| Sorry, but just because the majority of people thought these were the better shows in their genre, doesn't mean they're right. Entertainment is really subjective. I mean, look at how popular Kimetsu no Yaiba got. Personally, I thought it was good, but it didn't really do that much different from a lot of the other shounen series I've seen, and god was Zenitsu extremely annoying 90% of the time he was on screen. |
SaintMerakle said: Setsuei said: Sorry, but just because the majority of people thought these were the better shows in their genre, doesn't mean they're right. Entertainment is really subjective. I mean, look at how popular Kimetsu no Yaiba got. Personally, I thought it was good, but it didn't really do that much different from a lot of the other shounen series I've seen, and god was Zenitsu extremely annoying 90% of the time he was on screen. Allow me to ask you this then in your completed ranked by score why is it out of your top 30 only 2 have a rating of less than 8 and the both are rated above 7 as well so u rated them 8 and the community rated about 7.5 so a difference of 0.5. Moreover why do your ratings in general only have a 0.6 average difference from community ratings. All in all these numbers suggest that you yourself so far are in line with the standard of the MAL community. About Kimitsu as you said it is not that different from other shounen but still despite how young it is it has about 250k users - viewers which is more than most shows that have similar score and have been around for years. Individually speaking I agree it is not that unique but can you deny it had quality animations, fights, and story build-up My friend, did you even bother looking at the part where I list my favorite genre. All of those shows fall perfectly inline with my preferred tastes. I also state specifically that I will drop anything I find boring. Anything. This includes popular highly rated shows like One Piece and Gintama. Also, regarding Kimitsu no Yaiba, great animation and fights do not a good show make. To me, how much I like the characters is equally as important as everything else. |
| Of course, If you don´t have any idea of what to watch (or you are literally starting into the whole anime/manga hobby) you will go directly into the top 100 and see what clicks with you, so it is good reference material. However, then it is up to you to see if you like or not what you are seeing. So does it matter? Maybe as a starting point or if you don´t know anyone and want to explore blindfolded. Does it dictates what is good and what is not? No, it just states what a majority of people think. Being inside or outside the bubble is based on pure personal taste. |
RonnyZapata said: I don't need recommendations. I simply watch different titles through scripwriters, creators or shows directors that I liked or other directors, scripwriters or creators that were an influence on them. Yeah, I more or less do this...and I listen to friends who like the same stuff as I do as well. |
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| Well they "matter" in the sense that people will talk about (including but not limited to arguing about) these ratings and given them some sort of meaning or weight, even if they feel that they don't personally find that meaning or weight useful. And then there's the troll raters as well, who clearly do care enough to make alt accounts to influence ratings. SaintMerakle said: Well you do you, whatever works for you.a common theme I find in every thread I have read is that MAL rating does not matter or something in the same lines as that. Personally I have not seen much anime and I have little knowledge outside the scope of anime that I am watching or have watched already, but I will say this MAL rating is a huge factor in my search for new content to watch pre my discovery of MAL I watched anime seasonally, by recommendation or continuation of things I have watched when I was younger on TV aka Dragon Ball. Pokemon, One Piece etc.. MAL ratings are pretty much recommendations based on a bigger audience. MAL has over 16k Anime currently and over 1M active users with nearly 100k concurrent users at any single time making it with no doubt an insane community. I say it doesn't matter to me in terms of picking what shows to watch, because I've had good experiences picking out my own shows, and my opinions on those shows have tended to not match MAL average userscores much at all. More specifically, it seems that average scores follow a certain pattern of tastes that aren't very similar to mine, so that's why I know not to use scores to look for stuff to watch. Keep in mind that just because more people give inputs to the average doesn't mean that average is necessarily any better -- particularly because the anime fandom is basically just a bunch of different people in smaller fandoms, with sometimes vastly different tastes, it's more like you're getting multiple distinct points of view all blurred together when they're just averaged into one number. At that point it becomes more of a popularity contest, I'd argue. SaintMerakle said: I don't think it's a good idea to stick SO slavishly to the ratings, even if you find that high-rated stuff is to your liking. If a score falling by 0.2 makes you miss out on something you might want to watch, it seems that the way you look for things is flawed.According to my research there are about 1.5 to 4k troll accounts on this site. That number is low compared to any single anime members but can heavily impact a rating of a solid anime by .2 to 1.5 making it harder to find. SaintMerakle said: In this regard, MAL could take a page from Anime-Planet and make a "won't watch" status, I guess. I don't think it's the most salient issue here since you can pretty quickly see "I'm not interested in this recommendation" and move onto the next.First the recommendation system on this site is slightly messed up if I say I dislike Attack on Titan season 1 but also love Tokyo ghoul the site still recommends Attack on Titan season 2 which it should not since I already stated I dislike the first season I believe the system should not recommend further season of an anime I already disliked its first season. That said I found series-based recommendations ("If you like X, this user recommends Y") to be better than general scores -- since at least they're usually within the same genre or have similar premises, so the recommendation feels more relevant. SaintMerakle said: First, "better" is subjective as it is based on one's tastes. This applies not just between genres but also various attributes or story types. Some people hate fanservice, others love it, for just one example.Secondly, its clear the massive community has consensus on anime quality looking at the stats page where only extreme values that do not follow the trend are 1s. Lastly, Are you seriously suggesting the top 650 anime AKA rated 8 and above are not generally better in their respective genre than the rest 15k anime on this site using this list: https://myanimelist.net/topanime.php of-course there are a few exceptions but in 99% of the cases I would say that is the rule Second, if you pay attention to the ratings, you might notice that basically anything that's (1) got a more niche appeal, (2) is older, or (3) is more obscure, tends to get lower ratings. If anything, popularity can enter its own feedback loop, where something that's popularly regarded as good gains more watchers who come into the show with other people's commentary on why that show is good and so they're already biased beforehand to think that that thing is good...making them more likely to end up with that opinion, while something that's got a low score is often more obscure to begin with, and people who watch it again after seeing its low score are more primed to think "well, it's probably bad, and I guess I can see it in this flaw and that flaw". (That's one reason I prefer to watch stuff without knowing much of the community's opinion of it -- so I can try to form my own opinion on it.) Also, the things that get really bad scores are often things that people don't have context for. For example a video game that's famous in Japan but not in the west has a anime series that is based on it and heavily riffs on it. A lot of westerners probably won't get the relevant references. Does this make the show good or bad? To be fair, anything that gets a high score is probably a reasonably safe choice in terms of "this show probably won't be that bad". And, if you specifically care about keeping up with the fandom chatter and knowing and watching the shows that people talk about a lot -- then it makes sense to watch what gets a high score. But it's not a gold standard of quality that you seem to imply it is. There's a lot more going on than you've taken into account with your assessment. Furthermore, "consensus" varies from show to show. You can't see standard deviations in the MAL stats, but someone went and calculated them, and you can tell how it's very definitely not consistent. A higher degree of "consensus" (i.e. lower standard deviation) seems to suggest that a show had a broader appeal, while a lower degree of "consensus" (i.e. higher standard deviation) probably means that the show was more niche or otherwise sparked more varied opinions. RonnyZapata said: Most people only qualify for training RonnyZapata said: ???For example, I enjoy Chihayafuru, but that doesn't mean that anime is not another generic spokon. RonnyZapata said: I go even more basic than this. I get interested in stuff based on the theme song, the character art, and the premise. Then I just let it rip.I don't need recommendations. I simply watch different titles through scripwriters, creators or shows directors that I liked or other directors, scripwriters or creators that were an influence on them. |
| Avatar character is Gabriel from Gabriel DropOut. |
SaintMerakle said: Setsuei said: My friend, did you even bother looking at the part where I list my favorite genre. All of those shows fall perfectly inline with my preferred tastes. I also state specifically that I will drop anything I find boring. Anything. This includes popular highly rated shows like One Piece and Gintama. Also, regarding Kimitsu no Yaiba, great animation and fights do not a good show make. To me, how much I like the characters is equally as important as everything else. It seems you completely misunderstood everything I said although the shows fall in that genre they also fall in a another category which is all of them are acknowledged by the MAL community to be quality content. It is true you say you will drop thing you find boring which is your right but ALL the thing you have not dropped and ranked highly are also ranked highly by MAL and in general MOST your ratings correspond with MAL community rating were in general you only differ by 0.6 percent. Do you understand my argument now? I do...and my response to that is if you want a more accurate representation of how I typically rate shows you'd be better off looking at my entire completed list rather than focusing on just my top favorites. With the amount of anime I've watched, of course some of my scores are bound to match up with others, but it's not like all my favorites fall squarely within the top 100. |
| Functionally they can serve as a good starting point for general genre recommendations; however, those same people who use it for that function seemingly often end up arbitrarily barring themselves from potentially good series. For example it's not particularly uncommon to hear people actively avoid any series that say scores below a 7 or even an 8. Now granted that leaves a fair amount of individual entries when you then further narrow it down based on say genre preferences then people can actively start believing that they've seen every good show. Even if it's less likely that they'll say find a new favorite entry in those score ranges they could still feel individually that the average score doesn't reflect their tastes. It's for that reason that scores really don't matter once you're already invested in the hobby |
| But it's funny how most of the top animes have thousands of 1's than 2's or 3's because the fan of the anime below the top anime doesn't want the anime to surpass their favorite so they make fake accounts to give 1 to the top anime and without even watching that anime. |
| It matters in relation with "people consistency", I will agree that there is a wide-appeal when it comes to the higher scored series, and it will consistently pull fans into it, especially to more nascent fans who are getting around. Don't get me wrong though, I do not devalue the ranks, as it does matter to a certain extent, but truly MAL's ranking is much more faulty I find to be than other sites, and it's sadly more of a community miscreancy more than anything, but I'm not trying to offend anyone, I pretty much understand the enjoyment of it, this is why I'm still here. What is a problem is the community's unwillingness to explore more away from the seasonals, imbibing much of their anime repertoire with seasonals, bloating up statistics. Much of the 650 are bloated and mixed, look at Noragami and Maison Ikkoku, same score but nowhere near the same amount of people watching. I don't want to go into here (in a random thread) about the quality of a show, but from what I said earlier, the quality is mixed in the top 650 you mentioned, and many I find undeserving yet certain shows to be exceeding in quality of the aforementioned is down under. The most underrated anime you can possibly ever see is Argento Soma, a show that I find to be standing on my recommended quorum for me is a show on this site as 6.85, yet we have shows like No Game No Life, Takagi, BnHA, and whatnot are well-above it. The important lesson is, look past the numbers and go blind into a show (not necessarily entirely) in which you thought to be interesting from the get-go. If you are not willing to circumvent the will to doubt every single time you enter a new series, then it's quite hard to explore a medium. I've moved from looking at rankings and scores and see what my trusty friends or random users on this site has, you'll find a hidden gem one way or another. Or just simply seeing what my eyes like. Also, the troll accounts actually do matter, Chihayafuru S3 went from 8.57 to 7.96 in two days, that shit ain't normal man, 4k troll accounts matter in a show where the audience is nearly 20k, when half of that has only rated of it, subjugating it to the enormous shift in ratings. And wait, you use the recommendation feature? Again, it's also community based, plainly similarity base, and auto-recs. Does score matter? Yes, yes indeed, score has always mattered, but this site is much more faulty than most sites I've seen, or any anime site for that matter. |
 πππ«π«π π±π¬π²π π₯ πΆπ¬π², πππ«π±π¦π«' πΆπ¬π² π΄π¦π±π₯ ππ©π© πͺπΆ πͺπ¦π€π₯π± ______________________ |
| https://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1504768 Thread like these won't get into v.5 if it didn't matter. |
 Kickstarter for Rokujouma is fully funded. Good work everyone. Lets wait for the result of our hard work together. |
SaintMerakle said: Setsuei said: I do...and my response to that is if you want a more accurate representation of how I typically rate shows you'd be better off looking at my entire completed list rather than focusing on just my top favorites. With the amount of anime I've watched, of course some of my scores are bound to match up with others, but it's not like all my favorites fall squarely within the top 100. My dude I simply looked at your 10 and 9s since they dont transend 30 entrys I am one man your 8s are close to 100 I simply cannot check every single one and compare to the MAL one thus I used your stats as reference for the rest. If it offended you that I said you have a relatively similar taste to the general MAL community then I dont know what to say the stats say so Yeah...if you only go based on my 9s and 10s...digging deeper will tell you there are plenty of higher and lower rated shows I don't agree with. I mean..even my profile and forum pics are from shows I loved but the majority didn't. I'm not mad or anything, I just don't think it's fair to make generalizations based on a handful of data when there's more to how people rate things than that. |
SaintMerakle said: Are you seriously suggesting the top 650 anime AKA rated 8 and above are not generally better in their respective genre than the rest 15k anime on this site using this list: https://myanimelist.net/topanime.php of-course there are a few exceptions but in 99% of the cases I would say that is the rule Generally a good rating only tells you that it appeals to a lot of people and will appeal to a lot of people. Whether it's "objectively" good (objectively to me means i.e. no plot holes, doesn't rip-off common tropes without adding anything, doesn't repeat its own structure continuously etc.) doesn't play much of a role. I'm well aware I often like things that aren't necessarily what I'd consider "good" or well written- I like them anyway. A lot of series especially when it comes to Anime rely a lot on "emotional manipulation". I don't even necessarily mean it in a negative way- but it's easy to get an audience invested through triggering emotions through very simple structures. Whether the story as a whole is good or not. |
SaintMerakle said: That's really on the expense of wandering viewers who aren't familiar with searching shows in general, I know newcomers who aren't particularly keen on viewing the ranks rather seeing people they trust for recommendations, it's just a matter of searching skill. Someone who has 4.k on films (who is, let's say, a renaissance man) who had a small curiosity in anime probably knows how to dig the right spots in a treasure island.As for looking past the numbers I would say thats only a valid decison once you have seen the most popular or seen enough to figure out a way to find what you like before watching. |
πππ«π«π π±π¬π²π π₯ πΆπ¬π², πππ«π±π¦π«' πΆπ¬π² π΄π¦π±π₯ ππ©π© πͺπΆ πͺπ¦π€π₯π± ______________________ |
| How to do a multiquote reply: 1. click "Quote" 2. copy the opening quote tag (e.g. "[ quote = name message=12345678]") (without spaces) 3. paste that opening quote tag at the beginning of every segment you want to quote. put a close-quote tag ( [ / quote] )(without spaces) at the end of each segment you want to quote. 4. delete everything quoted that you don't use. Also, you may want to delete one of the two quote-my-entire-post quotes. SaintMerakle said: I see.As for sticking to ratings I didnt mean I would never watch a show ranked a 7.9 cause it is low than an 8.2 I simply meant with the massive database a difference of 0.2 could mean at least in the ranking page a difference of 200 spaces and such it is harder to find since I have to go through 200 other anime till I come across it. But with regards to this I think it may be better to narrow things down by genre or other criterion. Anime-Planet has a lot of tags you can search by, more than MAL's genres. That may help you. SaintMerakle said: I understand, though I think it's less important to find "generally accepted good shows" and more important to find shows one might enjoy, and in this regard, I find that more specific recommendations -- e.g. based on genre or premise or other trait -- to be more useful.As for me putting a high regard for ratings, Personally I do not I am simply saying as a community effort it saves alot of time that so many people passionate about shows are willing to give ratings to help others better get exposed to generally accepted good show till they gain enough knowledge and experience to find shows on their own. SaintMerakle said: The score doesn't tell me how well I fit into that audience, though.It is true without context shows will get lower scores but on the other hand as this is an international website if a majority dont seem to get the context then the show was ment for a small demographic and as such doesnt fall under MAL ratings since its targeted rather than aimed for a broad audience. SaintMerakle said: Oh wow.Moreover Me and you have a -50 affinity never have I had less of an affinity with anyone so far which is extremely baffling to me. The affinity rater seems to be based on "do you have a lot of shows in common, and if you do, how well do your scores match up?". Since we have relatively few shows that we've both rated, it probably looks very heavily on those shows for which our ratings are vastly different -- and there are two with a difference of 8 points. Amusingly, both of them are shows I dropped. The affinity rater is sometimes strange. RonnyZapata said: Oh, sorry about that.GlennMagusHarvey said: ??? (...) I go even more basic than this. I get interested in stuff based on the theme song, the character art, and the premise. Then I just let it rip. Every thing I said was related to the other. If you didn't understand me, it would be by the difference in our languages ββbecause I still do not know how to write English very well. |
| Avatar character is Gabriel from Gabriel DropOut. |
SaintMerakle said: Your statement contradicts with your account ratings in general you rank similarly to the general MAL community with a deviation of 0.66 so basically a difference of 1 or 2 only. out of you ranked shows 58 out of 110 are ranked 8+ saying you have a few extreme value so about 5 to 8 then 50 of ur shows that you ranked 8+ are actually in the top 650 thats aobut 50% of shows u ranked mate? so 90% of ur highest ranked shows are in the top 650 and more imporantly they form 50% of everything u have added My dear, that's because I've only watched series/movies I was sure I'd like based on theme and characters. But a nice way to jump to conclusions. Also I rate more based on how much I enjoyed it/had fun with it rather than if I consider it good. |
SaintMerakle said: Setsuei said: Yeah...if you only go based on my 9s and 10s...digging deeper will tell you there are plenty of higher and lower rated shows I don't agree with. I mean..even my profile and forum pics are from shows I loved but the majority didn't. I'm not mad or anything, I just don't think it's fair to make generalizations based on a handful of data when there's more to how people rate things than that. Man what I am saying is I dont need to, MAL has a thing called stats and ur deviation is 0.6 so in general you are in line with the community except on occasion I dont understand your argument at all If I watched everything that most people consider good or great regardless of the genre they fall into those numbers would be significantly different....All this tells me is that I tend to agree with the people who have similar tastes to me when it comes to the specific genre I personally enjoy... |
FanofActionNov 18, 2019 7:22 PM
| That's what I always say. I mean they don't 'matter' matter, since they don't make a difference in the real world and the quality of a show doesn't change based on its score. But they do contain a relevant amount of information about a show's perception that can be helpful for making an informed decision on what to watch, especially when interpreted in combination with other factors. There's no guarantees in life and it's the same with trusting average scores, but probability is a thing and none of us are special enough for it not to apply to them. If a majority of people among those interested in the show who have already seen it have liked it and the score reflects that, then it can be concluded that the majority of people among those interested in the show who have not yet seen it will also like it, as long as the sample size is big enough to not be arbitrary. Hence if you, all other factors considered, are equally interested in two shows you are more likely to enjoy the one with the higher score. Probabilities like that are far from guarantees and since people like to think in black and white they treat anything that isn't 100% as being completely useless, but in reality that's just not the case. Even if it's only going to work out positively 55% of the time if you take the score into account, that's still a net benefit of 5% over ignoring it as a factor. Aand considering that most people's standard deviation isn't gonna be huge unless they use an extreme rating system, it's probably way more than 55%. I mean maybe not everyone needs scores to help them make a decision, because if someone is already super picky just based on synopsis and genres, they won't ever be in the position of being equally interested in a dozen or more similar shows, when taking the score into account helps make the best choice. But for someone like me who's open to and interested in a lot of different kinds of stuff looking at genres and synopsis only eliminates a relatively small percentage of shows from the range of shows I'm interested in and starting with the highest scored ones when I can't decide how to explore a new genre or what to watch next from a genre has always treated me well. It just makes sense. Noone in their right mind would argue that you should ignore synopsis, genre and what you know about your personal taste. That's almost never the position of the people who argue that scores are useful. But somehow that's always the position that the other people argue against... Setsuei said: If I watched everything that most people consider good or great regardless of the genre they fall into those numbers would be significantly different....All this tells me is that I tend to agree with the people who have similar tastes to me when it comes to the specific genre I personally enjoy... I decided to quote this because it's essentially what I'm trying to say. Of course you will limit your choices to what you are already interested in. That's when differences in score come into play. You're basically agreeing that scores matter by saying that they tend to be agreeable on the shows you watch because they are watched by people with similar taste to yours. But that's always gonna be the case, every show's viewers are mainly gonna consist of people with somewhat similar tastes, hence why they chose to watch the same show. Why does it matter whether you hypothetically would disagree with the score on shows from genres you have no interest in the first place? The whole conversation should be limited to the range of shows you DO have your eye on, and whether you'd rather watch an 8.5 show or a 6.5 show if none of the other factors made you pick one over the other. And I'd like to think that almost everybody can agree that in that case it's more reasonable to start with the show that has been better received. And that's literally all that the 'scores are useful' argument is about. Arguing against any other position is just missing the point. |
| I probably regret this post by now. |
SaintMerakle said: Setsuei said: Man what I am saying is I dont need to, MAL has a thing called stats and ur deviation is 0.6 so in general you are in line with the community except on occasion I dont understand your argument at all If I watched everything that most people consider good or great regardless of the genre they fall into those numbers would be significantly different....All this tells me is that I tend to agree with the people who have similar tastes to me when it comes to the specific genre I personally enjoy... I never asked you to watch everything but I just received this link to a website that does what I was talking about which is compare personal score to MAL average and all I ask is look for yourself if this doesn't explain everything I am talking about then there is a huge miscommunication or you are in denial [/quote] How does me saying it makes sense that my scores line up with people that have similar tastes mean I'm in denial exactly? |
FanofActionNov 18, 2019 8:37 PM
Pullman said: That's what I always say. I mean they don't 'matter' matter, since they don't make a difference in the real world and the quality of a show doesn't change based on its score. But they do contain a relevant amount of information about a show's perception that can be helpful for making an informed decision on what to watch, especially when interpreted in combination with other factors. There's no guarantees in life and it's the same with trusting average scores, but probability is a thing and none of us are special enough for it not to apply to them. If a majority of people among those interested in the show who have already seen it have liked it and the score reflects that, then it can be concluded that the majority of people among those interested in the show who have not yet seen it will also like it, as long as the sample size is big enough to not be arbitrary. Hence if you, all other factors considered, are equally interested in two shows you are more likely to enjoy the one with the higher score. Probabilities like that are far from guarantees and since people like to think in black and white they treat anything that isn't 100% as being completely useless, but in reality that's just not the case. Even if it's only going to work out positively 55% of the time if you take the score into account, that's still a net benefit of 5% over ignoring it as a factor. Aand considering that most people's standard deviation isn't gonna be huge unless they use an extreme rating system, it's probably way more than 55%. I mean maybe not everyone needs scores to help them make a decision, because if someone is already super picky just based on synopsis and genres, they won't ever be in the position of being equally interested in a dozen or more similar shows, when taking the score into account helps make the best choice. But for someone like me who's open to and interested in a lot of different kinds of stuff looking at genres and synopsis only eliminates a relatively small percentage of shows from the range of shows I'm interested in and starting with the highest scored ones when I can't decide how to explore a new genre or what to watch next from a genre has always treated me well. It just makes sense. Noone in their right mind would argue that you should ignore synopsis, genre and what you know about your personal taste. That's almost never the position of the people who argue that scores are useful. But somehow that's always the position that the other people argue against... Setsuei said: If I watched everything that most people consider good or great regardless of the genre they fall into those numbers would be significantly different....All this tells me is that I tend to agree with the people who have similar tastes to me when it comes to the specific genre I personally enjoy... I decided to quote this because it's essentially what I'm trying to say. Of course you will limit your choices to what you are already interested in. That's when differences in score come into play. You're basically agreeing that scores matter by saying that they tend to be agreeable on the shows you watch because they are watched by people with similar taste to yours. But that's always gonna be the case, every show's viewers are mainly gonna consist of people with somewhat similar tastes, hence why they chose to watch the same show. Why does it matter whether you hypothetically would disagree with the score on shows from genres you have no interest in the first place? The whole conversation should be limited to the range of shows you DO have your eye on, and whether you'd rather watch an 8.5 show or a 6.5 show if none of the other factors made you pick one over the other. And I'd like to think that almost everybody can agree that in that case it's more reasonable to start with the show that has been better received. And that's literally all that the 'scores are useful' argument is about. Arguing against any other position is just missing the point. Thank you for explaining this better than I was able to. |
| Another score / rating thread, nice. |
| "Well, she's flatter than a pancake" -Mimi Alpacas "Woof" -Tobiichi Origami "Are you trying to turn the dormitory into a strip club!?! -Atena Saotome |
| Yeah I don't care for the people who constantly criticize the MAL score system, because there's a huge disproportionate amount of people who say "MAL scores don't matter, a higher score doesn't mean you'll like it" compared to people who say "Higher MAL scores mean the show is better". Like I see people railing on people who take the MAL scores too seriously, but I don't actually see that many people who do take them that seriously, most people just use it as a guideline and not an argument of quality, hell even most of the times I see people use a show's score to defend the show's quality it only really comes off as defending the show instead of defending the importance of the scoring system. People shouldn't rely on a show's score, that much is true, but to say the MAL score is pointless is going a bit too far. |
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| I personally find them unreliable because of how bias the general mal user can be toward things like pre 2000s animes most of which are scored below 8 with shows like LOGH, eva and cowboy bebop just being exceptions. Genre specific bias which is examplified in the moe and ecchi genres, with the second one only having 9 shows with an 8 or above rating and if you look closely you realize that only 3 of those are predominantly ecchi shows with the others just being shounens with ecchi elements to them. Add to that the cases of sequels, niche products and seasonals and I find myself thinking it's just better to rely on my own personal criteria and only checking the score for last |
JoyBoy_316Nov 18, 2019 9:32 PM
| When I was new, I just browse through my mal friends profile and even check out what people are talking about on forum so if it gets talked about then it's probably worth a try. mal rating is just one of many ways to find anime. You can watch shoujo genre anime just fine even though the rating might not be the highest. You can shit on Aachi wa Ssipak because it's really is about shit, shit that you love. |
SaintMerakle said: I agree that it can be a useful gateway, but it is definitely not the only gateway. My gateway involved not being interested in many of the popular shows that people got into, and simply finding a very solid set of shows that I really liked despite them being super obscure and me watching them several years after their release.GlennMagusHarvey said: I disagree the category of generally accepted good quality shows is a great gateway and baseline to have in anime familiarizing ones self with the culture or "Meta" and then finding ones taste is usually how these things go. For example the top 50 anime list on this site includes every genre and no matter ones taste I would bet 90% of watchers have heard or seen partially or fully at least 25 of them or at least are familiar with the name of 25 of them I understand, though I think it's less important to find "generally accepted good shows" and more important to find shows one might enjoy, and in this regard, I find that more specific recommendations -- e.g. based on genre or premise or other trait -- to be more useful. Watching the fandom-acclaimed shows is, in my estimation, more useful for familiarizing oneself with the fandom culture than necessarily getting a set of anime one is interested in. I have watched some famous anime, but it is, like other things, often rather hit-or-miss. SaintMerakle said: If you want to understand the "mainstream" of the anime fandom, and align your tastes with it, then sure, but I mean I don't think it's a great source of stuff I'll enjoy. I'm talking about, on the individual level, it's better to try to explore one's own taste independently than to try to rely on high-rated shows for recommendations.GlennMagusHarvey said: I did say the system does not work well for smaller demographics but thats not the purpose of the question or the direction I had in mind The score doesn't tell me how well I fit into that audience, though. But, maybe your tastes do align more with said mainstream of the anime fandom than mine do, in which case it'll be more useful to you. SaintMerakle said: It was definitely not planned, nor was it simply a random selection.GlennMagusHarvey said: The affinity rater seems to be based on "do you have a lot of shows in common, and if you do, how well do your scores match up?". Since we have relatively few shows that we've both rated, it probably looks very heavily on those shows for which our ratings are vastly different -- and there are two with a difference of 8 points. Amusingly, both of them are shows I dropped. I will say you have the most peculiar taste I have ever seen to the point where I feel its more purposed than arbitrarily I feel like you tried to watch every anime and thus you started with first one you saw then you were like that is way tooo many I will watch a certain genre and follow it across the years. It seems way more planned than a random collection to me but I might be overthinking it My anime journey was sorta like this: [childhood] Voltron, Pokémon -> [bunch of SNES JRPGs] -> [teenager/young adult and beyond] Neon Genesis Evangelion (friend rec) -> Kiddy Grade (random discovery) -> stuff related to Kiddy Grade, plus Nanoha (friend rec) -> anime more generally, with an emphasis on sci-fi and fantasy, and with a preference for adventure and drama (though I don't restrict myself by genre) I seem to pick shows for what may be odd reasons -- often based on whether the premise, theme song(s), or art (particularly character art) interest me. But then I decide my interest based on these things, so it's not actually random. I know I tend to prefer sci-fi and fantasy, for example, and tend to disprefer shows set in "normal Japanese high school". And I tend to like trancepop OPs so this means I end up checking out a good number of action shows, often with sci-fi trappings and brilliant colors and cute girl protags. I did watch some more famous things like Naruto and Bleach briefly but they never caught on with me. But I did not try to watch anywhere near "all the famous things". I have seen some of them -- e.g. Haruhi, Spirited Away, a few eps of FMAB, the Cowboy Bebop movie, Madoka Magica, Pokémon's first season, Naruto, Bleach, some of SAO, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, some Sailor Moon, Eureka Seven, Nanoha, Guilty Crown, Evangelion, Nodame Cantabile, Railgun, Gunbuster, A Silent Voice, etc.. These include some things I like and some that I don't. The ones with great scores on MAL tend to be reasonably good, but not necessarily blockbusters I'd rave about (though some are, while some others are worse than that). On the other hand I've not yet seen a variety of others -- e.g. Death Note, Code Geass, Utena, Free, (most of) Re Zero, (most of) Maid Dragon, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Fist of the North Star, (most of) JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Index, (most of) Azumanga Daioh, Cowboy Bebop (the TV series), Mushishi, (most of) Cardcaptor Sakura, Mushishi, Berserk, Slayers, (most of) Aria, (most of) TTGL, Monster, Lain, (most of) GTO, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, most of the Fate/ franchise, Gundam, Macross, Ghost in the Shell, etc.... this list is easily longer than the one above. And some of these I actually plan to watch, while others I feel meh about and some I really don't want to watch for whatever reason. Maybe I do have a slight preference for things that are more obscure -- partly because they may seem more curious and interesting if I haven't already heard about them, and going into them is somewhat of an adventure. But that's not something that necessarily influences my decision -- for example, when I picked up Beatless, I did so because I heard its main theme in the OST and was very impressed, and also was curious about the girl on the OST's cover; I had no idea what its popularity or MAL score average were (and was actually rather surprised to discover what they were, later on). SaintMerakle said: It does look right. I deleted some linebreaks to make stuff look even better, but you seem to have figured it out! Glad I could help.If this looks properly then huge thanks btw |
| Avatar character is Gabriel from Gabriel DropOut. |
| Ratings are important to me, mainly because I am a stats geek, but it also adds to the overall pleasent experience that the website provides. There are rankings by popularity (I don't pay attention), most favorited (which I do pay attention to) and by score or the top anime (which I find useful to be aware of). I choose to view matters in this way: There are entertaining anime. There are interesting anime. Sometimes I separate them by giving the more impactfull/substantial or interesting series a high score and not adding them to my favorites. While I put the fun/relaxing or entertaining series in my favorites, but don't give them a particularly high score, and vice verse. |
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SaintMerakle said: I havent been an active user at this site at all but a common theme I find in every thread I have read is that MAL rating does not matter or something in the same lines as that. Personally I have not seen much anime and I have little knowledge outside the scope of anime that I am watching or have watched already, but I will say this MAL rating is a huge factor in my search for new content to watch pre my discovery of MAL I watched anime seasonally, by recommendation or continuation of things I have watched when I was younger on TV aka Dragon Ball. Pokemon, One Piece etc.. MAL ratings are pretty much recommendations based on a bigger audience. MAL has over 16k Anime currently and over 1M active users with nearly 100k concurrent users at any single time making it with no doubt an insane community. According to my research there are about 1.5 to 4k troll accounts on this site. That number is low compared to any single anime members but can heavily impact a rating of a solid anime by .2 to 1.5 making it harder to find. Now onto why the ratings matter a lot. First the recommendation system on this site is slightly messed up if I say I dislike Attack on Titan season 1 but also love Tokyo ghoul the site still recommends Attack on Titan season 2 which it should not since I already stated I dislike the first season I believe the system should not recommend further season of an anime I already disliked its first season. Secondly, its clear the massive community has consensus on anime quality looking at the stats page where only extreme values that do not follow the trend are 1s. Lastly, Are you seriously suggesting the top 650 anime AKA rated 8 and above are not generally better in their respective genre than the rest 15k anime on this site using this list: https://myanimelist.net/topanime.php of-course there are a few exceptions but in 99% of the cases I would say that is the rule Only 1.5-4k trolls? What research did you perform to miss so many trolls? Comparing the rating system to recommendations system is futile imo. The majority of people who watch one thing (a popular anime like AoT, for example) will tend to also enjoy a similar, also popular thing (like Tokyo Ghoul). Of course this isn't always the case (like you) but it is true for the majority since most people rarely watch anything outside of the trendy anime. I'd argue that the lower scoring, less popular anime are more indicative of their true quality since you have to actively seek them out. Those who seek diversity tend to have a more critical sense of anime so the trend would be that these less popular, lower rated shows (the high-6s and mid-7s) are for the most part true. A high score above 8 is either indicative of quality or it's rated by people who don't really care too much about the quality of the show and simply just like it because they enjoyed it. Subsequent seasons are usually scored much higher since the ones who didn't like the first season have already dropped it, leaving only the ones who liked it and will have given it a high score anyway. My prevailing theory, therefore, is that people don't know what's good, but they can sure as hell figure out what is bad. I'd say all anime rated in the 5s are probably some of the worse things you'll see. |
 Latest reviews: Wonder Egg Priority and A Couple of Cukoos |
| Totally agree with you, MAL scores can be very informative. Most users who deny that usually misunderstand something basic. Common misunderstandings: 1 - MAL scores don't usually go below a 6 therefore they're meaningless. 2 - I didn't like show X and show Y, they had high MAL scores therefore MAL scores don't mean anything for me. 3 - I don't like genre Z but some entries for this genre have high MAL scores, that means they're not always informative. 4 - Show V has a higher score than show W but show W was clearly better therefore MAL scores are useless. 5 - Everyone rates things differently so the scores don't mean anything. - There's also the sequel effect, recency bias and old anime being generally lower rated. These are actually relevant points unlike the rest, but aren't that problematic as they can be corrected for. Quick explanation for why 1-5 are garbage: 1 - So long as there is enough variation it doesn't matter what range the scores cover. 2, 4 and 5 - A high score means there's a higher probability you'll like a show. 3 - You can filter and adjust for your tastes, that doesn't make the scores less informative. If your taste is radically different from the norm that's when scores tend to be a lot more uninformative. You probably don't have radically different tastes. |
Platypus7Nov 19, 2019 1:51 AM
| I've done some thinking from all this back and forth, and decided they only thing matters, to me at least, is the direct comparison between the score I've given an anime and the overall score it has. If my score matches the score on the anime's page, then that means I agree with the majority of the fans. If it doesn't match, even of it's only off by one point, then I disagree. I don't really see why it needs to anymore complicated than that. If something has an 8 and I give it a 9, that implies I likely enjoyed more than most. |
| Mal score is consensus score for it viewer. your taste may or may not agree with it viewer and it's okay. |
 "If taking responsibility for a mistake that cannot be undone means death, it's not that hard to die. At least, not as hard as to live on." |
SaintMerakle said: Setsuei said: I've done some thinking from all this back and forth, and decided they only thing matters, to me at least, is the direct comparison between the score I've given an anime and the overall score it has. Now that we are on the same page check this out the link I forgot to post https://anime.plus/Setsuei/list,anime Round down btw so 0.59 and low go back to 0 and 0.6 and high go up to 1 Ok, yea I see what you were saying, the differences from a lot of my scores and the overall averages aren't that big when compared like this. I still feel there's enough of a difference for me to say my level of enjoyment for a lot of these is often higher or lower than the majority, just not by much. |
FanofActionNov 19, 2019 2:31 AM
| MAL ratings do matter for the OP so he/she thinks that they should matter for everybody else? Naaah! For examples I don't have 10/10 for any of the MAL's top 100. Only two 9/10, eight 8/10, fourteen 7/10 and the rest is 6/10 and 5/10. Like people tend to rate their enjoyment which is very subjective and there is a heavy recency bias. Also there are fanboys that will give 1/10 to a decent show just because it's rivalling their favourite show. Nope! MAL score should be ignored! Also as someone above mentioned - the score is only a number. It can't tell you what is so good/bad in the show and would you enjoy it or not. |
| I only consider ratings to be a GENERAL sign of what the public opinion is, and even then I dont fully trust them to be a sign. One problem is that a lot of the times the scores are either way too low or way too high due to people jumping on bandwagons. Numerous anime ratings fall into this problem, especially the ratings of popular anime. So stuff like Shield Hero or Attack on Titan comes out and everyone just watches it and throws in their 10/10s cause everyone loves it! Yay! The second problem I have is kinda linked to the first one, and it's that less popular anime of generally higher quality and more popular anime of generally lower quality end up having the same scores cause the more popular ones are usually more accessible and thus are rated by more people, a lot of whom might be new to anime and would again.... THROW IN THE 10/10s IN UTTER DELIGHT! The third problem is probably the one which pisses me off the most. People don't fully use the anime rating scale. From my experience browsing a lot of profiles, some people don't even rate anime below 7. For them, 7-10 is what the rating scale is, 1-6 can bugger off. This again results in some very high scores for some anime. One general argument I hear is that "If I don't like the anime, Ill drop it and wont give it a low score (Usually listed as 1-5)" to which I'd say that if you consider an anime good anime to finish it and give it a high score, then you should also give a low score to an anime which you consider bad enough that you cant bear to watch it. At least contribute to the score and let your opinion be known. You'll be doing the same by giving it a high score. And even then, if people use the full scale, there's still the problem of people having different rating scales. There's especially a difference in rating a show on how much you enjoy it and rating it on what you consider it to be in quality. Lastly, of course, there's the commonly spoken statement that people have different tastes. If a mecha hater watches a show, they're more than bound to hate it, and then they'll give it a low score (This is an IDEAL situation considering the person utilizes the full scale) cause due to one reason or another, they hate the genre overall and will find a lot more flaws in it than they would if they were actually enjoying it, as you generally overlook the "intellectual anime anal-ysis" part when you're having a good laugh or goosebumps. |
SunBro26Nov 19, 2019 3:27 AM
| Here is a better way to find anime you will like and should check out, instead of basing it off of group consensus. Go look at the staff lists of your favorite anime, look and see what they have been involved in that you have not watched yet. Then go watch those. You will end up watching way better( for you) anime that way than what you are doing. |
| How can you say that ratings matter when Chihayafuru got 10% of the scores as a 1. MAL is full of trolls, maybe some obscure show has a pure rating but the known stuff is compromised. |
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Yeah - "matter way more than people think". SaintMerakle said: the whole point is to see the communities view to ratings But we already know how the community reacts to them and we think it's stupid...or at least unpractical. SaintMerakle said: I can not see your ranking Why even bother? SaintMerakle said: or is it some privacy setting I do not know about It's a privacy setting - my list is accessible only to friends...because it's not that important to public anyway. |
| Ratings will never matter,my head hurts from seeing idiots type walls of text with no sense in it whatsoever. |
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SaintMerakle said: Exactly think, in every post I read people say it DOES NOT matter more than not is it DOES matter. In other words - they disagree with the statement in the title of the topic. SaintMerakle said: I never said its the be all end all Yeah, but your title suggest that those ratings have huge influence no matter or against what people think of them. So if I don't share my list I am permitted to post here? Add this condition to your first post than! alshu said: interpreting my post in convoluted ways Or you just don't realize how suggestive is your title? alshu said: and not adding anything to the discussion Discussing how pointless a discussion is also a form of discussion. Also I wrote some other stuff you ignored. My personal data is irrelevant to this discussion...like yours or anybody's else who have posted here. |
alshuNov 19, 2019 5:37 AM
alshu said: what are those two nine outta ten shows. πMAL ratings do matter for the OP so he/she thinks that they should matter for everybody else? Naaah! For examples I don't have 10/10 for any of the MAL's top 100. Only two 9/10, eight 8/10, fourteen 7/10 and the rest is 6/10 and 5/10. Like people tend to rate their enjoyment which is very subjective and there is a heavy recency bias. Also there are fanboys that will give 1/10 to a decent show just because it's rivalling their favourite show. Nope! MAL score should be ignored! Also as someone above mentioned - the score is only a number. It can't tell you what is so good/bad in the show and would you enjoy it or not. |
| "I think I wanted to attack something. Like betraying people or hurting people. And, well, it's not exactly nice, but hurting the readers too... In all honestly, I feel that's what I really wanted to do. For me, as a reader, when I think, "this manga will remain in my heart," it means, for example, it phenomenally hurt me: It's those kinds of experiences I'm after." - Pajime Hisayama (My favourite hurting author). |
| I don’t think there’s much to disagree with what you’ve said. MAL scores are generally a good reflection of quality when it comes to shows in their respective genres. It’s funny how many people disagree with this notion while only having the top 1% rated shows in their favorites. Heck, most people won’t even watch more than the top 5% anime in their entire lives lol. |
Katsuo_Nov 19, 2019 5:51 AM
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Peeti said: what are those two nine outta ten shows. π 26. Cowboy Bebop 89. Koukaku Kidoutai: Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG - I prefer the first season (currently on position 128) but MAL likes this better. |
| In my opinion this might be true in the anime top but not in the manga's one which is a lot more subjective (no shitty animation/direction etc.) |
KingCanuteNov 19, 2019 6:28 AM
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