Good Anime Review Blogs Catalog

[False Prophet]

IMHO, I don't think anime blogging is quite death yet. The fault lies not in the contents, but more because of the presentation - if only more people trying to make an effort to create eye-catching and accessible Wordpress pages.

[crazyidiot78]

Originally Posted by False Prophet

IMHO, I don't think anime blogging is quite death yet. The fault lies not in the contents, but more because of the presentation - if only more people trying to make an effort to create eye-catching and accessible Wordpress pages.

I don't dissagree, but what would you consider to be eye catching accessible wordpress pages? Would mine count? And what if any recomendations do you have?

www.animescience101.com

[Infinite Zenith]

Originally Posted by False Prophet

IMHO, I don't think anime blogging is quite death yet. The fault lies not in the contents, but more because of the presentation - if only more people trying to make an effort to create eye-catching and accessible Wordpress pages.

We have a UX/graphics design person in house? Excellent, what visual aspects about my blog would you recommend I modify?

[crazyidiot78]

Originally Posted by Infinite Zenith

We have a UX/graphics design person in house? Excellent, what visual aspects about my blog would you recommend I modify?

FYI- not a graphics design guy

The banner art is good, but if you also do gaming, why not have a game character in the banner. I'm not sold on the color scheme, but its not bad either. Depending on how much you do with models I might give it its own tab at the top instead of hiding it under anime. The side bar is busy, but the only thing I would remove would be the tags section and the page view counter. Its great that you have a subscribe button, but have you thought of coming up with a freebie of some sort (I give away a post on anime chefs)

My only real complain is that you have all of your posts on the front page in their entirety one after another. It makes it hard ot scan the last couple of posts you did.

[Infinite Zenith]

For a non graphic design guy, you've got some good feedback on the UX. I'll likely run it by the existing readers, too, and talk to a UI/UX guy I work with before making sweeping changes. The tag cloud and hit counter, however, I can adjust very easily. I'm a mid-end guy by trade, so I usually leave the graphics design to other people

[crazyidiot78]

Thanks, and I do the same, and all of the art for my blog was made by other people. fYI- I really liked your violet evergarden post and I have a post of my own about her prosthetics coming out on saturday.

[False Prophet]

Originally Posted by crazyidiot78

I don't dissagree, but what would you consider to be eye catching accessible wordpress pages? Would mine count? And what if any recomendations do you have?

www.animescience101.com

Your blog feels very much like something people creates during the early 2000s, when Newgrounds was still popular. Which is not a bad thing, just feel disconnected with the thoughtful content of your blog. I recommend you get rid of the banner and change the skin of your blog into something that relies more on tags and keywords.

Originally Posted by Infinite Zenith

We have a UX/graphics design person in house? Excellent, what visual aspects about my blog would you recommend I modify?

I am no graphic designer. I only dabbled a bit in copywriting, so my opinion may not been that useful. But here goes:

- My first impression that your blog is very "academic" feel because of the length and density of the post (they seem to have taken a lot of work, by the way.) Maybe you should change the skin, or at least the color scheme, of the blog into something warm. Maybe the color of leather?

- Maybe you shouldn't start your posts with too much words. I don't say that you should "dress it up" or something, but even something that gives the readers a clear, or at least comforting, idea about the post (such as using bullet points) would be a good starter

- Is there anyway to move the "Tags" banner ("About Infinite Zenith", "Admin", etc.) from above to bellow the image banner? Readers can easily miss out these navigation tags at their current position and color scheme.

Anyway, to crazyidiot78 and Infinite Zenith, your blogs are damn good. Maybe you should considering working for a websites. I do not know much about ANN or Crunchyroll, but maybe you guys should try your luck and ask someone in the know like Frog-kun and The Cart Driver about how they broke into professional writing.

[Infinite Zenith]

Damn it UX/UI is something I'm no good at: I work with a highly talented designer for all of my HCI needs, so I don't deal with it too often. I went with the pre-set Wordpress templates for ease of use with their free plan, so I'll likely need to 1) upgrade to a paid plan and then 2) talk to a web designed who knows CSS to make some of those changes.

On your second point, that could be an interesting concept. I've gotten this as feedback before, but never really thought of a possible implementation. As per usual, I'll also check with some of my readers to see if they'd like me to try something new; there are some ideas that I have in mind for addressing this. Thanks!

[False Prophet]

Originally Posted by Infinite Zenith

Damn it UX/UI is something I'm no good at: I work with a highly talented designer for all of my HCI needs, so I don't deal with it too often. I went with the pre-set Wordpress templates for ease of use with their free plan, so I'll likely need to 1) upgrade to a paid plan and then 2) talk to a web designed who knows CSS to make some of those changes.

On your second point, that could be an interesting concept. I've gotten this as feedback before, but never really thought of a possible implementation. As per usual, I'll also check with some of my readers to see if they'd like me to try something new; there are some ideas that I have in mind for addressing this. Thanks!

You're welcome. It is always nice to see anime blogs being continued. A lot of good blog just ended and being forgotten, wasting all these precious writings.

I don't know much about wordpress paid plan. but yeah, you should really talk to a designer.

[Fireminer]

I just added several old (from the late 90s) anime blogs. While inactive, they are still interesting reads on how the fandom was like back then. Also, great respect to the guys and gals at THEM Anime Reviews for keeping the site running for so long

[crazyidiot78]

Originally Posted by False Prophet

Your blog feels very much like something people creates during the early 2000s, when Newgrounds was still popular. Which is not a bad thing, just feel disconnected with the thoughtful content of your blog. I recommend you get rid of the banner and change the skin of your blog into something that relies more on tags and keywords.



I am no graphic designer. I only dabbled a bit in copywriting, so my opinion may not been that useful. But here goes:

- My first impression that your blog is very "academic" feel because of the length and density of the post (they seem to have taken a lot of work, by the way.) Maybe you should change the skin, or at least the color scheme, of the blog into something warm. Maybe the color of leather?

- Maybe you shouldn't start your posts with too much words. I don't say that you should "dress it up" or something, but even something that gives the readers a clear, or at least comforting, idea about the post (such as using bullet points) would be a good starter

- Is there anyway to move the "Tags" banner ("About Infinite Zenith", "Admin", etc.) from above to bellow the image banner? Readers can easily miss out these navigation tags at their current position and color scheme.

Anyway, to crazyidiot78 and Infinite Zenith, your blogs are damn good. Maybe you should considering working for a websites. I do not know much about ANN or Crunchyroll, but maybe you guys should try your luck and ask someone in the know like Frog-kun and The Cart Driver about how they broke into professional writing.

As I said before I'm not a UI or graphics design guy. What is newgrounds, and what do you mean by dissconnected. Also what do you mean by tags and key words. I use them for SEO,

I've tried to contact ANN and crunchyroll and got no where so I will try and contact The cart driver and frog-kun.

[Fireminer]

Looking through the Twitter and Facebook of the authors of the blogs on my list, I have this idea that many of them are acquaintances, friends or partners with others. Anyone here is familiar with this--someone who follow the blog, podcast, and con scence closely--can confirm me about this? Does anime newswriters and critics know pretty much everyone else?

[Guardian Enzo]

Originally Posted by Fireminer

Looking through the Twitter and Facebook of the authors of the blogs on my list, I have this idea that many of them are acquaintances, friends or partners with others. Anyone here is familiar with this--someone who follow the blog, podcast, and con scence closely--can confirm me about this? Does anime newswriters and critics know pretty much everyone else?

I know a few fellow anime bloggers (online, of course) but I certainly don't know most of them.

[felix]

Somewhat of a tangent but if anyone knows what are some good anime vlogs & podcasts.

I do come upon a good video in that idea every now and then but it seems to be usually 1 among a sea of "other shet" on the given channel.
Podcasts I haven't seen in a while.

[Fireminer]

Originally Posted by felix

Somewhat of a tangent but if anyone knows what are some good anime vlogs & podcasts.

I do come upon a good video in that idea every now and then but it seems to be usually 1 among a sea of "other shet" on the given channel.
Podcasts I haven't seen in a while.

For podcasts, you can't never go wrong if you start with Anime World Order and The Anime Nostalgia Podcast. As for vlogs, well, I really don't know where to start, since there are just so many topics covered by so many people. Are you looking for reviews, retrospectives, or lectures on the technicality?

[felix]

Originally Posted by Fireminer

For podcasts, you can't never go wrong if you start with Anime World Order and The Anime Nostalgia Podcast. As for vlogs, well, I really don't know where to start, since there are just so many topics covered by so many people. Are you looking for reviews, retrospectives, or lectures on the technicality?

Thanks!

I'm mostly interested in reviews and retrospectives targeting a series, rather then essays on why X from Y is bad and whatnot.

[Excalibur08]

Originally Posted by Infinite Zenith

I'm specifically referring to their take on things like K-On!, which have been very lacking; I'm accepting with criticisms towards shows I enjoy, but one thing that gets my goat is when people assume a veneer of academic sophistication and then use their 'intellectualism' to tear down a show via purple prose. It's fine not to like something, but it's not okay to pretend to be a teacher or scholar and then intimidate others into accepting one's viewpoints.

I am absolutely with you here. Behind The Nihon Review is actually a blog that doesn't really deserve to be praised as a good anime blog. Looking through their posts, Sorrow-kun and their other authors never really stood by the quality of their articles as far as consistency and fairness go. Most of their posts were characterized by an incessant insistence for pedantic language and specific terminology: Sorrow-kun's gang frequently used "big words" to give the impression they were more authoritative that they actually were. Of note was the blog's single-minded, irrational hatred for K-On! and their attempts to justify this by saying that anime could be "objectively" scored for quality, arguing that an anime is necessarily good if it can satisfy some form of "critical analysis". After Sorrow-kun published the long-winded rant about why K-On! was poor, one could not go more than a few posts without encountering some snide remark about whatever perceived slights there were in K-On!.

While I get that blogs are intended to be about an individual's (or group's) take on things, it became very wearisome to read a blog whose writers seem compelled to point out every minor shortcoming in K-On! and then hold other anime as being "objectively" superior: my grievance with Behind the Nihon Review was this demand on objectivity where anime, as a form of entertainment, is largely subjective. Given what I've seen of their presence, they appear to have convinced some number of people that what they had to say mattered, and it is very unfortunate that they were allowed to go unchallenged for so long. The only consolation is that they are no longer active.

The other blog in this list that I strongly disagree with inclusion as a good blog is Chizumatic. That particular author had nothing meaningful to say about the shows they watched, but were still somehow regarded as being "brilliant, insightful, inspiring and always right". When Chizumatic stopped blogging, other bloggers claimed that "animeblogging has become poorer for [them stopping]". Characterized by their uncommonly short articles which never had any meaningful content about the shows being discussed, I always felt that Chizumatic always counted on their previous reputation as a politics blogger to carry their argument. These short posts imply "I have authority, so I don't need to make any effort in justifying what I say, since I'm always right anyways". Chizumatic's weak posts, especially those on Strike Witches, Girls und Panzer and Hai-Furi do not deserve to be considered useful: just because they recognized some obscure piece of technology or tactic doesn't mean that another viewer cannot do the same. Similar to Behind the Nihon Review, it is some consolation that they've stopped posting, as well.

[Infinite Zenith]

Behind the Nihon Review isn't just dead, it's beyond dead now. I think it can be safely struck from the list outright: their domain expired, and the entire place is inaccessible now. This is, of course, no loss.

[Fireminer]

Made a bunch of changes to the list. The number of dead blogs is still growing. Thanks god that a lot of them are on Wordpress, which usually doesn't delete old blog or made weird changes. There was this old Blogspot site of one of my friends back in the days that was abandonned, and when I checked it, Google or some kind of automated machine in the name of Google had post a bunch of indecipherable posts. My friends of course did not post any of them.

[Fireminer]

I really wanted to add THAT Anime Blog, but they have completely shut down and their domain taken by a Japanese website. So you probably will have to use the Wayback Machine to find their old posts from these two addresses: https://thatanimeblog.com/ and http://that.animeblogger.net/