I'm a sucker for heart-wrenching shows, love psychology/philosophical aspects of animes, and I think cliches/generics are non-innovating and pointless but we still watch it.
Comedies/hentai have their own section.
A "favorite" show and "good" show are different things, however you can express both perspectives in a single show. I define a personal "favorite" as a show you can watching over and over without it getting "old". And a "good" show has a rating of eight through ten.
Here's the grading system I use
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Four - Either trolling or retarded.
Five - Lacking in basic composure as an anime, poorly executed and developed
Six - Does things noticeably one/two-sided, does not branch out or have other purposes and does things underwhelmingly or generically.
Seven - The average show, where commonality and nothing too "special" meets. "I've seen this before" pharse gets repeated and often is enjoyed by just watching not thinking. A lot of times they are also boring.
Eight - Proves itself with redeeming qualities and excels in multiple categories
Nine - Is a milestone and creates precedents for others shows, a "Game changer"
(Ten scores are very subjective and everyone is entitled to have their own opinions and honestly, it is freaking really hard to articulate how some media portrays itself as "good" without actually being in their "shoe" to tell them. Because you can't simply empirically test it and say that "oh, well this show is 10 times better than that other show, or shit this show suck donkey balls!" ya know!? )
(*note, this description of a ten score is a perfect "ten" in my eyes, I'll give a ten to a show if it masters "some" of these qualifications.* )
"Perfect" Ten - Has to have the ability to be re-watched over and over again. Animation style are of top-notch quality and is creative/unique. Sound tracks are epic/ or just plain great and well placed. Has an exceptional capability to provoke a multitude of thoughts, emotions, feelings, and interpretations. Conjure philosophy, psychology, morals, reason, and logic. Bring up universal themes, archetypes, and allusions. Develop elaborate/complex, original, memorable, characters, plots, and settings. Encompasses all plethora of genres (Comedy, drama, action, adventure, mystery, cyber/steampunk, mecha, romance, school, slice of life, historical, war exc) and demographics (shounen, shoujo, seinen, and josei). In as little run time as possible. And basically goes down in anime/manga history as THAT anime/manga.
Also not to mention ten's usually adhere to my personal bias. :)
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Continual rambling of how I decipher a rating
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Just because I give an anime a low rating doesn't mean that it is all bad. Many shows I don't praise highly as a good, solid show, I still enjoy watching it. I.E. most comedy/slapstick shows. Vice versa, a show a rate the highest score, a 10, one might not entirely agree with. For what goes into rating an anime, one must understand that most animes are an adaptation. For example, a show can come from a light novel, visual novel, video game, manga or straight from the creator without any prior forms of media. An adaption that bases it self on a prior media source has the tendency to be depicted either well or not to its full potential. This is because it was the direct result of the studio and the director. This means when in control of source material, a storyboard writer can chose how many volumes to adapt, what characters are to be animated, to remove gore, nudity, and vulgarity, how many episodes are allows to even be animated, and this all is accounted for by production cost, due dates, and even if the source material is not finished. In full, directors have the right to bend and twist a show’s content from its original source to maintain an episode limit, to make it less ecchi or what have you. This in turn makes some anime adaptations better or worse in comparison to the source material. I.E. Love hina manga is 10x better then it’s anime counterpart or Elfen lied anime was so much better than the manga exc.
In addition it is important to recognize a certain anime as a sequel, prequel, reboot, or stand alone/one shot in order to fully give a comprehensive and critical rating. Knowing if a series is a sequel or a reboot changes the rating of a show because you can't just rate the show solely on its merits, one has to also take in account the other shows, and how well it integrated itself into the series, like if it opened up new plot lines, or improved on character development and so on. I.E. when they cry season one was slow as all hell, but the second season had better character development.
Then one can categorize the genre and demographically placement of the series. It is important to understand that not everyone enjoys all genres. I.E. A person who is only into action, cliché, shounen shows attempts to watch a josei, mystery, romance show might give a negative opinion because it's not the person's "cup of tea". So one has to compensate for that by removing their own bias and reviewing purely on its own merits and keeping in mind it’s simply not for “them”, but also understands how other people can enjoy it. After that, one may compile thoughts on show from the character development, plot integrity, story longevity, usage of foreshadowing, archetypes, themes, and overall progression holistically. How a story and characters are portrayed is crucial for one to figure out what the show is "going for". And what I mean by that is that all shows can be pinpointed down to have "goals", and it’s determined by the mind director of the anime or the writer of the manga. A mangaka who only draws and writes generic hentai isn't going to focus other aspects like plot or an over arching story line for the most part. And an anime whose only purpose is to crack you up isn't going to become serious. Thus, a show that tries to be serious and fails, deserves a low score. And also I rate anime, movies, and ovas, slightly differently, so a 9 for and anime and a 9 for a movie are little off.
What is this some sort of commemoration page? You must appreciate a lot of reviews to be receiving so many thanks, ahaha. How about a greeting for once then:
Hello! I'm Bayrock, a friendly fellow if you wish to know.
