Daily Archives: Sunday, August 3, 2008

Anime by Score Organization

By Josh | August 3, 2008

I reorganized my Anime By Score page from listing them as Excellent/Very Good/Good/etc. to doing them by star rating, hopefully to give it a little bit more granularity and to give more context to the scores.

So now I have 5-stars to 0-stars, divided by 1/2 stars.  Each star rating spans 4%, so the ranges are:

  • 5-star: 96%+
  • 4 1/2-star: 92% – 95.9%
  • 4-star: 88% – 91.9%
  • 3 1/2-star: 84% – 87.9%
  • 3-star: 80% – 83.9%
  • 2 1/2-star: 76% – 79.9%
  • 2-star: 72% – 75.9%
  • 1 1/2-star: 68% – 71.9%
  • 1-star: 64% – 67.9%
  • 1/2-star: 60% – 63.9%
  • 0-star: under 60%

Hopefully this shows that basically the “above average” shows (3.0 or above) = shows with scores of 80% or higher, average shows (2 and 2 1/2 stars) are generally in the 70s, while below average scores (1 1/2-stars or below) are below 72%.

My concerns about this are:

  • Only one show is 5-star, which seems a little silly, but unless I use different scales for each rating, I’ll either need a bigger range, have a smaller range (and not just have any 5-star shows) or I’ll have to live with it.
  • I originally had a scale of 5% per scale, but that put the middle ratings – 2 1/2 stars – in the bottom of the 70% range, which I thought was rather low.  To me, the division between good and not-so-good in a 5-star scale seems to be above and below the 3-star mark, so that’s how I’ve tried designing my ranges.  However, that’s just me.  I don’t know what other people might think.
  • Even with this, this just shows a possible issue with how I rate shows, in that I kind of give a score of 8 or so by default, and then raise or drop it based on what I like, with the effective range really being 7-9, with a range of 6 – 10 for really good or really not-so-good things.  Of course, the problem at this point is that going back and re-scoring over 100 shows and doing so consistently seems like a rather significant job, especially for shows which I may not have seen for quite a while.

In any case, I hope this makes looking at the Anime By Score page a little more useful.

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Anime Review – Blue Drop: 86.8%

By Josh | August 3, 2008

The Essentials

Name: Blue Drop: Tenshi-tachi no Gikyoku
Genre: Sci-fi, Romance
Episodes: 13
Released: October 2, 2007 – December 25, 2007
Based On: Blue Drop manga by Akihito Yoshitomi
Director: Masahiko Ohkura
Produced By: Asahi Production, BeSTACK
US Distribution By: N/A

Major Japanese Cast

Mari Wakatake: Akiko Yajima
Hagino Senkoji: Miyuki Sawashiro
Michiko Kozuki: Satsuki Yukino
Tsubael: Yuko Goto
Azanael: Ai Orikasa
Yuko Sugawara: Miho Yamada
Akane Kawashima: Akeno Watanabe
Hiroko Funatsumaru: Kimiko Saito
Shivariel: Youko Asagami

Major English Cast

N/A

Scores

Animation: 7/10 (x 4 = 28 pts)
Story: 9/10 (x 4 = 36 pts)
Music: 9/10 (x 4 = 36 pts)
Coherence/Story Arc: 10/10 (x 2 = 20 pts)
English Dubs: N/A
Gut Score: 9/10 (x 5 = 45 pts)

Total: 165/190 (86.8%)

Review

Blue Drop is about girl, Mari, who lost both of her parents in a mysterious island disaster when she was younger – an incident where Mari was the only survivor. She now lives with her grandmother, who decides that she should attend an actual school when Mari enters high school of being home schooled like she had been up to that point. However, Mari sees this as her grandmother dumping her off because she’s tired of taking care of her (which isn’t the case).

On her way to the school, Mari sees a mysterious girl standing out in the harbor. Mari soon finds out that the girl is her roommate in the dorm. However, when the girl, whose name is Hagino, touches Mari, she goes temporarily crazy, trying to strangle Mari. This obviously doesn’t start their relationship off on a good foot, and it doesn’t get any better when Mari finds out that Hagino is actually an alien who is on the Earth to do observation.

As Hagino tries to improve her relationship with Mari, Mari eventually learns about the truth of the disaster which killed her parents, how Hagino is involved, and why Hagino is on Earth observing in the first place.

I found Blue Drop a rather slow-paced but still excellently written anime series about the relationship between Hagino and Mari. While this is technically a yuri series, it’s more about the buildup of the two’s relationship than about the relationship itself, which really only lasts very briefly at the end of the series due to certain events.

Even though Mari is the lead character in the series, Blue Drop is about Hagino and her past and regrets as much as it is about Mari. Hagino also has to deal with the commander of the fleet in which Hagino’s ship, the Blue, is included, as well as the commander’s sidekick, who has a grudge against Hagino as well.

In the end, all of these dramatic elements wrap together to make a pretty good put together show.

On the technical aspects, the animation is probably the show’s weakest point, though it isn’t too bad, and is marked more by a “softer” sort of coloring in contrast to the sharper animation one might see in other series. However, the music is excellent I thought.

I you’re open to a good sci-fi drama series, and don’t mind the yuri aspect, I’d suggest checking out Blue Drop.

First Watched: October – December 2007
Do I Own: No
Do I Recommend: Yes

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