Improving your reviews by referencing others

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulobrandao/2788050844/ [http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3061/2788050844_e28da32923_m.jpg|240x240px|El Alma del Ebro. Photo by Paulo BrandÃ£o on Flickr, sculpture by Jaume Plensa]]

Alex Leavitt recently added a fascinating post to his Department of Alchemy: "Conceptualizing the Academic Anime Review." He's applying academic principles to anime blogging. I will refrain from snarky comments about the quality of anime blogging.

One of his ideas: normal anime reviews (like the ones at Ogiue Maniax or Reverse Thieves) usually don't refer to other anime reviews, except to say that other reviewers have covered an issue so thoroughly as to need no further discussion.

But, as he points out, why not? Why don't we refer to other reviews? Why don't we build off them? This is what academics do: take existing research and build on it.

It's a great point, and an approach easily attempted: when starting a review, search for other reviews of the same work. Read them. Reference them in your review, and add to their observations.

I'm going to take my draft reviews and rework them this way, and approach my future reviews the same way.

Let's do this.