After its launch a week ago, blog carnival has now come to an end. We’ve seen what other participating bloggers have to say about the given topic – What Makes a 10/10 Anime. Personally, it has been a wonderful week, reading how other bloggers rate their anime and the things they consider. Obviously, each of us has our own sets of standards; some pretty similar, some very different.
It took me quite some time to go through all the blogs. That’s only because they’re such interesting read. While most of us agree that rating an anime is subjective to personal taste, the other participating bloggers have good points and it’s something I should take into considerations the next time I rate an anime.
For starters, Sam mentioned about considering the anime’s year of release. Production values of yesteryears differ greatly from what we have today. The songs, the artwork, the style are very different. But does that mean they are any less good? Does that mean they don’t deserve a perfect score? If a person considers production values as a criterion, he or she should consider comparing a particular anime against other anime that were released about the same time. It’s only fair to do so.
A few participants as well as commenter noted nostalgia as one of the factor that influence their ratings. As I reflect on this, I can understand why. If I still have this lingering attachment or generally positive and clear impression on an anime, it can only mean one thing – the anime has made an impact on me. I might not have noticed it during the time I was watching the anime, but some time later.
Also, in the absence of plot, typical for slice-of-life anime, how should they be rated? I’m sure there are some titles that deserve the full score. Maybe there aren’t any now, but perhaps in the future. Nopy chose to use how attention-gripping an anime is as a measure while Yumeka decided to go for the “heart score”. I think “heart score” is self-explanatory, but just in case I’ve provided the link to her blog along with others at the end of this post.
AceRailgun didn’t think the animation/music/design are that important, so do I. Surprisingly, there were quite a few participants who think the same. Before this carnival, I thought I might be the only one >.<. Thank you, Du5k for organizing this blog carnival.
Speaking of Du5k, he had his standard changed over the years, and I’d think my standards will change some time in the future. The question is what about the anime we’ve rated before? Do we go back and reconsider their ratings? Is there a possibility an anime that wasn’t given a perfect score will get the perfect score after reconsideration? What do you think?
Whoa, look at that. That’s a long list of nice little discoveries. I must say, I’ve enjoyed this blog carnival very much. It was really fun reading and sharing opinions with various people.
Once again, the list of participants here. Thank you guys for making this carnival as fun as it is.
- Ace Railgun by AceRailgun
- Anime B&B by Marina
- Anime Viking by Marow
- Draggle’s Anime Blog by draggle
- Ephemeral Dreams by Ephemeral Dreamer
- Hachimitsu by Mira
- Leap250’s Blog by Leap250
- Lemmas and Submodalities by SnippetTee
- Listless Ink by Yi
- Mainichi Anime Yume by Yumeka
- Nopy’s Blog by Nopy
- One Minute of Dusk by du5k
- The Otaku’s Study by Sam
World of Yamaguchi Hoshiko 
I’ve also learned a lot from the carnival too. After sharing and seeing the difference in opinions, I’m considering to make a few minor tweaks to improve my standard as well.
And thank you, too!
Yeaps, yeaps. It’s always fun to share with others and learning something new in return.
Yes, this was an interesting experiment.. I wish I had more time to comment on it as it progressed.
>If a person considers production values as a criterion,
This is always a contentious issue, isn’t it? There are those of us who realize it’s almost entirely inconsequential in 99% of cases, and those of us who are still young enough to think it’s a big deal.
For me, production values are to be measured against the show itself, and little else. In ten or 15 years they’ll contrast poorly with the new stuff, and knowing it looked good compared to other anime of it’s time is little more than an interesting historical footnote.
But are production values doing their job? Are they stepping aside to let the better shows suck you into their worlds passively? Or are they intentionally distracting you from how bad the show really is otherwise? Do they take a dive, and the show along with them? Subjective stuff like that is more important to a nerd like me.
>in the absence of plot, typical for slice-of-life anime
I still maintain that’s a red herring argument. Even if you want to pretend “going through highschool” or “learning to master the gondola” aren’t traditional enough to qualify as over-arching narratives, they’re still the plot.
And if you’re going to bother rating a plot you still have to consider more than just how interesting it is in point form; plot *execution* is more important to me, especially when a show is based on characters and their growth, rather than the structure of the narrative.
So rating the “plot” of a slice of life show comes down to finding out what it *was* and seeing how well it mixed in with the growth of the characters. In a sense, I treat plot as another character – does it interact with the other characters, and grow with them?
The point of a plot in slice of life is, after all, to grow the real characters (or some similarly abstract notion in other cases). If you can’t fathom how to rate it’s effectiveness, then it’s likely it was just highly inconsequential and deserves low grades.
Even if you presume that a plot was “unnecessary”, one shouldn’t sweep it under the rug because it’s always still there. If you want to be objective you can’t sweep it under the rug. If you want to be subjective, well, then you don’t need to care about this entire discussion 🙂
Then again, determining whether the production values live up to their expectations or not is also dependent on each individuals. Some don’t mind how bad the anime actually is as long as the the production level reaches their expectations.
I like that you chose to use “plot execution” instead. I can’t remember if any of the participants actually said that. Come to think of it, it’s a more appropriate term. At the end of the day, it’s how well an anime does in delivering what is intended.
It’s fun to be part of this carnival and nice reading what bloggers have to say about their standards. The diversity and richness on one’s view is really interesting and helped me widen my perspectives.
It definitely did. That’s the fun part about sharing.
This was a cool idea and even though I was a last minute participant…(Or was that Yi-san?) it was an enjoyable sharing experience I suppose.
It was. As they say, it’s better late than never so glad to have you on board too =)
“For starters, Sam mentioned about considering the anime’s year of release. Production values of yesteryears differ greatly from what we have today. The songs, the artwork, the style are very different. But does that mean they are any less good? Does that mean they don’t deserve a perfect score?”
This is definitely a true thing! For example, in my case, I love Inukami (so hilarious) and gave it a very high ranking even if it’s a series from 2006…:P
There you have it =) And I truly believe series from as far as early 90s and watched today can still score a high mark if it nails everything a viewer desires.
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aww man, i missed the deadline Xd, anyway it was an interesting read. and kinda cool to see how everyone views anime in a totally different way than me.
Looks like you’ve written a post on this after all! Yes, it was also an interesting topic which allows us to see things from different perspectives once in a while.
The carnival was certainly an eye-opener with the different ways in which everyone rates anime. I know I’ve gone back and re-rated some anime, but only those that were my very first. At that point I didn’t have anything to compare them to and thought all anime was great.
Yes, it was. I haven’t gone back and re-rate some of the anime though. Just thought I should leave it as it is at the moment although I could use the “nostalgia” factor to reconsider some of the ratings.
yes ,i love this post.