[Archon_Wing]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

Kimlinger should never have been given the Nanoha review assignment to begin with. He clearly loathes magical girl anime, so it's a horrible move on ANN's part to give him the Nanoha review assignment, of all things. It would be like asking a shonen fan who hates "slow, boring" slice of life to review Kimi ni Todoke, or asking a slice of life fan who hates "silly shonen action" to review Bleach.

Even so, Kimlinger missed the whole point of Nanoha, which even a magical girl genre hater should get. Nanoha was (at least in its first season) about fusing the magical girl and mecha genres together, to try to achieve the best of both worlds. Obviously that means there's going to be conventional magical girl material in it (just like there's going to be conventional mecha material in it). There's no point in fusing magical girl and mecha together (as the whole idea behind your work), if you're not going to play straight at least some of the conventions of each.

I'll respond to other folks soon, but I'd like to address this first.

I agree that he shouldn't review a series he is so clearly biased against, but even that alone is not really the problem I have with it.

A good reviewer should be able to clearly place out points regardless if he hates it or not. Basically, one should try to keep excessive hate at the door and then pile it up later only when one has completed a logical argument.

My point in linking it was not just to suggest that he fails at that, but to highlight the entire flawed thought process that many people have. He doesn't explain why an anime geared to otaku is bad, and too much name dropping of series we may not have heard of, but he seems to be expecting us to know. I've never seen Pani Poni Dash for example.

If you want to express your opinion with authority and being taken seriously, you must be prepared to do that. This is why the the average-good reviews are harder to write than the masterpiece/trash reviews. It requires this kind of balance.

I would give that series a C+, which isn't that much better than what he gave and the categories were kinda similar, so why can I not understand that kind of opinion at all?

If you're going to reference other shows in a sidenote like that, let it be to the side, and explain it. Who the fuck is Tsuzuki anyways? And why do I care?

The series' utter devotion to fan-pandering can be impressive in its thoroughness. Even its production is steeped in otaku trivia (it's a spin-off of an adult series based on a computer game) and its very animation is aimed at fanatics.

Hint: Do not put "cool story bro" stuff in your reviews. Triangle Hearts isn't relevant to watching Nanoha as a show. Almost nobody gave a shit or knows what that even is. Fanatics of what? If it's the mecha homages, why is this bad? Why is anything bad?

Add to that his skin-crawling lolicon fan-service—which includes a brutal whipping....

lol, of all the things to label fanservice... But anyhow, this is another example of twisting things to be like "Oh, it was made for lonely otaku to fap to!"

Fortunately, he actually comes up with actual criticism at the end... wait why is it in the conclusion

Spoiler:

Nanoha is not without appeal—much of it is cute and the magical action is downright cool—it's just that it's hard to enjoy it amid the naked elementary-school girls, traffic jams of knowingly recycled plot developments (viva la rival-to-friend transformation!) and ponderous pacing. Had the series devoted a little more time to crafting likeable leads (as opposed to moe archetypes) and less time to sating appetites for gloppy, codified emotional darkness, or more time to Shinbo's oddball humor and less time to Tsuzuki's thinly-disguised S&M fantasies, perhaps the series could have been the modern magical-girl classic it wants to be. As it stands it is more a monument to otaku tastes than a viable work of entertainment, and an oft-disturbing monument at that.

It seems that I am only quoting a few things, but that's only because I am trying to reach the core of his argument about otaku pandering which is repeated endlessly. Which is going nowhere.

Anyhow, self supporting premises tend to to suck, and I really just bolded what could be considered legitimate criticism. The problem is that it should start with the beginning not at the end! Are you telling me I had to read through all that rant to get to a 30 second analysis of merit, aside from the visual notes?

If you wanna name drop people, you better damn well make sure people know what you're talking about. Introduce them...

Something more fair... that I came up with in a search. Note this review could care less about the intentions of who made it save for a few concise statements (it is explained immediately afterwards) and makes no intent to mindread insidous intentions from nowhere. It focuses... on the show itself! It also doesn't make long rants about stuff nobody cares about. Dear god, who would have though of that?

Tl;DR It's ok to think things are bad. But you need to explain why it is bad, and repetition doesn't count.