Some thoughts about anime rating systems

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.

16 thoughts on “Some thoughts about anime rating systems

  1. Hm, I am glad that you gave your rating system so much thought, but I’ve actually always been a big fan of your 100-rating system so far. If you decide to switch to your new rating system completely, are you also planning on re-rating your old shows? Personally I have found your review index by rating quite useful.

  2. I think the problem is not so much that your system is too finely grained (well, okay, I see little point in rating things out of anything more than, say, twenty), but that your average is too high.

    You see this problem everywhere actually. In games, for example, anything that is even remotely playable get 70%+. That’s ridiculous. You’re cramming 90% of items into the top 30% of the scale.

    I would support a scale like;

    -10: Utter garbage
    -5: Watchable
    0: Average/Decent
    +5: Good
    +10: Classic

    Actually, a ten/eleven point (-5 through +5) scale would probably be good enough. Just so long as, y’know, you use the entire scale. Keep enough room to differentiate between the merely excellent and the true classic that will stand the test of time.

  3. Sasa: it’s going to be fairly easy to convert these ratings:
    ✩✩✩✩✩✩✩: 100-94
    ✩✩✩✩✩✩: 93-90
    ✩✩✩✩✩: 89-87
    ✩✩✩✩: 86-83
    ✩✩✩: 82-77
    ✩✩: 76-72
    ✩: 71-65
    no star: anything below that. The problem is indeed going to be those SCSS-ratings…

    Autonomous Monster: that was indeed my dilemma: there are indeed enough bad series, but if a series is bad, then there’s a very small chance that I’ll actually finish to be able to review it. In the system I suggested above, the amount of series for each category seems about right.

  4. I’m actually happy with the change I think it’s a step in the good direction. As I told you a long time ago (and Autonomous Monster just told in an earlier post) your old system was too fine grained, you new system is much better still a little bit too fine grained for my tastes but still much better.
    As for the categories I find them much better that in most other anime sites. I like them.

  5. I’ve seen many different review sites struggle with their rating system. What appeals to one person will absolutely not appeal to another. So you lose for trying. However I do like the idea of the 7 star system because I do agree that a bad series really doesn’t need to be watched regardless of how bad it really is. If you want to attach a symbol to it then make that symbol something like a rotten egg. A little tiny egg, slightly green with green vapored drawn over it. Whatever, you know what I mean.

  6. Frankly, I find actual numerical ratings fairly unimportant, I much prefer to see your own opinion over anything else.
    I would rather you add that extra comment here and there than try to sum up your own opinion in a number.

    Don’t go listening to people who want to force their own standards on you just because they’re used to it somewhere else – unless you, and only you, really WANT to change the rating system, don’t bother.

    However, I think the four sections – Characters, Setting, etc. are a good idea.

    But when it comes to numbers and stars, I don’t think it’s so useful. I only glance at your rating, it’s what you write that’s most important.
    On top of that, I think the Star Rating system is redundant. It’s just a load of symbols that only manage to differentiate slightly. They don’t really have much significance unless all your series are compared together, in which case your percentage system works fine.

    Don’t fix what isn’t broken, I say. But this little categorical summary is not a bad idea should you choose to use it.

  7. I like the idea of not bothering to score the crap series.

    I would disagree with the idea of scoring individual episodes as the point of a score is aid people in deciding whether they should watch something or not. While this is useful with first episodes and reviews, someone who is following a series is probably not going to skip one episode just because someone gave it a bad score.

  8. Lol, NOOOoooo…..

    Your making me count stars! I had to stick my cursor on and highlight across so that I didn’t lose count!

  9. Wow…this is indeed a big change to your review system.

    Ironically, MAL’s rating system got tiring for me, so I started reviewing shows on my Red vs Blue profile, but I am trying to create a rating system that I borrowed from you. So as you start your new idea on reviewing, I’m using the old system, but I’m trying to tweak it so that I can make it as accurate as possible.

    I do agree that there is no use reviewing the bad shows. Hell, I tried to suffer through Kanokon so that I could give it the bad review it deserves, but after Ep 9, I just had to give up.

    The SCPS idea is awesome though. Ironically again, I can’t really come up with much for animation and sound when I wrote that Tower of Druaga and Moetan (that one finished subbing recently, and it was decent to me) review, so I just combined the two as well. Characters and the Story are the two most important aspects in a work of fiction anyway (in my opinion).

    Enough rambling from me, need to see your HOLICKei and Amatsuki reviews…

  10. I can’t see any stars, I just see question marks instead? What fonts/language support do I need to install to see it?

  11. Yes, my computer does support unicode, but I guess I’m missing a font to display it correctly.

    I have tested with
    WindowsXP SP2: Firefox 2.0.0.14 & IE 7
    Ubuntu Linux 8.04: Firefox 2.0.0.14

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