PA #87: Page Five Editorial

Writing reviews has always been somewhat of a risky business. Not health risks, mind you -- no one would want to write reviews if it led to testicular cancer or a barrage of gun-toting men knocking on your door. Though, the latter comes awfully close to some of the responses that reviews can garner sometimes. Only, instead of guns, the men are readers who come with harsh words, and instead of coming to your door, they just have to press a few buttons on their computers. It's all part of the package; readers' opinions are just as valid as the reviewer, and if one party is going to spout their opinions, one can only expect the other to do the same, be it dissent or agreement.

What goes into writing a review though? If it was all a matter of personal opinions anyway (and it is), why not just slap down a few stars and say that Show X sucks?

I can't speak for other writers, but I can certainly speak for myself. Whenever I write reviews, I always want to make sure that even if the reader has completely different tastes from me, they should still be able to gather enough information from the text to determine whether or not they'd want to watch the show. I may despise it when shows embody certain characteristics, but if that's what thrills other readers, they'll at least know to put the title on their wish lists. Even if a review slaps an F- at the bottom, it should still be able to tell readers that, in accordance to their own tastes, they may think it's the best show ever released.

Ideally, a review would be completely objective, but not only would it be next to impossible, it would also be the driest, dullest thing ever written. No one wants to read a shopping list of every little thing that happened between frame 234 and frame 42534 (actually, the main character's girlfriend dies, but shhhh). The next best thing is to present the reviewer's opinions in as objective of a manner as possible -- explain your thoughts, describe what went into your rankings, and hope that people will rely on the text rather than the letter grade at the bottom of the page.

There's one common misconception, though. It's true, much of the material that gets reviewed is screeners sent by the anime companies. And yes, sometimes early screeners come with neat trinkets like letter openers, action figures, and what have you. Despite it all, the job of reviewers is to present their straight opinion without regards to what the company will think of it. Even if reviewers trash everything Company Y releases that month, the company will continue to send screeners. There's a level of professionalism that exists that prevents reviewers from sugar-coating reviews, even if the company is an advertiser. After all, if you can't take the heat, take your head out of the furnace.

Of course, reviewing has heavily changed over the years. Several years ago, consumers would use reviews to determine if a certain series was worth their time or money. When anime cost $30 for a couple of episodes, the only thing you could do was hope that your local anime club was showing the title, or go online and browse through dozens of reviews.

Nowadays, the minute a review is published, feedback comes pouring in from people who either agree or disagree with the writer's assessment -- even for shows that haven't been released yet. How? Quite simply, the readers have already seen the title through fansubs and the like. No matter how early of a DVD pressing reviewers get, their words are always backed or refuted by readers who are already several episodes ahead. Comments like, "just wait, it gets better!" and "You'll see later -- he's not really evil!" clutter forums.

It begs the question: are reviews even necessary anymore?

If reviewers are simply giving their opinion about something that everyone has already seen, should they even bother? The point of a review is to give consumers hints of what's out there before they pull out their wallets. Anime is certainly not a cheap hobby, and with so many titles out there, sometimes reviews are the only way to "sample" everything on the shelves. But if readers are always two jumps ahead, doesn't it render reviews completely pointless?

Of course, that's just a broad generalization, and a huge exaggeration. Not everyone downloads fansubs or has the means to, and even if they did, they wouldn't watch everything that was ever produced. So maybe... for now, there's still a place for anime reviews. Until the day when first episodes of anime will be widely distributed over the internet then, reviewers will continue to strive for balance in their words, and readers will have to suffer through our run-ons and cynicisms.

Whew, safe for now.

Bamboo Dong
Associate-Editor