Just sayin'

[http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2395/2062639378_30f3fabef3_m.jpg|180x240px|Faile, Anime by bixentro on Flickr]

I'm increasingly frustrated by reviewers' insistence that only original stories have dramatic power.

How often have we read a variation on this? "There really isn't a trace of originality in this thing at all, just naked demographic-courting...the girls are pure, flat archetypes." Look, folks, just because you've seen these archetypes before doesn't make them dramatically uninteresting to the rest of the world. The question is how well the characters are used, not how "original" they are. There's hardly an original character in anime, when it comes to that.

Besides, if you're going to use originality as a required value, how on earth do you define it? How original does an anime have to be? Completely original across all fiction? Surely not. Then how much? And why are you complaining about it when you haven't told your reviewer the standards you apply?