momentie's Blog

Mar 8, 2021 11:25 AM
Anime Relations: Shinseiki Evangelion, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Soul Eater, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Highschool of the Dead
I've always found how we rank or judge media and art to be somewhat fascinating and this goes doubly so with anime. Almost everyone reviews and judges the media they consume in varying ways, for example there are many who would suppose that art can't be judged on a linear scale and this is a sentiment I would generally see some sense in. After all an 'out of 10' rating can rarely express how you actually feel about a work that speaks to you, however, especially in the case of Tv and Film giving a score or critic is integral to the continued improvement and expression of one's feelings on a subject. As such you may fall into the opposite camp, the one that would suggest that all media be graded the same and looked at through one single, logical lens, however for the same reason already mentioned I find this method far to clear cut to judge a medium as wide and varied as anime.

As such it would appear that the answer lies in some form of balance, after all an anime may be terribly produced, with a poor score and animation but what it makes you feel, how you empathize with the characters could be far more influential to your personnel sensibilities. Equally an anime or manga could prove to be antithetical to your personal beliefs, with poorly written characters and a sloppy story but still having stunning visuals and voice acting.

This brings me to the topic that interests me most, bottom up scoring bias. It strikes me that many of us all to often score anime up, i.e. when deciding on a token score, we start at 0 and go up based on our own system, i.e. 2 points for music, two for character, 2 for story etc. etc. Of course this gets heavily affected by bias, we all have them weather we realize to what extent or not and the issue I see with scoring up is it exenterates our biases. For example I have a friend who ranked 'Highschool of the Dead' a 0/10, it was in all likely hood, a fairly off-handed grade with no major consideration and that's totally fine, however one does have to wonder how you could possibly score it 0. Zero implies no enjoyment or value or any kind when using HOD as an example, that seems hard to believe.

Taking it that the over indulgency in fanservice or the plot simply clicked the wrong way with said person, then it's conceivable and fair that they might of given these two aspects 0 but what about the art-style? Or the highly fitting soundtrack? The character designs? By all rights, if you remove as much of your own biases as possible then it's hard to ignore that the art style is fairly standard for the modern anime landscape but with harder lines and a darker colouring scheme, which cleverly adds to the shows horror aspect by using a familiar style, twisted into a zombie apocalypse aesthetic. This alone should surely be enough to garner the show a point or two, additionally aside from the kick-ass Op there's really nothing bad to be said for the rest of the Ost, which again suggests that additional points should be given for that.

In reality its easy to see why it got a zero and that's because the scorer didn't like it and this is something you see everywhere. For example detractors of the Disney star wars films, will often claim the films are hopeless in a story sense and then offer a 0/10, ignoring those films stunning visuals and bold directing cuts. Now don't misinterpret me here, I'm personally a real hater of all 3 of the Disney star wars trilogy films but I could never give any of them much less then a 3 or 4 purely because the visual, prop designs, CGI, acting etc., is all far to good to be completely written off by the awful story and characters. In fact I'd probably if pressed, score them between 5 and 7 respectively.

This in a round about fashion brings me to this post's title 'Judging Anime by Jury''. This is a system of ranking I started using for anime some years ago when I first started adding shows on to a Mal list. My conundrum came about while trying to make a top 10 best shows list, something I still haven't managed to do ( I have a 10 favorites but I consider that a different concept ). Quite simply I couldn't decide if the likes of Soul Eater, Code Geass and many others were as good as FMAB or Evangellion, all four were shows I'd given a 10/10 to. As mundane as it may sound, this pointless thought exercise got me interested in why I'd given them all 10/10 other then as a flippant box to be ticked on a Mal listing.

In the end what I decided on was that all 4 shows were indeed 10/10s but for very different reasons, ones that were tricky to express on a scale of 1 to 10. I was made to look at the shows from their own perspectives and when I did, I realized I loved each of them, for among many reasons, one common one. That being that they all succeeded in their own goals. They all did what they promised in their opening quarters and while they all have their own shortcomings, non of these could possibly out weight the good in them, as such why wouldn't they be 10s across the board.

Is Soul Eater as important as Evangellion? Probably not but does it ever want to be seen as such? Almost definitely no. This all in turn led me to how I threat everything now, by Jury. For me to objectively ( as much as possible at least ) rank media I portion it into categories, not all that dis-similar to those I've listed at earlier points in this post, however I add in a few that are more emotionally based. For example how the show makes you feel is worth considering, equally the context of both when the show was realized and when you yourself watched it, should be taken into consideration.

I also made one other court style change to the way in which I look at media, 'all anime is innocent until proven guilty'. To elaborate on this, earlier I mentioned how people have a tendency to score upwardly, this can lead to a pessimistic view on the media we consume, where-by we inadvertently judge something harshly rather then optimistically. As such, when I go to pass inconsequential judgement on an anime, I start at ten and work down. Rather then offering a show points for each category, I take them off when it fails. This helps to alleviate my own biases and helps me to see shows from their own perspective. Even if I didn't like something, it starts at 10 and then goes down, therefore even if I didn't like the story or message of an anime, I'll proceed to only remove points for that failure, i.e. after talking two points off I'm now down to 8. Now I'll be faced with actually considering the rest of the show, if I really hated the story, rather then having my own bias cause me to write the whole show off for its poor narrative, I'm instead made to look at the rest of the show in order to understand it's perspective. This may seem excessive but I've found it can actually be enlightening when watching anything. If you find a show you didn't like still scores a 7 or 8, you find yourselves thinking about it's contents and trying to better understand it, which in turn can lead to a better understanding, a new perspective and may even lead to you finding yourself changing your opinion and coming to enjoy something you first disliked.

There are of course disadvantages, as anyone who looks at my Mal will see, I have a tendency to be really lenient and score shows far higher then they nessacerily deserve but this in and of itself is kind of the point. Surely we rank/score shows in order to share our enjoyment, in an often vain effort to express our sentiments towards a property. As such I always try to enjoy the media i consume because at the end of the day I really believe very few shows are made with malicious intent. Even the cheapest cash grab shows will probably have a handful of dedicated and talented individuals behind the scenes.

A simple example of this method of scoring in action retains to my own experience with the show 'Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann'. When i first watched Gurren, I loved it, I loved the art style, the direction, the story, the designs and the characters. The musical score was to die for and on a technical level all seems 10/10, there was just one member of the jury who stood in opposition. I'm not complete sure what his name is, he's the same one who questioned weather soul eater could go into the same bracket as Eva. Pretension maybe or arrogant, I guess you'd call it my sense of 'Nuance'. Was Gurren Nuanced? By this I mean did it explores the themes and depth of its world and character plus story of course. The rest of my hypothetical 'jury' thought it was and I'd followed the story just fine, I'd picked up on most of the character developments and so on but something seemed just slightly off. Maybe it was more a 9/10, ya know, great to look at, fun, inspiring but not deep enough. This seed of doubt lead me to reviews and inevitably to 'Best guy Ever's' brilliant video on Gurren. This video in highly entertaining fashion broke down what made the show so great on so many levels and in so many different ways and gave me a whole perspective and appreciation for the show.

I'm human at the end of the day and therefore fallible and I love nothing more then being humbled, that's not to say I love hearing how my favorite shows are bad ( thought I do often seek out counter-view points) but that I love releasing I was wrong about something or didn't quite get it, only to then have it become something speical.

Gurren for me would of always been a 9 or 10 out of ten but with this new perspective and upon re-watches I've come to appreciate it as one of the greats and as a personnel favorite of mine and it's merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my use of this anime Jury scoring method. So the next time your watching something and a certain aspect rubs you the wrong way, try giving it the benefit of the doubt, try understanding it's perspective and what its aims/goals are and you might just find a new favorite show, or appreciation for something you over looked in the past.

I hope you enjoyed,
Thanks for reading.



Posted by momentie | Mar 8, 2021 11:25 AM | Add a comment
It’s time to ditch the text file.
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