Mai-Otome

[Dizeth]

Nevermind...

[Sheex]

I haven't forgotten you, don't worry. =P

I have a final coming up Monday morning, so I'll try to get you a response by Monday evening/Tuesday morning.

[Sheex]

Alrighty, here goes:

*: As a general note, you want to have some sort of opener to your story section to lead into the review. Opening up straight into a story description doesn't carry as much polish since it doesn't ebb the reader into the review as readily. It can just about anything from a joke to a rant to a brief narrative - whatever you can think of.

*: Also, I'm noticing you're using a very liberal amount of passive voice; I'd suggest sticking with active for now. Here's a few examples of what I mean:

As the story progresses, Arika becomes very ambitious and decides she wants to obtain the highest honor at Garderobe Academy of becoming an otome.

I'd word it something like: As the story progresses, Akira grows ambitious enough that she sets her sights on becoming an Otome - Garderobe's highest honor. This probably isn't the best rephrasing, though; it's been years since I attempted to watch Mai-Otome and nothing is fresh on my mind; play with it a bit.

Before I praise the storyline of Mai-Otome...

Before I praise Mai-Otome's storyline... would be a much better iteration.

*: Another thing you might consider is collecting your thoughts together a bit better; you drag some of them out in run on sentences and it comes across confusing. Here's an example:

If there was one thing I would change about this anime, it would be simply that it seems like they spend too much time in the beginning “easing” you towards the main plot, which gets pretty dark after a few episodes.

*: Check your tenses. You shift back and forth between past/present a lot mid sentence and occasionaly future as well.

*: Remember to italicize titles like Mai-Hime.

*: You use the verb "to be" a lot; try to substitute other verbs whenever possible.

*: Your scoring system seems way bloated; irrespective of the fact that I dropped the series 8 or 9 episodes in, I would strongly disagree with you that the animation was a 9.5 or that the characters were 8.5 (I actually dropped it because I find the character mind-bogglingly cliche and shallow.) The animation seemed more appropriately scored as a 7.5 to an 8, as though it was crisp and smooth, both the character designs and scenery were pretty generic and somewhat plain. I could be wrong about the characters, but they rated somewhere around a 4.5-5 in my book when I dropped it, and this makes me a bit skeptical as to how accurately represented they are with an 8.5 score. Maybe another site reviewer who has seen Mai-Otome could better help you with the scores; it's terribly difficult for me to accurately appraise them, but from my personal experience an 8.5 (and subsequently an overall 9.0) doesn't sit right with me at all.

Keep in mind that you need to have an accurate scale that reflects ALL your anime experiences; a 9.0 would leave you basically with a 9.5 and a 10.0 to rate anything better than Mai-Otome with; I checked your profile and it doesn't even make your top 5. I'd recommend browsing through some of the ranges of site reviewer scores to get a feel for how your ratings should pan out. Keep in mind I'm not trying to bash the series (since everyone can like/hate things as they choose and anime enjoyment is entirely subjective) or your tastes, but unless you truly feel that Mai-Otome is one of the best series out there I'd consider giving it some thought.

[Sheex]

First off, my opinions on your scoring come from many discussions with Sothis, Vivi, Viva, and many other site reviewers on standards of evaluation. I made a point to try to clarify that, and I tried to offer my explanations without being biased. However, your claims that I didn't "truly looked over my info for more than a couple seconds" is utter bullshit - I read your review through from start to finish three times in addition to taking the time to break it down and give you my feedback. I saw you gave it a 4.5, but I also saw you gave a lot of series 5 stars as well. It doesn't matter one iota if I dropped the series in terms of noting your scoring system as potentially needing improvement; Sothis and I have gotten into disagreements about my scores a number of times over MY scoring system. I tried to be as objective as I could in giving you feedback by which to evaluate your OWN methods (such as mentioning character designs/backgrounds, which are NOT top notch in an objective sense.)

If you'd like a further example, Vivi and I disagreed on the quality of Escaflowne's story about a month back - she thought it was a 10, I thought it was a 7 to a 7.5. However, when explaining to her my reasoning for it, she actually ended up agreeing with me that her initial scores were bloated. This is exactly the same concern I had with your scoring - you were unintentionally bloating your scores and compacting your scoring system to leave too little room for your top series.

As for me admitting "not giving the anime a chance," I was admitting that I hadn't seen it in full (I consider 9 episodes MORE than a chance, by the way) and that might influence the accuracy of my ratings. However, that is certainly not to say I was admitting my claims were invalid or even remotely ignorant - I was giving you some things to consider when rating the series so high. Again, if the series takes over 10 episodes to get going and it's 26 episodes, that is an enormously legimate critique that your review should both address and take into account when giving an overall score. To somehow call my feedback a biased rant against the series makes no sense - I could give two shits whether or not you hated Mai-Otome or loved it, and I could give an even further two shits as to my opinions on the anime. I disagree with plenty of reviewers about plenty of scores on many occasions, and to somehow think that I singled you out as a special cause for a rant is bogus; take Vivafruit's scoring of Toki wa Kakeru Shoujo as a 9.0 (I thought it was a 7.0-7.5) or my scoring of School Days as a 7.5 (mariprosa rates it 4.0-4.5) if you want more examples.

Anyway, if you don't want to take the time to revise your work (which is a scary sign in and of itself) or even take my feedback into consideration, that's certainly your call. Do as you wish - it's of no concern to me either way.

[VivisQueen]

This is me officially saying I'm not involved in the dispute. I just wanted to make a general point that others who want to become site reviewers might find useful:

If your aim is just to review for the fun of it, nobody will bother you at all about your style, your ratings, your content or anything. I enjoy reading different reviews in the forum and so do all the other reviewers. However, if your aim is to become a site reviewer, it's a slightly different ball game. EVERYTHING you submit is free game for critique because the point is to write quality reviews that are balanced, well-written grammatically, interesting to read, and fair. This means:

- your ratings have to be consistent with what you are saying e.g. if you give all praise and your rating is a 6, sothis will get on your arse for it and tell you to amend either the content or the rating. Better to learn to be consistent from the onset and save her the effort.

- your ratings should take into account everything else that you have seen and not just your subjective opinions on one anime. Like Sheex said, that is the mistake I made with Escaflowne. While it is undoubtedly one of my favourite anime of all time (and was even ranked my number 1), I cannot say with a balanced view that it deserves a higher ranking than Grave of the Fireflies or FMA for overall product.

- your ratings should leave enough of a room to rank your anime in such a way that others can see your preferences in order. So if I see that you rank X as 10 and Y as 9, I know you preferred X to Y. But if you rank A B C D X Y Z all 9s, I can't tell which is better than which. While someone like Viva will have trouble ranking all his 280+ anime with only a scale of 10, someone like Dizeth, with 78 anime might want to consider reworking their rankings to be more balanced (if your intent is to become a site reviewer). It's a lesson I had to learn and luckily I was given the chance to learn it. It's truly a valuable tool when considering anime in a more balanced way.

To that extent, I just want to give an example using Dizeth's anime. Whilst I can't say a thing about the overall rating you've given Mai Otome (since this is too subjective and would touch upon the dispute), I think I can make my point well with the Animation section. Here are other anime on your 'watched' list that I think most people would agree (and heck, probably most animation students would agree) have better animation than Mai Otome:

Bebop Movie
FMA
Haibane Renmei
Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
Spirited Away
Final Fantasy Advent Children

Now, if you have given Mai Otome a 9, you have to consider what you would give all these other anime above if you rated them for animation. You literally have given yourself only a one point range to rank all these anime with different effects. Unless of course you started going decimal e.g.

Mai Otome 9
Bebop Movie 9.1
Spirited Away 9.2

And even so, the ranking suggests there is very little difference in the quality of animation between all these anime. Which, again, is highly unlikely. I think there is a notable difference between Spirited Away and Mai Otome, not just in terms of overall quality, but background details, smoothness of movement, quality of the images, imagination employed with character designs, world building etc. However, you can't reflect this difference in your Animation rating because you have set Mai Otome's quality at such a high level.

Again, let me make this point: this would not even have been brought up had you not said you wanted to be a site reviewer. None of the reviewers read the forum reviews and critique them in this way because people are free to give their opinions however they wish. However, if they want their views to represent the site, then they do become subject to the same standards. When there is disagreement between reviewers, the point for the original reviewer is to justify their ratings/content. If they can't (just like I couldn't with Escaflowne), then it's a case of painful and reluctant adjustment. Lol. I don't know about anyone else, but I've found it has made me a better reviewer for it.

Okay, I made it sound like a bigger deal than it is, but you get the gist, right...?