How useful are anime "ratings"?

[DanielSong39]

One thing I have noticed while watching anime is that there isn't a terribly high correlation between the "ratings" given to a particular show (by review sites, blogs, and communities such as this one) and the enjoyment I receive from the show. For example, Crescent Love and Kagihime were two of the shows that were almost universally declared to be horrible - yet I was still able to enjoy those shows. Meanwhile, there were some highly rated shows that I could never get into - such as KGNE, Rurouni Kenshin - Reminiscence, Suzumiya Haruhi, etc.

I think it just goes to show that I should explore and find anime that I can enjoy, instead of having to be told what to watch. There's a reason why there are so many shows out there - no matter how "bad" a show seems to be, it's going to find an audience. And if I enjoyed the show - does it really matter if it landed in the Bottom 10?

[TronDD]

I never go by what others say about a show. Everyone has their own opinions. There is no way someone else can tell me if I'd enjoy a show or not. I will take into account some descriptions about the show, though. For example: "Best ninja fighting anime since Naruto" would be a fair indication that I will not like the show.

The problem is finding the time to watch the first couple episodes of every show that comes out.

[Aoie_Emesai]

Rating is a general rating of the anime, nothing more. I usually find that if it has a good rating, I should at least test it out to see whether it would be good for me. If it has a low rating, then it means that i should even try it out even more.

[Deathkillz]

Originally Posted by Aoie_Emesai

If it has a low rating, then it means that i should even try it out even more.

yep basically what i like to do i like to see what aspect of a series makes them fail so hard...

hmm well i guess rating also correspond to the number of people rating the series...i mean in if not enough range of people rate a series it would most likely end up bias...ie in a poll of 100 people 70 were hardcore SHnY fans and voted 10/10 for the series then the other 30 would be more spread out and thus be less significance compared to the hardcore fanbase...ive also found some series that where rated horrible but i still enjoyed it..."what is one's trash is anothers gold" as the saying goes (or something similar)

[White Manju Bun]

I dont go by what an anime rating is considering KgNE has a huge rating on animenfo and I personally hate that anime. But if people recommend me an anime I know what they like and what they dont like, Ill watch it so I take personal opinion over ratings.

[psycho bolt]

On Animenfo the rating is based on popularity value. It just shows how popular the shows are. But it doesn't tell if the show is good or not. For example, Monster had a lower rating than other shows, but its review average is high. So, I usually don't look at ratings a lot. Remember there some awesome shows that never land in the top 100 because not a lot of people that know or heard about them. However, ussually its the high rating shows that are good. I know some anime were once at bottom rating and then somehow reached the top.

[Greenish Growth]

I don't find ratings very helpful unless if I (in the very least) take into account how popular the anime is "within its own genre".

And as has already been mentioned, it's better if you seek out people that have similar tastes to yours and find out what they like. You're more likely to discover anime you like that way.

[Shinji103]

I personally find anime ratings to be not-too-reliable. People underrate and overrate anime according to their own tastes. What may work for one person may not work for another. The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi is a perfect example of this. There are people who will tell you this show is awesome, some who will say it sucks, and others who say it's worth a watch.

[Mueti]

I never looked any rating up before checking out a show.

Basically ratings are useless, they can provide a rough estimate at best; and mostly not even that.
Not only concerning anime but ratings of all kinds and everywhere that is.

[Vexx]

Frankly the ratings are skewed (horribly so in many of the "bigger" fan rating sites like animenfo and others). If the majority of the population rating shows are Naruto/Bleach/Gundam fans, you can guarantee that character relationship drama shows are going to take a hit .. and vice versa in the opposite situation.

Even if they like that subgenre of show, there are multiple reasons it might work for one and not another (example: Kaoru_Chujo and I have overlapping tastes in shows... yet with the two shows Crescent Love and Tokimeki --
he dropped Tokimeki and loved Crescent Love; I dropped Crescent and am fond of Tokimeki). Basically the type of humor in each show and how it played with the drama/romance was what drove the difference.

I've found it most useful to find people who have liked many of the same shows I liked... and then we all explore and recommend things to each other. Myself, I get pretty high hitrates from listening to Kaoru, Furudanuki, Xris, NoSannin, Catgirls, and a small band of others. Other folks ... their mileage may vary.

[anselfir]

There is no objective value of a show aside from the individual's own judgments. The values you see are just the result of some formula derived from various inputs by other people. For review sites that require a substantial review, the scores are not "objective" but rather reflect the sentiments of those who are able to write a lot. For fanboy votes, if the show is of a specific genre(naruto for example), then the 10/10 all votes will be discounted, but for something that is without a genre per se, like reminiscence or elfen lied, the fanboy vote could reflect an emotional attachment that is more widely accessible for people not obsessed with particular genres.

[Papaya]

^What he said.

And I'd venture a guess that as a result, almost all votes will probably be either 0's or 10's.

[Pellissier]

Anime ratings are not "useful" in the way we probably would strictly mean: provide us something of undoubt liking to watch.

As it was mentioned, high ratings for anime, show basically their popularity. Which isn't bad, per se. But it's at an "universal basis" that you have to acknowledge that ratings. Various genres don't meet various tastes, and it's likely that I won't appreciate a show with a stellar rating, if the genre doesn't match my preferences.

On a further analysis, there's a distinguished difference from a series' overall rating and its enjoyability. Ratings are often based on categorizations systems (such as animation-sound-story-characters-value) and any of these elements has something to do with the enjoyment itself. When I first started watching fansubs (like 3 years ago) I kind of liked that type of system. But, as the number of anime I've watched has gradually yet terribly increased by that time, my opinion has drastically changed. Now I feel really uneasy on valutations based on pre-outlined papers.

I used to keep a tab with all the anime I've watched including their ratings, but merging all the old ratings I used (that of animation+sound+char ecc.ecc.) with the new one I'm testing - more focused "on the whole" rather than "on the parts" - brought me to note a lot of incongruences (read: shows I liked better ending up with lower ratings).
So yeah, that of "on the parts" rating is a totally untrustworthy and misleading method, as far as I'm concerned.

A nice solution, on the end, if you want to keep tracks of others' opinions, is to do as mentioned above, be sure to have good, trustworthy friends whose tastes on most of cases match yours, and you'll difficultly be wrong. I consider myself lucky to have this chance, and as a consequence I'm rarely (if not never) disappointed from what I pick up for watching.

Lastly, when I'm watching a show that I feel being underpopular, I try to "help" that series by producing/using animated avatars/signatures. I did so for series such "Shinigami no Ballad" , "REC", "Bokura ga Ita" and will still do in the future (as I myself see no point in using Kanon 2k6 or SHnY graphics works (well.. unless small exceptions ^^), series which already stand on their own.)
I prefer to "help" the less famous ones. Some people seeing the graphics, may be hinted that the show could be of their liking, asks me and I gladly point them out. If I am able to induce even just 1 single person to watch a certain series, hearing later him/her telling me it was actually good, then I feel like a great accomplishment has been done for that anime itself. ^_^

[Lambda]

Of course they can be useful, they're pieces of information after all, telling you how good something was at entertaining a given group of people. They just need intelligent interpretation based on your knowledge of the tastes of the people doing the rating, and your own personal tastes, and in concert with all the other information you have about a title, that's all.

[General_Norris]

Originally Posted by Lambda

Of course they can be useful, they're pieces of information after all, telling you how good something was at entertaining a given group of people. They just need intelligent interpretation based on your knowledge of the tastes of the people doing the rating, and your own personal tastes, and in concert with all the other information you have about a title, that's all.

My thoughts exactly.

[4Tran]

The usefulness of ratings varies greatly. In general, ratings based on the opinions of lots of people amount little more than an opinion poll; it just represents the popularity of a show among the people who go to a particular website. This may or may not be reflective of one's own sentiments as well. Another issue is that a lot of people automatically contend that a show that they like is a good show and that one they dislike is a bad show.

In my experience, individual reviewers are better at pointing out the merits and flaws of any particular show. Even here, I find that their actual reviews, what they say about a show, are far more useful than any numeric rating they give.

Originally Posted by DanielSong39

I think it just goes to show that I should explore and find anime that I can enjoy, instead of having to be told what to watch. There's a reason why there are so many shows out there - no matter how "bad" a show seems to be, it's going to find an audience. And if I enjoyed the show - does it really matter if it landed in the Bottom 10?

This is an excellent point. Even the best show may not be one that you may like, and even the worst show (usually) has some redeeming characteristic. It's usually better if you just judged shows for yourself.

[Js2756]

I can't believe that amount of negative flack that reviews are getting in this thread. I mean, from what I gather from the original poster, he is basically bragging that his tastes are his own.

I probably came off a little mean in that first paragraph and that's not my intent. But, let's be realistic here, nobody really needs to get on a soapbox and say, "I'm different because I don't like what's popular."

Realistically speaking, there are two types of ratings:
1) Individual ratings - usually reserved to blogs, news sites that have reviews, etc.
2) Aggregated ratings - sites like animenfo, or anidb that take a bunch of reviews and calculate an overall score based on a bunch of ratings/reviews

Both have uses and I doubt you'll find an individual whose tastes line up exactly with either 1 or 2. Everyone has something different that they enjoy and stuff they don't like. It's naive to think that you'll like something just because a lot of people like it. It is also naive to think that your tastes line up exactly with that of the person who wrote the review that you are reading.

Both systems have their shortcomings as well. System 1 is limited to the taste of that one reviewer, and so you have to take into account that person's preferences. System 2 generally only has contributors who are either the hardcore fans or the hardcore haters (with the former usually outnumbering the latter), so the scores tend to skew. Both systems have the flaw that anyone who contributes to it automatically adds their own bias. But the fact is, people have to expect reviews to be biased, since in the end, it is just an opinion about something. In this case, whether or not the reviewer(s) liked the show or not.

Personally, I've used both types of reviews to help determine whether or not to watch a show. However, I rarely let it influence whether or not I actually enjoy the show. I wonder how people actually hear about shows to watch if they aren't using reviews, whether it be word of mouth (which is a kind of review in itself), promos (which tend to be skewed by the production company to entice you to watch), or some other channel.

Disclaimer: I have a blog with reviews in it, so personal bias may be contained in the above post.

[xfool]

Originally Posted by Shinji103

I personally find anime ratings to be not-too-reliable. People underrate and overrate anime according to their own tastes. What may work for one person may not work for another. The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi is a perfect example of this. There are people who will tell you this show is awesome, some who will say it sucks, and others who say it's worth a watch.

yeah I can't figure why Suzumiya Haruhi gets such high ratings,maybe I miss something

Btw wats KGNE?

[Crystal_Method]

You don't just look at the ratings to get inspired to watch a show. (at least not for me.) I mean yea, a lot of the anime I watched were based on ratings and suggestions. But there are other things to take into consideration. Not only do you look at the rating, but you also have to look at the genre. Probably 75% of the people who rate a certain show depends on the type of genre they are into whether it is science fiction, fantasy, psychological, or even ecchi. The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi happens to be of the science fiction/super natural genre, and maybe you are just not into that type of anime. The luckiest anime watchers though are the ones who enjoy basically any anime.

The best way to to find a show though is to actually not to be lazy and just look at the ratings of a show, and actually read the description given by ann or anidb (or both for insurance.).

[kauldron26]

i became an anime fan summer of 2005, and animenfo's reviews were truly amazing because not only are there shit load of reviews, u get to compare those who hated the show, loved the show, and inbetween. I think that website really gives u an idea if u will like the anime or not instead of just seeing numbers like 10/10, 8/10 etc. If not for animenfo, i wouldnt have discovered so many great anime

I hate when people give anime like a 2 or 3 out of 10. that makes no sense because then ur hatred for the anime just clouds ur objective judgement. As much as i hate Hurhi, i wont vot a 1 or 2, i'd give it a 7 because objectively that is what it deserves. Also u have to remember that everyone's scale is different. As a med student, a 10=A, 9=A-, 8=B, 7=C (average). some people think 5 is average but in my school a 70 is average.