| Written by @zombie_pegasus Please leave any comments or feedback on the article here! Rules: |
The official publishing account of the MAL Articles club. Interested in writing or editing for us? Click here! |
| Uhhhhhhhh... what |
| "Since a lot of these tips effectively make your quality lower" I like how the article admits you'll be sacrificing some quality for sake of adding quantity to your writing. Some of these tips I may take into account next time I write, although sparingly. One idea I thought was uniquely interesting is the idea of using an "episode diary". I think it'd be a helpful tip for anyone who wanted to write an anime review in the future. It's easy to write down your reactions as you're watching it. And implementing small details you caught, that you otherwise may have missed without watching real-time, could help strengthen your review. It's the little things that count. Though I'd still use all these tips sparingly. I don't think excessively dragging out sentences, or reiterating the same things over will help strengthen reviews. Through all of my high school education I've been told that writing excessive sentences was not encouraged. So far I've never had to write a 7 page or 10 page essay assignment for class. Though that may change when I go into college, but I remember specifically one of my teacher's telling me that even Professors will make sure to steer students away from writing even over one or two pages worth of essay. They don't encourage it because they know students will write excess sentences about pointless subjects to meet a word quota. There's nothing wrong with short reviews. In my reviews I aim to write out most sentences each with a new idea. And not smother those ideas with excess thoughts. People will lose focus otherwise. Simplicity is important when you want to outline key ideas to people. |
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| This.... this is a parody article right? "The first trick is to not do any editing." Really? |
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| Well, there were some good tips but as others have said, this seems like writing a review just to have as many words as you can. Dragging things on and on is boring when you're watching anime, and the same applies when you're reading something too. I'm saying all this but my review style is concise, so I don't actually know how to write a long review but the article is full of unnecessary things. I recently wrote a review for the third season of Haikyuu!! but I definitely wouldn't go with the tip of writing everything in full. Mentioning Haikyuu!!: Karasuno Koukou VS Shiratorizawa Gakuen Koukou instead of simply Season 3 of Haikyuu!! will look untidy and weird in my eyes. Wouldn't want that. Jokes are a good way to entertain readers though I don't really use them but the idea of an episode diary is similar to what I'm doing. While watching, I open up Notepad to write brief dot points that highlighted things I want to express. It's useful when it's time to write the real review and help you remember things you might forget later on. Also here's my review outline for those interested. Four paragraphs is enough to convey what I want to say. - Introduction - Story and Characters - Art and Sound - Conclusion |
OVERPOWERED99Feb 5, 2018 2:32 AM
My Anime List < Have a good day! > My Manga List |
| In my opinion long writings feel unneeded. Just Make (+) and (-) sides and write everything objectively. at the end write your opinions. Nothing much different than long writings. They both would be helpful reviews. Nothing much should be expected from reviews. |
| ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ _Open to criticism._ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ |
| I'm not sure if the guy who wrote it is being deliberately antagonistic cause they're mad their reviews don't get rated high enough or this is an actual advice cause I checked zombie_pegaus's reviews and he's not any better. His reviews are either short to a point they're not more than a quick opinion or suffer the same flaws as the ones that were pointed out in the article. Such as saying 4 times that Asuna is the only decent character of SAO, talking about opening themes and such. If they're meant to be a mocking meta-review that aims to prove a point then that didn't work too cause they're sitting there at 5 helpfuls. I think there's a place for an article that focuses what makes long reviews with a lot of useless information bad and what qualities a tightly written, informative review should have but this just seems like a snarky, negative article that aims to make fun of people that at the very least try to contribute something so I'm pretty disappointed. Edit: On a side point I strongly disagree that long reviews are inherently bad. While it's very much possible to express strong and weak points of the work quickly there's a market for people who want something more in-depth. I don't have good examples for anime but I follow Joseph Anderson, Matthewmatosis and Lord Mandalore on youtube precisely cause they can make long videos on video games that take a thorough look at things. It helps you to understand opinion both your own and people you disagree with then opinions are given reason. A short "it's good cause characters were well developed and story is interesting" might be good enough to help you decide when it's said by someone you trust but it won't tell you why those characters are well developed or interesting. |
GundroogFeb 5, 2018 9:42 AM
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| ADDED TO ARTICLE: NOTE: This article is mainly meant as satire. Not all points conform to the Review Guidelines You can find them and tips for new writers here. |
| @Gundroog It's intended as satire. |
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The sarcastic tone gave off that intention I just thought it was too mixed with things that were more spiteful than satiric. Satire is usually used to make fun of people for doing something stupid but the article makes fun of things that can be informative or bear no impact on quality of the review in the worst case scenario. Such as remarks about production staff, sometimes mentioned mentioning the people who worked on the show can contextualize some of its elements and intentions. Similarly using a review structure that MAL recommends it framed as not the proper review structure even though there it can be beneficial to the reader who might want to quickly navigate to the part of the review they are more interested in. Even the article itself is broken into self-contained chunks for each point. The point about people going off about parts of the anime is agreeable though, there are plenty of reviews for shows with nearly non-existent stories that just become a retelling of events. The point about jokes was rather confusing too cause I'm not even sure if it's commeding them or making fun of them. The paragraph starts and ends with what can be considered positive points of jokes, they take effort and make a review a bit more enjoyable to read but then go on about how it's a way to keep away from delving into deeper parts of the anime even though points prior condemn going below surface level. The remarks about comedy and dark anime also seem to imply that jokes for former are redundant and other for latter are disconnecting as if a review for something bleak should keep in tone with the show. Similarly the paragraph about analysis I'm just too stupid to understand cause the only satire I can see there without having context is making fun of people who write half-hearted analysis for shows that they don't know in extreme detail. |
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| @Gundroog It's not like the article is only isolating what not to do, in fact some of it is to give the false impression that the article could be about legit advice. The analysis paragraph is mostly a setup for the one about over analysis. |
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zombie_pegasus said: @Gundroog It's not like the article is only isolating what not to do, in fact some of it is to give the false impression that the article could be about legit advice. The analysis paragraph is mostly a setup for the one about over analysis. Yeah but it being satire I would assume to point is to make fun of dumb things people do when writing bad, uninformative, overly lengthy reviews. When satire is mixed with things that aren't intended to be shown in a bad light it muddies the line between the two. If you seen or heard of CinemaSins it's a prime example of satire done badly where they try to be both funny but also mix in serious critique so both fall flat. |
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| I thought Zombie's article was funny. It didn't go over my head even though at first I thought it was serious but then it said not to edit your review at all and I laughed and then it kept doing exactly what it was saying you should do, which is to reiterate points. Infact, it was actually so good at being one of those long reviews I hate reading, that I ended up skipping to the last paragraph. And then going back over it like I do, even though it takes so much longer to do it that way. But yes, I think this is really good satire as it is art imitating life. Also, many things which are obviously satirical to some people are perceived differently by others. And there are many many examples I could bring up where particularly movies or songs ended up getting exactly the audience they were criticizing. (like Asshole by Denis Leary) |
Energetic-NovaFeb 11, 2018 11:24 AM
The anime community in a nutshell.  |
| idk... I think comparison is a BIG BIG NO for reviews. though people will start like that. for the sake of long , long reviews I think quality of the content matters. It'll create a difference to a series that doesnt build on the same system. Long reviews shouldnt be blind yet closed to the specific details of the series. |
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