Shinkenshi's Blog

It seems like that people are much more critical on anime reviews than anime series. Where as anime with a rating of 7 is considered mediocre at best for most people, a review where more than 70% of the people finds helpful is a pretty rare find. What's worse, unlike anime where you can see reviews on what people liked and disliked, there is none for the reviews themselves.

I think many people are confusing the term "helpful" with "agreeable." An example would be a user giving a low score review that I like. Whereas most people will automatically drop an unhelpful for the review, I would read through the review and see whether the flaws and opinions listed are valid and really serves as a helpful guide for those unfamiliar with the title. Or, in hindsight, the review can offer some sort of insight on blind spots or points that you previously haven't considered: While I don't like Haruhi the anime, I like to read reviews about it to see what people think are its strengths and flaws.

In other totally unrelated news, I am considering writing reviews for visual novels I have played through in the blog. It's not like anyone will read it, but I feel like it's a great medium that warrants more exposure, especially in an anime-watching community, so I'll do my part to help out. Plus, I'm that bored.

This was originally just suppose to be in my blog, but I decided that I want more input and made a thread in the Clannad club about it.

I am not sure how why Clannad somehow turned into a time-traveling paradoxical storyline, but for some reason my interpretation of the storyline seems to be very different from most people's. At first I thought this is because I played the game, but it seems like most people now who say that they've played the game nowadays also prefer the space-leap, extra-dimensional interpretation. Am I delusional or do I just have a brain that works different from everyone else?


When I originally played through the game this is pretty much how I saw the story. The different branches in the School Arc was Tomoya's delirious dreams. Due to Nagisa's death, Tomoya decided to shut himself from the outside world. Those School Arc dreams are his way of clinging on the happy memories of the past (real or made up). At one point I thought the girl in IW was a trap for Tomoya. That train of thought ended of course when she said otousan.

It also becomes more apparent to me that the IW is a physical reflection of how he sees the world:Ushio bringing life life back in him/girl sparks interest and makes IW more vibrant. Ushio falls sick/winter approaches and girl loses strength. Ushio dies/IW destroyed.

The true end I intepreted two different ways. First is the popular miracle belief; basically people's happiness/light combined with Ushio/girl's effort altered history and they live happily ever after. The later is that the ending is an extension of his School-Arc delirium, where he make-beliefs a happy ending to cope with Ushio's death. Being the optimist that I am, I choose to believe the former. It might not really make any sort of sense, but since when did Key endings make sense?

I know this view is contradictory to 90% of the people out there but I've known other people who have expressed similar sentiments.

So basically my timeline looks like that:
Nagisa's School Arc -> After Story normal end, Nagisa dies -> Tomoya shuts himself, clinging to happy memories (or make beliefs) during the School Arcs -> Ushio brings Tomoya back on track / progress alternatively reflected in the Illusion World -> Ushio dies, IW collapses, Tomoyo live in a make-belief where his family lived happily ever after. Alternatively, Ushio/girl/happy memories/light was able to overcome fate and alter history, they live happily ever after.


Discuss away.

This was originally a random comment that turned into half a page of rambling. I decided to make my virgin entry in celebration of my first attempt at being an attention whore.

Man, do you guys ever get into the dilemma of the score to put down when you add an anime? I swear to god every time I add an anime nowadays I spend 5 minutes just to decide where to place it on the score ladder and make changes to some other anime ratings accordingly.

I think my scores system is mostly 1-2 points lower than most people's. Anything above a 9 can have a pretty legitimate claim to being my favorite anime of all time depending on when you ask me, and anything above a 5 I will generally enjoy majority of the time (and I''ll even watch 5s more often than not).

What really sucks is that even though this is suppose to be a 10 point rating scale most of the time I just end up using 5-9. My rationale for avoiding 1-4 is that if you sat through an entire anime that generally means there are parts you enjoyed enough to make you sit through the whole thing. 10s I avoid because I only put 10s for anime that I'll watch regardless of what mood I am in. Ironically, in avoiding the trend to have ratings of 100 10s and 100 1s, I end up with like 80 6s and 80 7s

The reason you are making your eyes bleed reading this stuff is because I just spent as much time adjusting ratings for H2O as I did typing up this post.

Yea, this should probably have been a blog entry but I seriously doubt anyone would read my blog; maybe I'll copy and paste it later or something.

Edit to append some edited comments to the blog.



The next part is a response to a comment attributing the difference to personal taste.