Building a Better Anime Review

''|300x225px|anime-watching-animeNote:  Everything I write in this post applies equally to manga and light novel reviews. I'm only going to mention anime to simplify this post's grammar.''

I have a problem.

I've been reading a lot of anime reviews lately, and I've noticed that a lot of them suck. My own reviews are very much included. They don't tell me anything about a show I couldn't get from Wikipedia, and the opinions are the mental equivalent of Jell-O; very little of substance. They're basically "This is a show about characters X and Y, who are trying to find Z. I thought this was a great show." Um, okay.

Which begs the question: what makes a good anime review?

Well, let's look at the bad anime review, and figure out what it does wrong. The reviews I've been reading are usually divided into two parts: a summary of the show's premise, and a personal reaction.

Here's the problem I have with summarizing a show's premise:  I can get that from many places. I can get it from Wikipedia, or Amazon.com, or ANN, or MyAnimeList, or the back of the DVD box.

I think '''reviewers forget that they exist within an ecosystem. '''When I want to learn about a show, I don't read a review and stop there. I don't say "XxSesshomaru138xX said it was good, so I'm going to buy it!" I'll check out a few other reviews and the Wikipedia entry and the ANN ratings to get a feel for the show. There are other places to go for anime information.

Now, yes, to review a show one needs to talk about it. But that should be integrated into the review; not a dry recitation of an episode's events.

Then we get to the personal reaction; the actual review part of the review. And while I recognize that reviews are inherently subjective, too many reviews boil down to, "I like it." Or, at best, "I liked this aspect of it."

Well, that's nice, but all it tells me is that one person liked the show (or an aspect of the show). How useful is that, really? Is that the best a review can do? At that point, the review can be completely binary: Aoi Hana: Yes. Queen's Blade: No.

I'm tired of value words. Shows have "good action" or a "terrible dub" or a "great plot." What exactly is a great plot? Is it a plot that's complex? Clear? Deep? Entertaining? Dramatic? Evenly keeled? Always keeping you guessing? I might like a deep plot; the reviewer might like a clear, simple one. I usually don't know the reviewer's preference, so how will I know what the reviewer means by "great?"

Here's the thing: I want to know why.

If you liked the characters, great! But why? What about the characters did you like? Were they realistic? Oddball? Surprising? Unsurprising? Memorable? Did they have chemistry?

Every time I see a value word, I want to know what it was about that thing that the reviewer liked. If you love the story, okay, tell us what it was in the story that you loved.

So, I propose a ban on the following words in a review: good, bad, great, fantastic, excellent, horrible, terrible, awesome, and sucks. I just tried to define a few cases where those words actually help the reader in a review, but I honestly couldn't think of one.

I also propose a ban on summaries of the work's premise.

As reviewers, value words and bland recitations of a work's premise add nothing to the review. Our readers deserve better. They deserve specificity. They deserve our full reaction to a work; not a lazy simplification.