What I Learned From The Aniblog Tourney

Well, that’s a wrap. Shades of Grey officially lost in the second round of the tournament against Unmei Kaihen. It’s essentially what I expected going in, since I’m not a very popular blogger and some of the other people participating are very well known. Honestly, I didn’t think I would do well even at the start. I even had a picture picked out before the first match started in case I lost.

I had some fun and managed to avoid most of the DRAMA!!!, so I’d say it was a good experience. However, there’s still something that’s been bugging me about the whole thing since the first match started. It may very well be the question that’s been hanging over this website since it began: how exactly does a manga blog get attention?

Winter Status Update

I’ve heard a few people talking about what they’ll be doing for the next few weeks. Some people are working on the 12 Days of Christmas posts, which does sound interesting. Some of us, however, have a little too much on our plates at the moment with exams and things. Sadly, the next few weeks are not going to be easy ones for me, as I’ve got not only exams, but the last few assignments for my classes, and then I literally have to fly out two hours after my last test. Not a lot of breathing room in there.

So I wanted to officially state right now that most of my larger blog posts are going to be on hold for the time being. I was working on two specifically – a first impression of Nisekoi and an entry about getting started with manga – and I’ve decided to save these until after my exams are over. The last day of exams are the 19th, so I should get back to work on them soon after that. The regular blog posts are also going to slow down. This doesn’t mean they’ll stop completely, as I should have a post about the latest One Piece chapter in a day or two, but other than that I’ll only post something if it’s part of some major event of the series, or something that is not likely to come up again. The obvious exception is the time directly before the exams, where I’ll be lucky to get anything done here at all.

The Problem with Madoka Magica

Not too long ago, I wrote a post discussing a few things I found irritating about many review series. One of those things was the mindless praise that some series end up getting. I mentioned how it hurt the review process by both reducing the amount of valuable information the viewer gets and bundling all viewers into a single group, which hurts no matter how you feel about the work. But there’s another thing that bothers me about this kind of praise, and that’s the effect it can have on anyone who doesn’t feel the same way.

Have you ever had a series that everyone around you enjoyed except for you? The reason you don’t like it could be anything, but it’s something that can’t easily be changed. It can make you feel annoyed or possibly disturbed when everyone else praises it for reasons that have nothing to do with you. I’ve seen it happen before, particularly when one review disagrees with the others and gets shunned for it.

Subjectivity in Reviews

Those of you who have seen my reviews have probably noticed that I use a different method of judging the manga than most other reviewers do. Instead of using a numbered score, a letter grade, or even a simple assessment of overall quality, my reviews end with a clear description of who would probably like a series and who wouldn’t. Well, I think it’s time I wrote about this particular method of reviewing and why I chose it over the more common methods.

See, I’ve seen a lot of different reviewers in the last few years. I’ve seen game reviewers on TV, movie and anime reviewers online, and more than a few reviewer blogs. I’ve seen critical reviewers, casual ones, and quite a few people who just like tearing into things they hate. And because of this, I came to notice a few trends that I didn’t enjoy as much as the other reviewers seemed to. In particular, there were three things they did that I decided had to stop when I started writing my first video.