Josh’s Anime Blog

Before I add any more reviews, I’d like to share my way of rating anime. Its not perfect and is rather subjective, of course, but these are my ratings, not some complex quantitative analysis.

While my ratings are from 1 to 10, “average” is more along the line of a 7 score and not a 5 score.  An 8 would be seen as slightly above average, 9 would be significantly above average, and 10 would be fantastic.  Meanwhile, a 6 would be below average, a 5 would be bad, and anything below that would be pretty hard to get unless something was just atrocious.

Animation
I take into account three factors for this:

1) The time the anime was released (I wouldn’t expect an anime released in 1996 to have the same quality as one released in 2006)

2) How was it released (movies are held to higher standards than OVA, which are held to higher standards than TV series)

3) The “look and feel” of the anime. If the anime is goofy and has goofy looking anime, I won’t necessarily hold that against it.

I’ll say now that I’m not exactly an animation expert and so I don’t necessarily know about (and thus don’t necessarily notice) the more specific nuances of animation.  Basically how I rate it is…if it looks good, I rate it high.  If it doesn’t look good, then I don’t rate it high.  Pretty simple I think.

Story

Also, pretty subjective to whether I like it. Does a suspension of disbelief exist? Am I laughing with them or laughing at them, etc. How well thought out is the story. Is it something I’ve seen a bazillion times before? Do they focus more on, say, fan service than the story? Things like that are what I take into account. An anime which has a lot of fan service or action, but little story won’t do well in this department.  Meanwhile, if there is a plot, and episodes actually follow the plot, it will do better.

Music

Again, partially subjective to whether I just like it or not.  However, I do pay attention to  whether the music helps define or confuse the look and feel of the anime? Is it an action anime with romantic music (just as an example) or vice versa? What is the music quality (which can also partially be influenced by when the anime was released)?

Coherence/Story Arc

This is one of the hardest things to grade. Basically it goes like this: Is a goal and/or some sort of story line established (or seemingly established)? Next, how well do the following episodes progress this story line or the achievement of the goal?

Of course, this is imperfect. If there is an anime where the real story in different from what one perceived it, then I would look more at how the story was told to conceal this fact, etc.

Series with a lot of “filler” episodes, or which appear to be aimless until their “conclusion” won’t do well here. The only exception I might make is if it is clear from the very beginning that the show isn’t meant to be watched with a central plot in mind - but that largely depends on how the series is executed.

Also, I’m requiring a minimum episode count of 12 episodes for this to be applicable, so series shorter than that (like Oh! My Goddess or Video Girl Ai) won’t have a score for this.

English Dubs

Not all anime will have a score for this because either 1) they haven’t been dubbed yet or I’ve seen it, but haven’t heard the English dubs.

Basically I look at all the major characters and see 1) is the voice actor/actress any good. In other words, does the dialog sound authentic or like they’re reading off a sheet of paper. 2) Does the voice match what I would expect for the character. In other words, does it match the personality and looks of the character, and if it doesn’t, is there a good reason for it.

I can usually forgive minor characters unless there are just a lot of bad dubs for them.

Gut Score

Basically, if I had to pull a rating out of a hat, what I would give it.

Weights

Since I deem my gut score, music, animation, and story to be most important, they get high weights.

“Gut Score” is multiplied by 5
Animation, Story, and Music scores are multiplied by 4 each
Coherence/Story Arc score is multiplied by 2
Dubs score is not multiplied by anything.

Since not all shows will have a coherence and/or a dub score, the actual total points each anime is given changes.  An anime with a score in both story arc and dubs will have a score out of 200 points. However, a story with no story arc score will only have a total out of 180, an anime without a dub score will only have a total score out of 190, and an anime without either will have a total score out of 170. For this reason, my final score will be a percentage of total possible points, and not the number of actual points.

For me, getting into the 90% means the anime is excellent and that I probably already own. An anime would have to be virtually perfect to get a score higher than the low 90s.

Scores in the 80% means the anime is good, that I have or probably am considering buying it, and that I would recommend it.

Scores in the 70% means that the anime is OK. I’d buy it if I saw it cheap, probably. I may or may not recommend it.

Scores in the 60% means that I wasn’t very impressed by the anime. I probably wouldn’t buy or recommend.

Anything in the 50% or less would pretty much be considered trash.