Category: Special Articles

A few months ago, I was asked if I could do a post once in a while about some of my other interests aside from anime. It took me a while to think of something interesting to write, but I figured that I might as well use this post to keep track of the different books and novels I read from time to time. Do note that this list is over the scope of a couple of years: I’m a very slow reader, and usually take three months to finish one book. These all have nothing whatsoever to do with anime or Japan: most are either American thrillers, fantasy or European history, or a combination between these. Do note that some of these entries contain spoilers.

The Dreamers 1: The Island Thurn – David Eddings & Leigh Eddings
A story that takes place in a fantasy world, where a huge focus is spent on building up, and setting everything up correctly. While it’s a bit too caught up in its need to do everything by the book, give every single character background and enough time to develop, up to the point that there’s not much excitement along the way (nothing really happens through the first three quarters of the book), it does deliver nicely in the end, although nothing spectacular.

The Magic Circle – Catherine Neville
The prime example of how you can also get too convoluted. This novel set out with grand ambitions, as it attempted to tell a plot that spreads across 2000 years, with a story containing a huge amount of symbolism, referencing Jesus, Hitler some Roman Emperors and other notable historical figures all caught up in it. In the end, though, it becomes clear that it never really knew what it wanted to go for, and the story didn’t really accomplish anything, other than establishing the ridiculously complex family history of the female lead character. Seriously, in the end the twists about her family became so formulaic that you can almost predict the exact page at which the next increasingly ludicrous plot twist would arrive. It’s got a lot of nice trivia, though. The author really did some intensive historical research on this one.

The Collectors – David Baldacci
A very nice in-depth look in how con artists do their jobs, as we follow a group of four of them as they try to get away with a multi-million dollar scam. Great attention to detail, and a huge focus on careful preparation, only ruined by a joke of an ending which forsakes everything that the story has been building up for and instead goes for a nonsensical action end. The other story that runs parallel through the book also isn’t the most interesting: a bunch of old people solving a murder may sound good on paper, but it’s not the most exciting thing out there.

The Golden Compass – Philip Pullman
Excellent book, and I still need to get my hands on the continuation of this one. The whole idea of every person being accompanied by his own daemon (a sort-of animal that accompanies him everywhere; they even can change shapes for children) is fleshed out really well. The lead character may be just a little girl, but she’s a very likable lead. This is one story that gets increasingly better as it goes on.

Gone Baby Gone – Dennis Lehane
Absolutely fantastic. There’s no other way I can say it. The sheer imagination with which such a police thriller is told still amazes me. It’s an in-depth look at police cases involving missing children. It tells the story about two detectives, looking for a missing four year-old girl, and continues to keep the reader in the dark throughout the largest part of the book. But when a second child disappears, it finishes with an incredibly strong final quarter. I can safely say that this has been the best book I’ve ever read.

The Lost Labyrinth – Kate Mosse
This book tells about two stories as they intertwine: one about 12th century Carcasonne (France), and the other, happening about 8 centuries later. The former one is really good, with a likable female lead and a story that gets increasingly more interesting. The latter, however, just feels like second fodder in comparison. It’s full of plot holes, lacks detail and especially the romance that pops up near the end from out of nowhere feels a bit jarring. It’s got quite a few nice ideas, though.

Deverry: Daggerspell – Katherine Kerr
I’m only nearly halfway through this one at the moment, but I’m having a lot of trouble to get through it. Basically, this book is the first one of a large series of fantasy novels as it tells of a series of very annoying romances. Seriously, we have this guy who already was screwed in the head. His father dies and he continuously angsts and throws tantrums about it. He then proceeds to screw his sister and kill his best friend (no, really). When the bugger finally dies, you’d think that the annoyance finally stops, but no: he reincarnates, and the annoying romance starts all over again. Sure, in the end the story might have a very good conclusion, but I’m about to just drop it because people continue to behave like complete and unlikable imbeciles.

So yeah, one thing I noticed is that each medium has its own share of strengths and weaknesses. The things I noticed with these novels is that in nearly all cases, the thing that decides whether they succeed or not is their final quarter, the rest is all or mostly build-up. Nearly all of the above-mentioned ones either had very promising first halves, only to fall apart completely in the end, or fairly uneventful first halves, only to come together wonderfully in the end.

Another thing I can appreciate is the large diversity of lead characters. Okay, I may have just picked out the right books for this, but it feels like every lead character of the ones mentioned above comes from a different age group, as opposed to anime which tents to usually pick out teenagers. Still, the reason why I prefer anime to novels at this point is that novels lack the ability to suck me in and create an atmosphere. I’m a big fan of all sorts of things multimedia, and the thing I like about anime is how it combines all these things (audio, visuals, storytelling, etc) in order to create a coherent story. So yeah, in the end it’s just a matter of personal preference here, though with some of the above mentioned books, I’m glad to be able to have read them. Especially in the case of Gone Baby Gone. There are geniuses in every single kind of medium.

I may update this entry in the future as I read more. In the meantime, what are some of your favourite novels? I’m really a noob at this medium, so some help in deciding what to read next is always appreciated. ^^;

Well, it’s the time of the year again where I’m swamped with work, right before the Christmas Break. I’m having exams (or finals or whatever you call them in English) next week, and so I can’t use the distraction of blogging right now.

I’ll be back next week Friday.

Just for the information, for the upcoming winter-season I’m again planning to not look at any of the promo material of the upcoming series, so again I won’t be writing a preview for it. I’m going to make one exception for this, though: Konnichiwa Anne, the next instalment of the World Masterpiece Theatre. I figure with such a title, and the “kids”-label most people who might be potentially interested in the series will be turned off before the series even started.

For those of you who don’t know about the World Masterpiece Theatre, here’s a short description. They started back in 1975, and each year, a new series of usually around 52 episodes would be shown as an adaptation of a famous children’s novel. One of the big trademarks of the franchise was the huge focus on creating “real” characters: characters that felt like real people. The different series come in all sorts of different sizes: sometimes they get gut-wrenchingly sad, others are quite light-hearted, others are inspirational. They can be surprisingly mature for mere children’s’ series, and therefore are also an excellent watch for the older viewers.

This has both its good and bad points. The good side of the franchise is that because the characters are so well fleshed out, they become a delight to watch, and they’re very easy to identify with as a viewer. The bad side is that nearly every series of the franchise is very slow paced. There are a lot of slice of life moments that help to identify and define the characters in question, and if you can’t enjoy those, you probably won’t find much enjoyment, and the series will most likely bore you to death.

Anyway, about Konnichiwa Anne. It’s based on the novel “Before Green Gables”, which is the prequel of the famous children’s novel “Anne of Green Gables“, a novel by Lucy Maud Montgomery, and adapted in 1979 into an anime by Isao Takahata of Ghibli-fame. The original series was a slice of life series, which depicted five years out of Anne’s teenaged life.

Before Green Gables actually wasn’t written by Lucy Maud Montgomery herself, but instead by a completely different woman: Budge Wilson. She wrote it in 2008 as the 100th anniversary of the original novel, and it can be very well considered as professional fan fiction, telling about the first eleven years of Anne’s life, which only had been hinted at in the novels (or the anime, at least). What the tv-series told us about Anne’s past was that her parents died when she was only three months old. She then moved from family to family, living there as something as an unwanted child for those already overcrowded families, eventually ending up at an orphanage.

So my prediction is that this series is going to be completely different from the original Anne of Green Gables anime, and that instead it’s going to be a very dark but heart-warming slice-of-life series with quite a bit of drama every now and then.

The problem with this series is obviously going to be that there’s a very low chance of it actually getting subbed or licensed. I was hoping that the fanbase of Akage no Anne would at least give this series a small advantage over Les Miserables and Porfy no Nagai Tabi, but it’s nearly one month until broadcast and the information about the production staff hasn’t even been announced yet for goodness’ sake. All we know is that it’s going to be the next WMT and that it’ll be based on the book Before Green Gables.

However, if you’re a fan of sad slice of life series, then I do urge you to give this series a chance if it does get subbed somehow. In any case I’ll probably be providing a detailed summary for each of the episodes, for those who want to watch it raw but are still uncomfortable with Japanese. The World Masterpiece Theatre Series are actually relatively easy to understand.

Oh boy, time flies by fast. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been ding this for three years at this point. Last year I celebrated this by showing some statistics (props to Google Analytics), which is what I’m going to do this time as well.

General Statistics:
Up till now, I’ve made 2217 posts, regularly blogged 80 television series and 11 movies and OVAs.
The site has been received 1661636 unique visitors, which consist out of 1037409 first time visitors and 624227.
10025 comments have been posted (many thanks to everyone who posted one)

Top-10 Most Accessed Series:
(note that this list is from the past year only, otherwise it’d just look too much like the list I made a year ago)
10. Mobile Suit Gundam 00
9. Macross Frontier
8. Jigoku Shoujo
7. Baccano!
6. Dennou Coil
5. Shion no Ou
4. Ghost Hound
3. Les Miserables
2. Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
1. Saiunkoku Monogatari

Top-10 Most Accessed Posts: (Thankfully a lot less crazy than last year)
10. Darker than Black Review
9. School Days Review
8. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann Review
7. Shigurui Review
6. Sword of the Stranger Review
5. Autumn Season 2007 Preview
4. Himitsu ~The Revelation~ – 02 (why this one of all posts that I made got so many hits… I don’t know…)
3. Summer Season 2008 Preview
2. Spring Season 2008 Preview
1. Top 10 Anime
(An interesting observation is that none of my series reviews made the list when I made it a year ago, and now it’s full of them)

Top-10 Google Keywords: (aside from the obvious ones as “psgels”, “star crossed” and variations of “top 10 anime”)
10. himitsu the revelation
9. dennou coil
8. darker than black review
7. soul eater 12
6. shion no ou
5. takane no jitensha (surprising amount of people that are interested in this cute but unremarkable ova)
4. saiunkoku monogatari
3. porfy sucks (No, really. The counter is on freaking 1636 hits for that one. Why in god’s name 1636 people feel like finding out how much Porfy sucks is beyond me. )
2. baccano
1. shigurui

Amusing searh-terms (or downright weird ones)
“school days” anime very annoying – I agree!

anime ep spanking high girl ass – Really nice to see that those who visit my site for mature reasons…

battle programer psgels – That sounds kindof nice…

claymore pee – For god’s sake… why?

incest with my mother – You don’t need to tell that to the world…

psgels eats cake – mmm… cake…

it is not hard to know that the sprng season is coming – indeed, it isn’t!

why is the season called autumn & not something else – um, good question…

psgels is gay for porfy – I can’t believe that people are actually searching for this…

true tires anime – The next Initial D!

which girl is shinichiro in true tears – Oh, the fan-fiction….

“she turns evil” – How did you end up here?

psgels fails at life – I’d like to meet the bastard who typed this and have a long and thoughtful discussion with him. >:(

“skunk rising” – what the…?

“which question is this” – it isn’t this one…

‘by the big slippers of big slipperdom’ – This one’s my favourite ^^;

10001001010100

[qq[]q]qq]q]q][][][][][][] – Do not ask me what these guys were hoping to find with this, let alone how they ended up at this site…

3d too – 4D three!

; that explains a lot – it does!

a bishie in toshokan sensou i won’t have it! – unite and destroy the bisies in Toshokan Sensou!

anime girl gives kid money in bag made from magic illegal angry cars float – this is actually a pretty nice idea.

what does it mean when im getting pushed by a ghots – prolly that your spelling goes wonky

Next up in the category of “ah, why not?”, I figured that it might be interesting to revive a little contest I held a year ago. Before the start of the spring and autumn-season of 2007, I ran a small poll where readers could nominate an upcoming series. The one with the most votes would be blogged, no matter what, which resulted in me blogging first Claymore and then Gundam 00.

I decided to not do the same for the past spring-season because I needed a small break from it, but it’s a fun thing to do about once a year. Especially since this time I’ll have no idea which show I’ll be forced to blog until I watch its first episode.

Anyway, here are some concrete rules:
– To make a valid vote, drop a comment leaving your selection. You can select up to two series from the upcoming Autumn season.
– The anime with the most amount of votes in the end will be blogged for at least 12 or 13 episodes (in the unlikely event that the series in question becomes way too much of a chore to cover).
– Here‘s a list with the shows that are scheduled to air. (At least, that’s what I assume. Notify me if it isn’t complete).
– No direct sequels; that’s just boring and predictable.
– Apart from that, I accept any series with an airdate between September 25th and November 11th (yes, those were the first dates that came to my mind)
– Please refrain from spoiling synopsises or staff lists. I’m still trying to enter the Autumn Season with as little information as possible about the upcoming shows, and I’d like to keep it that way.
– The poll will end at September 30, 23:59 GMT. All votes that arrive after that will be ignored.

Here are the current scores:
Tytania – 23
Michiko to Hatchin – 20
Skip Beat – 14
Tales of the Abyss – 11
Chaos Head – 10
Hakushaku to Yosei – 9
Shikabane Hime – 8
Kuroshitsuji – 7
Toradora – 6
Kurozuka – 6
Casshern – 6
Yozakura Quartet – 5
Today in Class 5-2 – 3
Ga-Rei-Zero – 3
Mouryou no Hako – 2
Macademi Wasshoi – 1
Bihada Ichizoku – 1

Now that the discussions about the autumn anime season have started, I might as well note that for those who are wondering: I’m not planning to make a preview of the upcoming season.

It just feels like everyone and his dog is already doing one, so I don’t see what my attempts can add, since they were never that good anyway. The only advantage I had was that I wrote my previews always relatively early, but this time the first previews for the autumn season already popped up around the half of July. There’s no way I’m going to compete with that. If you want to see an autumn season preview, just go to Animenano and search for “fall preview”. I personally recommend waiting until Hashihime publishes his/hers (I’m still not sure about his/her gender…), as his/her thoughts are always very interesting to read.

The second reason is that I wanted to try a little experiment. For the past few years, I’ve always tried to prepare myself as best as possible, by reading synopsises, staff lists, et cetera, so that I knew what to expect. That doesn’t make much sense, though. I mean, I can understand how someone who’s only planning to watch a handful of series needs to separate the cream from the crop, but I’m going to watch the first episode of every new series anyway. Then what’s the point about getting excited about a series that might disappoint, or dismissing a potential gem because it doesn’t look interesting enough at first glance. Quite a few of my favourite series actually didn’t make too good of a first impression when I first saw them (Simoun, Shion no Ou, Kaiba, Mahou Shoujotai), and I’ve often been disappointed by a series that looked good because of its staff list and promo-art, but turned out to be complete garbage.

Hence why for this season, I wondered what it’d be like to go into a season without knowing anything about the upcoming series, save from possible sequels of course. With that mindset, I obviously can’t write a fall preview at the same time. I personally love being surprised by a series, so who knows? All I know is that I’m going to be enjoying the second seasons of Gundam 00 and Jigoku Shoujo, and for now I’ll just assume that the rest of the season will consist out of dull and uninspired shounen-series.

I just finished watching episode fifteen of this series, and I’ve got too many thoughts about this series and I don’t feel like waiting for this series to end to share them. It’s just too much of a shame to see that a series that I once loved for its witty humour degraded so much in only two months. The first seven episodes of Itazura na Kiss, where Irie and Kotoko were both into high-school. My favourite moment was that kiss in episode 7. Strangely enough, as soon as the two hit university and started to develop, the problems began piling up and this series went South.

It’s a shame, since this series did manage to avoid the standard pitfall for such a series: it’s nice to see the characters develop, and Irie and Kotoko realize what they want to do later. The two of them becoming a couple of a doctor and a nurse may be a bit conservative (that wedding also came way too fast), but then again, this may feel awkward because I’ve watched too much anime, which seems to hate modern conservatism like this.

The smaller problem in this series are of course annoying, like the horrible Engrish (I can understand how Irie’s English is bad, but people who are supposedly English yet again speak with a horrible accent. I really wonder, in these days of outsourcing, why nobody got the idea to hire a bunch of English voice-actors to fill in for the English parts…). The inconsistent animation at times is also rather grating, especially in that new ED. It feels like a bunch of entirely different people made it.

But the biggest problem is that the writers suddenly seem to have given up… it’s strange, but their wit that made me fall in love with the first few episodes is entirely gone now. One thing I liked about these first few episodes is the fast transition from funny to dramatic, when either Kotoko or Irie’s pranks went a bit too far, for example. That’s what made that drama work. Ever since university, the creators seemed to have increased the drama in this series, but the problem is that… they just can’t write decent drama.

For the past eight episodes, the creators just kept throwing love-rivals and random illnesses at our couple, as an attempt to test their relationship. I mean, come on, think of something bloody different! Have a bit of faith in your characters. They’re funny as they are, without these contrived plot-twist. The creators keep hanging at the boring parts and skip the potentially interesting parts. I mean, that sex-scene really came from nowhere. There was no build-up, absolutely nothing, even though it was supposed to be a moment to bring Kotoko and Irie closer together…

I think that indeed the big mistake of the creators, was that during the development of the characters, they never developed their characters, or built up for that matter. There’s hardly any foreshadowing, storylines aren’t wrapped up properly, there is such a thing as getting over your love… why hasn’t that black-haired tennis-woman whose name I forgot found herself a new guy? This series hardly feels connected at all, and it feels like the writers are struggling to find something interesting for their main characters to do.

I’m really trying to like these romantic comedies, but they really make it harder and harder by continuing to disappoint me. I really hope that this series finds its groove back in its final third, because I genuinely liked this series when it first started. It feels like nearly every one of these love comedies I watch gets dull as it goes on and loses inspiration. I believe that the only pure love comedies that I genuinely liked so far are the ones who added something extra, so that they weren’t just about the adventures of a brand new couple. Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge had lots of gothic horror references and bishounen-parodies; Moyashimon had its references to bacteria and in Umisho we got to see the chronicles of a local swimming-club. They may feel like plot-devices, but at least they provide the creators with enough inspiration to keep their series interesting until the end.

Short Synopsis: The students are taught magic through various practical assignments at real clients.
Highlights: Sora may have been a bit too emotionally attached to her assignment.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10
I’m pretty annoyed by Bonen no Xamdou, for its attempt to mess up my whole blogging schedule this season. Just when the final show this season aired and I decided which shows to blog, this one pops up. I don’t have a Playstation, and I’m not willing to buy one, so I haven’t seen its first episode yet. It’s not certain that I’m going to blog it, but there’s a pretty good chance that if it does pop up somehow, I’ll end up covering it. Especially since there are going to be 26 episodes.

One really annoying trend of 2008 is that, when compared to previous years, there are hardly any shows that go on for longer than 13 episodes. Only a select few went with a series length of 22 or 26 episodes, which is a real shame, in my opinion. In any case, if I do end up blogging Bonen no Xamdou, Natsu no Sora is probably going to be dropped. It’s obviously not a bad series, and I actually really like it, but everyone already seems to cover this series, and I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to say something interesting about each episode, considering the nature of this series. Either that, or Birdy the Mighty’s third episode has to be realy bad, but I doubt that one.

To go back on topic, this episode shows how the school in Natsu no Sora isn’t as Harry Potterish as I originally thought, and Sora is actually going to carry out many jobs as a magician in order to learn and develop her skills. It showed how in this world magicians are quite rare and not always admired. Sora’s also gets accompanied by some sort of manager or something. I’m not quite sure yet how this system works, but my limited Japanese may have been the cause of that. Do these people continue to accompany their magicians, or is it just for the first few months? Are these people magicians themselves? Does the school really have enough manpower to assign one manager to one magician?

Just as with episode 2, this episode again was very solid, with a bunch of forced plot-twists popping up from out of nowhere. Thankfully it wasn’t as blatant as that truck, but Sora suddenly decides to run off with the photo albums that she was supposed to get outside of a locked safe and bring them outdoors. This may have triggered the client to show a more personal side of herself, but I’d prefer it if was less forced, especially considering the nature of this series.

I’m also interested in whether the rest of this series will shed some more light into the world this anime is set in. I mean, in this episode we saw how easily Sora cracked that safe. What if there was a magician who suddenly thought that it’d be a nice idea to start robbing houses. If he’s talented enough, he’d probably get away with it, based on what I’ve seen in this series.

EDIT: aaand just after I make this post a sub of Bonen no Xamdou turns up. Does anyone know whether the .mp4-file is in HD or not?

Short Synopsis: Sora travels to Tokyo, has her first day at school and meets her classmates.
Highlights: Very detailed storytelling, but where did that truck come from?
Overall Enjoyment Value:7,5/10
Okay, so even though everybody and his dog will probably end up blogging this, I’ve decided to cover it. I haven’t seen the first season yet, but apparently you don’t need to have watched it in order to enjoy this one. It’s got a warm slice of life feeling, even though plenty of things are happening. Sora is quite a likable female lead, and I like how the creators gave everyone in Sora’s class his or her own identity. The backgrounds are also awesome: there were plenty of times where I couldn’t tell whether they were live-action or painted. It’s just going to be a bitch, trying to take screenshots of them, since there are hardly any good shots of the characters. The camera is either too far or too close the character’s faces. ^^;

This show does have its flaws, mostly in terms of coincidences. Out of all the houses in Tokyo, Sora ends up in the same as her potential love interest. But the really strange thing that was that accident that happened in front of Sora (where the SAME GUY was also present). First a car crashes, only for a truck to actually fly from a bridge somehow. I guess that the creators were trying to show Sora’s powers a bit, but this could really have been more subtle. Especially considering how solid the rest of the series is.

Sora’s classmates are an interesting bunch. Sora’s obviously talented, but this episode also showed that her magic is rather uncontrolled and not polished yet (especially when she lets her emotions take over, which I guess is a trait that 90% of all mahou shoujo leads have), but her classmates are either much more precise, or still need to learn how to use magic properly. In any case, this episode showed the beginning of good chemistry between them, which is always a plus.

I must thank everyone for replying on the reader survey, because I got a lot of interesting feedback. I’ll try to consider some of the things you suggested, but what caught my attention the most is the criticism for my rating-system. In a way, I agree. Most of the times, I don’t see the difference between 83/100 and 84/100, so it would be near-impossible to try and explain this.

The things these guys have said on the matter got me thinking about the right rating system for Star Crossed. This guy has a point as well: why waste so many different ratings on the bad shows? Why should one have so many room to differentiate all the different kinds of badness?

I don’t think that there’s one universal kind of rating scheme, it all depends on the reviewer. In my case, I’m in my element when I can praise a series to heavens, and while it’s fun once in a while to bash bad shows, I’d much rather spend time on the good stuff. Then I took a look at my list of reviews, and noticed that I already split up the series into basic categories, and wondered if I somehow could combine some sort of ambiguous star-like rating with this:

“100-94: A masterpiece, the best of the best
93-90: Outstanding series, with perhaps one or two small flaws here and there
89-87: Excellent series, definitely worth a watch
86-83: Great series, really enjoyable to watch.
82-77: Good, but could have been better
76-72: Has some great points, but significant flaws are holding this series back
71-65: An average series with one or two great parts
64-56: Mediocre series, not really worth your time
55-40: Bad series, stay away from these
<39: Painful, garbage, crap, etc”

I’ve never been that much of a fan of the 5 star-rating, for some strange reason. I’ve tried a few times, but they never really express what I want to: 5 different kinds of options do feel like to little, and if I include those half-stars, I’m with the problem again that the lowest categories will hardly be used. In fact, why do we always need to use a rating system with a number of options that can be divided through 5 or even 10? Why not something like… seven? So:

✩✩✩✩✩✩✩: A Masterpiece
✩✩✩✩✩✩: Outstanding
✩✩✩✩✩: Excellent
✩✩✩✩: Great
✩✩✩: Good
✩✩: Decent
✩: Mediocre

And the bad series just get a category with no stars at all. I mean, both Lucky Star and Shining Tears were unwatchable, and I can’t see why you’d want to differentiate between the two, if I’m not going to recommend it anyway. I’d much rather have a detailed distinction between the good series. And my current scoring would be relatively easy to change into this system.

The next idea was splitting these ratings up in different parts, to differentiate on what makes a series good. I refrained from doing this, mostly because I don’t agree with the standard system that review-sites as and Myanimelist are having. They make it seem like good animation and music together have just as much weight as a good story and characters, while I’m personally much more interested in storytelling. It’s no use to add in extra categories, because that’ll just end up cluttered. After a bit of thinking, I came up with the following areas that I find important:

– Storytelling (you can have a magnificent story in your head, but if it isn’t told well, it’s worthless)
– Characters (do the characters connect? Are they fleshed out and developed well enough?)
– Production-Values (thanks Autonomous Monster; this is basically a combination between graphics and music. In other words, a series with a high rating in this category is a proverbial feast for the senses)
– Setting (In other words: how much time has been put into designing the setting, and keep it consistent? How complex is the setting, and does the storyline make full use of this?)

I’ll call it the SCPS Rating system for now. For the next couple of weeks, I’m going to try and experiment a bit with this system. I’ll still continue to give out numerical ratings, in case this was a bad idea, but for each review I’ll give out a star-rating for each of these four categories, along with an overall one and see how things go. If it works well, I might dish out these star-ratings for individual episodes as well.