578.
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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I maintain a list at MAL and participate actively in the recommendations section of the forum. I see my role as promoting excellent older shows (2003-2010) that most contemporary viewers have not heard of like Juuni Kokuki or Oh! Edo Rocket.
I rarely use any scores below a six. If a show falls below that, I stop watching. I also have only six shows with scores of ten out of ten. I find the list a convenient way to keep track of what I have watched. The biggest problem about MAL is the age of most of its participants and the rather juvenile reactions some of them, especially the men, display. (A common recommendation is the shotacon series Boku no Pico regardless of the request.) I don't try to carry on serious discussions of shows there; for that I use ANN and AnimeSuki. Many years ago I worked on a project funded by the Markle Foundation to develop an alternative television ratings system using viewer reactions. We ran a couple of fairly large studies where people tracked the shows they watched in a diary and gave them scores from one to ten. Like me, few people gave shows scores below 5-6, and many fewer ratings between 1-4. Zero was more common than 1-2's. We attributed most of those to people watching shows chosen by other viewers in the room. That problem doesn't really apply to a lot of anime viewing which often involves individuals watching on devices other than the living-room TV. |
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killjoy_the
 Posts: 2459 |
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I think yes, it pretty much all comes down to that, but separating each part of the whole and talking about it - the way it accomplished something or failed to do so - is perfectly fine to me. If you tell me that an anime's grade is always going to be 20% based on the soundtrack, then I'm going to disagree with you, but if you tell me you rated an anime whatever number you did because the soundtrack was amazing/awful, then I can see your point. After all is said and done, even if you divide your rating in Plot, Characters, Sound, Animation and Enjoyment, and they're always going to be a fixed % of the overall rating, you're still just rating it based on your own standards. I think FLCL has the best anime soundtrack, and don't care too much for Cowboy Bebop's outside of a few tracks. One Punch Man had great sakuga, but none of it made me feel anything, while I'm excited to see some less technically accomplished shots in shows I did like. Etc. As a basis to make sure you considered every part that makes an anime, I think it's valid to separate your ratings in separate pre-defined aspects, but if you want to write an actual piece, you're done with those in your draft. I'm not one to write too many reviews though, and I can see how easier it is to just go topic by topic than to exercise your writing by making one final piece considering every aspect. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18189 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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I utterly disagree that reviewing anime - or, for that matter, any other type of entertainment media - is useless. A properly-done review helps those who are not familiar with a particular title to decide whether or not it's worth their time to check out rather than just taking a blind flyer on it. And no, I don't buy the "but you should just check it out for yourself instead of having other people make decisions for you!" kind of argument, as that can be enormously impractical if you don't have time to check out the dozens of new shows every season. Having someone else do the legwork for you can be a huge time-saver.
Over the years my observation has been that a lot of people are resistant to reviews because they have this gut reaction about how it co-opts their decision-making process and/or because their tastes don't align with those of the reviewers. The former shouldn't be an issue, as it's always your decision whether to heed the analysis of the reviewer or not. I also see/hear a lot of comments like, "well, if the critics don't like it then I probably will!" I've always found this to be a very defensive reaction because the speaker's tastes/priorities clearly don't align with those of the critic and/or they don't (as they see it) like being told what to think about something. But that's easily resolvable these days, too: just find a critic/reviewer whose opinions on titles usually align with yours. I also disagree about quantifying reviews with numbers or letter grades. I know a fair number of people don't like this practice, but I actually prefer it because I find labels like "Excellent" or "Masterpiece" to be too vague and broad. Maybe this is my Math teacher's soul talking, but I prefer quantifiable values which allow for comparison. (I do fully appreciate that not everyone cares anywhere near as much about that as I do, though.) Now, I will fully concede that the exactness of any quantified grading system is subjective, as even after more than a dozen years of professional anime viewing I still struggle with decisions like what separates a 4 from a 4.5 (on the Preview Guide) or a B+ from an A- (streaming and full reviews). Often those decisions come down either to comparison (if I gave that one a 4 then this one must be a 4.5 because it's better) or a level of enthusiasm; I tend to opt for the higher result when I'm excited about the title and the lower result when I'm uncertain but still feel there's a certain level of quality present. Which brings up the other major point mentioned so far: that some just watch anime for entertainment and don't care about any deeper analysis. That's fine; there are definitely titles that I watch just for fun, too. (Strike the Blood immediately comes to mind as such a title for me, for instance.) If that's your exclusive priority then you just ignore the parts of a review which don't deal with fun factor or potential distractions to it. However, there are a lot of people who enjoy analyzing what they watch, too, and/or find that it deepens their experience, even if that does mean picking it apart. Reviews are more for those people than anyone else. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23770 |
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I rarely read reviews (as opposed to previews) before I've watched a title to completion. That's because I generally prefer knowing as little as possible going in. However, I enjoy reading reviews after the fact just to see if they jibe with my own opinions and also because there may be things that I didn't understand or appreciate and and a good review can be very useful in supplying some insight.
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 9841 Location: Virginia |
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@Key
Perhaps I should clarify. I agree that formal reviews by experienced reviewers are extremely helpful. I also agree that someone who rates shows frequently can probably handle a letter or number grading system and keep it consistent. Though I will admit that I mostly ignore the letter or number grade and only pay attention to the write-up. What I am after is a description of the setting and a vague idea of how well or poorly the story plays out. Unlike my friend Blood-, I want to know as much about a show as possible before starting it. What bothers me is the idea that everyone must evaluate shows in a similar manner. I don't use MAL, but the My Anime feature here on the site has way too many levels of evaluation. It also has few criteria as to what each level means. Worse yet is the fact that a significant number of people tend to rate everything they like as a masterpiece and anything they don't care for as a failure without consideration of differences in taste. What I think is useless is an evaluation without an associated write-up. Unless you know why someone thinks a show is good, bad or indifferent it is hard to judge how valid their evaluation is. For that reason I find the weekly Best of / Worst of feature useless for decision making though it is fun to see people get upset at the results. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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It really is stupid how the MAL reviewers (and Glass Reflection, I believe) will analyse a show by category and then give each category the same weighting (and then take an average). This means that, to such people, animation is considered to be just as important as music, which is just as important as plot, which is just as important as entertainment value. Which is crazy, and quite simply wrong.
Technical categories like animation and music and artistry do matter, but they they only modify the base quality. They aren't critical to a show's quality. The plot, the writing, the storyboarding, the humour, the voice acting (to a lesser extent); these are the things that really determine whether a show is bad or not. A well-written show with garbage visuals - like Windy Tales - isn't helped by its looks, but it isn't all that hurt by them either (and yeah, I know that in that case the weird art style was deliberately weird). Just because the visuals were not good doesn't mean that it cancels out the great writing. And Guilty Crown has fantastic animation and superb music, but they don't make up for the appalling writing quality. Basically, you have to look at the big picture, not just break an anime down into meaningless parts and then average them out. |
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15462 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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I myself am not a fan of total review of something being what was added up from rating the various parts of the show. I don't really use MAL except for remembering a character from a show, and maybe having a little look at what other people are thinking of something after I have watched it. I actually used to be really against reviews, but I have started to find some really good ones on ANN from the professionals.
I tend to rate most of what I watch in the general forums of this site, by which I add the show to the My Anime, and pull apart what I thought of the series with a final rating based on Masterpiece (10/10) and Awful (1/10), I actually find it a really good framework than simply numerical as I have never been one to find a good baseline without a comparison. I have never actually found something worthy of a Worst ever (0/10), I would probably have to be strapped to a chair and forced to watch something for it to be worthy of such a thing. Only one show for me has even earned an Awful (1/10), that was Scar-red Rider XechS, and if I actually averaged out parts of a whole it would be higher, but watching that caused such an angry reaction that I made an entire topic for it, just so I could go into huge detail about how much I hated it, and asked anyone who also watched it if they could debate it with me. It is opinion, and I think that is actually important when one wants to quantify how good something is, and that some of the best shows I can think of might have had problems in some areas, yet they did some things so right that they were in my opinion worth as high marks as I could give. But I understand how even that can be a problem when people want something quantified. But it was as said before, that pulling it apart too much into those quantified elements can remove the magic. My top show of the year so far, in terms of only one worth Masterpiece has been Princess Principal, second one being Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid at Excellent. The second I noted misses out not for any real asthetic reasoning, but in my opinion missed out on just not having a little something which I probably could not quantify, while I thought the first managed to be a complete package in spite of me wanting more, but has that thing I think pushes it up, even though I would not be surprised that for many it wold be Kobayashi that is the better one. It is not like everyone is going to think and hold things the same way. Even with a reviewer, it helps to understand the sensibilities of the reviewer. Not to suck up, but Theron is one of the reviewers I usually find myself mostly agreeing with, but all the others offer a different point of view, which can help in what someone else I might talk to would think. |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18189 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Oh, that's been an issue on this site, too, although it's been a while since I last heard complaints about it.
Agreed. |
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Spawn29
Posts: 551 |
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I never like how MAL lets you rate a show before the show is finished. I seen too many shows that are rated super high before the show is finished. Most of them are not even that good to begin with in my opinion. I wish they let people rate the show from 1-10 when the show is over. If it's a long running one like One Piece or Naruto, wait until the show reaches the 50 episode mark.
Well most of the people that I seen on MAL are teenagers and people in their early 20's. I see people on the site that will hate on something if the animation is old despite the great story. It seems like younger people can't enjoy a anime unless it has pretty looking animation in HD. I wonder how these people are going to feel in 20 years when they see younger people don't want to watch Kill la Kill, Fairy Tail or Attack on Titan for having dated animation. |
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16935 |
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That might be the case for you but you don't speak for everyone. What I dislike is when people, reviewers or normal users, at any sight try and dictate to everyone else what constitutes "good" and "bad" based on their own personal opinions. You are more than entitled to feel however you want and grade something however you want, but don't try and act as if you're word is the one holy truth and that's all there is. Doing so inherently sends a message to those with a differing opinion that they are wrong and their enjoyment based on those opinions is invalid and also wrong. I agree with the notion that simply having a number or letter by itself is more or less useless. You are losing all the context as to why that show got that rating. Maybe it was due to the technical merits the user felt the show had. Maybe it was just a guilty pleasure and they know it's not "worthy", for lack of better term, of that rating. I think a review, with or without an actual "grade" to it, can help someone sort out what they should get to next. I do think people should not let a review sway them per se' if they disagree with the reviewer. If you think something sounds interesting but a reviewer panned it that doesn't mean you should automatically toss the show away. That's where the context part comes in. WHY did the reviewer give it the rating that does not match your own? If the reasons they gave a show a particular rating don't matter to you then you know to ignore that and just move on. Likewise if the points they address do matter to you then you might have a better idea if this show is truly up your alley. Just having a crap ton of numbers and an average star rating doesn't tell you anything beyond if a show is popular or not. Popularity obviously does not automatically equal quality for any given person. I use MAL primarily just to keep track of what I have watched or not and what I want to watch. I rate my shows sure, but I don't ever use their rating system as a basis for if I should watch a show or not anymore than I would use simple numbers or letters or stars in an Amazon review or a book club review. |
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louis6578
Posts: 1861 |
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I think a huge issue is with the way a lot of people judge animation. They often assume that if you can pause the anime at any moment and it would make good wallpaper, then the animation is good. This is very wrong. Sword Art Online is a show that a lot of casual fans say is outstandingly animated, and while it's not particularly broken, the animation should not be thought of as more than average in my opinion. The ART is good, but the animation (the movement of the characters) is pretty limited. The fight choreography is awful, the movements are the same typical lunging and running motions, and if it weren't for the music, I bet a lot of the fight scenes would be very forgettable.
On the other hand, these same casual fans who have never worked in the animation industry will look at a show like Mob Psycho 100 or Kill La Kill and immediately assume that it's poorly animated, despite the fact they are far more stylistic than Sword Art Online. A lot of the "poor animation" in Kill La Kill is done to purposefully enhance the viewing experience. Things like everyone fodder enemy looking the EXACT same or Nui moving like a clip art icon when dodging attacks are clearly there on purpose, not because they "gave up" on making the show well-animated. It's gripes like this that make me wonder why these casual fans who have no idea what good or bad animation really is are judging anime on that standard. I mean, yeah, if you like the aesthetic of a show, well-made or not, you would rate that show higher because of it. However, this just adds to my point that EVERY one of these categories should just be "personal enjoyment." |
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