The lists I update here are only meant to be an archive of titles I've already completed.
Here you can read my opinion on ratings and criticism in order to understand how I assess the titles.
My way of thinking is rather simple. Pleasurable experience and the feeling of fulfillment is what matters to me the most in fiction. I don't care about “role-models” or widely-recognized standards, since I am not the creator of the product. For me a work is worth giving a shot if it has memorable characters or story themes pushing you to reflect upon them, or if I had a great time watching/reading it.
That's why a 10 point system sucks for me. I don't really want to strictly define how I feel about each aspect of the work. A 5 point system is a lot better, since it makes it all less strict and blurry. However, I would go even further and argue that the following categorization will do it:
- Made horribly, not even worth to get into it.
± Worth your time.
+ Highly recommended, very worthy product.
I feel extremely skeptical about any reviews (and would encourage you to do the same) and never use them as a guide when choosing a title. They might sometimes offer an objective criticism, but more often than not it's all about the feelings obtained through the lens of personal experience and bias.
The product can be objectively bad, if its flaws are technical like bad animation and choice of colors, chaotic editing, poorly written script with plot holes and insufficient exposition, too many clichés, failed characters development or their stupid actions, dialogues that don't make any sense, low-quality soundtrack, bad voice acting, plagiarism.
In other cases, the judgement in reviews is subjective, for example if you find the product boring, the art style ugly or the story stupid, if you don't agree with a philosophical narrative or dislike a particular type of characters. These kinds of criteria are subjective feelings the viewers have. They shouldn't affect your decision to give a work a try.
From my point of view, reviews should be just the means for the audience to communicate with the authors so that authors could find something useful in their non-trivial points. This is where it profits. Furthermore, many “experts” write their “constructive opinion” in a rush, while the real worthy reviews take time finish, since you need to thoroughly analyze the work, which in turn often requires a re-watch/read. An example of a good reviewer will be Moonlighter, the guy from a Russian YouTube community. He makes his videos hourlong, and you can see the rationality and accountability in them.
At the end of the day, even if the work has a few flaws, why should I even care if it already fascinated me? Even an ink blot on paper might somehow strike a chord. And being able to enjoy a piece of art regardless of so-called “ranking scales and quality-control evaluations” labels is truly beautiful.
Also, there are few criticism directions which strike me as rather confusing, so let me tell you about them.
“Realism”. This is when the criticism is centered around the fictional world or its events being realistic with a comparison to our world, history or concepts. What can I say, this can't be serious, right? People write fictional works to do exactly the opposite, that is to mix up real things with fiction as much as possible. If I want to see something real, well, I can just go outside. You can't use realism as the quality criteria. The reason I dive into a fictional world in the first place is to escape the reality and make my imagination work.
The same applies to any weird things in a setting that could never happen in the real world. In the fictional world this weirdness might be added on purpose to keep the story going. Moreover, you can use any setting you want by just building “a world inside your head” that comprises all the possible cultures and historical contexts mixed together. I argue that setting like that isn't bad, but rather original; it makes the fictional world more interesting.
Also, I'd like to talk about action titles and people looking for a deep lore with every single detail worked out in this genre. I think, it is all BS. Most of the action titles are Shounen. Their essential goal is to show epic fighting scenes, to develop characters and their relationships with each other and to have a great overall storyline. All kinds of information about worldbuilding to create some inner logic is secondary. The authors shouldn't care too much about making the mechanics complex, most of the time it will be very superficial. And even then, the authors could break their own laws for the sake of continuing the story. If the detailed explanation and rationality is what you came for, why don't just try some kind of science fiction?
Here is the description of each type of grading level, which you can find in “tags” column in both lists. You can also sort these lists by tags and see my preferences. Hopefully, you will find something useful there.
- my fav: The works that touched me to the very core. Emotional attachment plays a crucial role here. When the times passes unnoticed and you are already looking forward to the next episode without even finishing the previous one, and when the title finally comes to an end you can't get over it and thinking it through while filled with pure joy. This is when you know that this is a bingo.
- (highly) recommend it: Even though these works aren't my favs, it's only because it's me. Nevertheless, I absolutely encourage you to give it a try, as they might very well become your own favs. Even if not, you'll definitely have a good time.
- you can give this one a try: These works are neither good nor bad. While they do have a few flaws, in general, I think they are somewhat worthy. If you have free time and a bottle of a good beer, that will do it for you.
- the anime/manga is better: I don't consider these works bad. However, I do believe that their original (anime/manga) is more remarkable and that you should definitely watch/read it as well in order to have a better idea about the title. It might even save you some time, as manga takes significantly less time to finish than anime, but the story is still the same.
- don't waste your time: The amount of flaws and garbage in these works made me think that the time I spent wasn't worth it at all. You will get little to no pleasure out of it. I already took this hit, so believe me and don't repeat my mistakes :D
- just chilling: These works aren't supposed to have a profound meaning and value or meet any high standards. Having fun, getting some feelings of warmth or relieving stress while watching/reading it is what they are for. You get the feeling that you spent your time with meaning, even though the work doesn't stand out as particularly interesting.
- cringe compilation: These works are either full of something ridiculous and absurd or offer you such an epic shit that's beyond anything. You get the feeling that no heart or efforts were put into this, but only LSD and alcohol consumed over the course of one night at a house party.
Note: If you are a mobile user and can't see the tags, try to switch to a desktop version using the button at the page bottom or go to your browser settings.
Some titles don't have tags, because they could be a sequel to an already rated work, or any other kind of extra/supplementary materials like OVAs, ONAs, one-shots, additional movies and so on.
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