If you’ve seen one of my reviews you may be questioning about the scores I put in the end, which gives the average shown everywhere in this blog. How the hell I came up with that? What the f*ck do I mean by “Concept”? What is “Production” exactly? Damn, why not just stick with some normal stuff like animation, sound, story, and so on?
Well, there’s a reason for that. Since I began written reviews to polish my english and unleash my rant in AniDB, I found out that the while scoring animes the average result was far from giving my true impression of a show. I mean, I would watch a beautiful piece of art that was a garbage in every other term and its average would eclipse a few other good shows just because it scored high in “animation”. I would see my Berserker or Great Teacher Onizuka scoring become lower than a few others when, in my opinion, they were clearly superior pieces of animation. I had to give weight to those scores for the sake of them making sense to me.
I will never put animation with the same weight of story or character. Although I do enjoy great audio experiences, for me they are secondary to the enjoyment you can extract from a show. These things made me weight those scores, and when creating this blog I found an opportunity to create areas of interest with a similar weight in my mind.
Production
Production means everything that involves the art and sound departments. It is a catch all to present how beautiful, crispy, and exciting the show looks and sounds. I try to look mainly at some of the following details to determine the production score:
- Visual Identity. How the show tries to set itself apart from the others and create its own, easily identifiable, visual.
- Animation. How smooth and natural the animation is and how expressive are the characters.
- Art Quality. The overall sharpness and coloring of the artwork, from characters to background and special effects.
- Sound Direction. How decently are music themes used and how good are the sound effects. It also considers the capacity of the opening and ending songs to create a fitting mood for the show.
Direction
Direction mostly means how the story is executed and how the cast comes to evolve along its events. A great idea might catch you at the first episodes, but its is typically the direction that makes you stay for the rest. It is mainly composed of the following elements.
- Pacing. How naturally the plot progresses and transition from one moment to another.
- Narrative. How naturally a single scene progresses and how good is the sequence of events presenting us the story.
- Script. How coherent is the dialogue, how the show treats the conversation between characters, and how it exposes content and lore.
Concept
Concept is all about the ideas of the show, from its starting point, its setting and its overall impression. Coming up with a nice idea alone can be a huge boost for a show, especially in the beginning.
- Initial Idea. How innovative, interesting, or straightly weird is the premise of the show.
- Setting. How interesting and dense is the place where the story will take place. For shows fantasy shows it means everything in the world building. For real-life settings it means how real it feels and how it exposes the details needed to you understand the sub-world where the story takes place.
- Consistency. Although a great idea and a great setting can provide a good experience, it needs to remain consistent throughout the story and not deviate for the sake of pleasing a new audience or simply losing the trail of what it is.
Character
Character is a big element that deals with every member of the cast. It goes around from the tropes used to build a character to its voice-acting. It doesn’t includes character design (that is tackled by visual identity above) neither the expressive power of the artwork (again, it sits within Production). Here I only look for the personality and development part of the cast.
- Lead. How original, well-developed, and interesting is the lead character or the leading party. Some shows may point out a single-protagonist, but here I look at every core member of a show deserving to be praised as a protagonist.
- Support. How good these side-characters are in every aspect and, most importantly, how naturally they fill their small screen time within the show.
- Voice-Acting. How good is the voice-acting overall. How the voices match the characters and how they interact with what is being shown for each scene.
Enjoyment
Enjoyment is most subjective of the areas. It basically means how I felt about the show’s power to lure me in, keep me hooked, and make me feel if my time was worthy it or not. Although some shows have great production, direction, character, and everything else, they can fail to simply keep us watching it.
- Immediate Satisfaction. How the show works to keep my full attention to it during a single episode.
- Pull. How the show pulls me to the next episode. This typically means how each episode relate to one another or how the teases work to make me come back later.
- Conclusion. How good and coherent is the conclusion of a show. If it doesn’t have a conclusion I try to sort out if everything present fulfilled my immediate curiosity and if its climax is strong enough to make me wish for a new season or movie.