ANN is not an anime blog but I can sympathise. A little
I didn’t want to write this post; I don’t like meta-blogging at the best of times. I prefer to write about interesting things rather than writing about writing about interesting things but even so, I can’t not clarify a point that I was faced with this morning, which is somewhat related to the recent discussions on Twitter and Google Reader about ANN’s current standards of reviewing.
Source: xkcd.xom, a site I love
It started with this unfortunate incident that’s an example of (on this blog at least) a mercifully rare side-effect of the user-comment feature: the Annoying Unconstructive Comment. The anime blogging community is a pretty closed one but every now and then, alongside the usual discussion with your blog’s regulars, you get a comment from a stranger who in all probability is ‘just passing through’. I try to reply to these but when it’s a one-line or incomprehensible comment I don’t normally bother – they’ll probably never read my reply anyway. This time I took the bait and was, well, a bit abrupt; in retrospect I was in the wrong but that’s beside the point. Nor am I taking back what I said. Here’s why.
It depends on your own writing style but I’m not one of those gifted few who can kick out a long, complex article in one sitting on a regular basis*: agonising over screencaps (now made slightly less tedious thanks to this plugin), turns of phrase and even punctuation frequently lead to a cycle of Post Draft Hell. It takes me a long time and a lot of effort to get one blog post online, which is why I don’t post with as much frequency and as a result every one is a big deal. If I waited until I was certain it was perfect in every aspect I’d never publish anything.
Blogging is fun but I still have a constant fear that I might make flawed arguments, unseen typos and other errors that go unnoticed until it’s too late. I go to a lot of trouble to weed these out but the thick skin that comes with writing publicly-viewable articles is something I’m still in the process of acquiring; there’s always that nagging feeling that after clicking the Publish button everything I say is going to be ripped to shreds or ignored entirely (or, worse, have the important points ignored while the trivial ones get all the attention). It appears some people actually enjoy nitpicking but after going to all the extra hassle to remove mistakes and give those people less cause for complaint it makes it all the more irritating when it happens anyway.
I’m, like, sooo tsundere for the Internet
We’re only human after all, so with the best will in the world (accompanied by Wikipedia and the MS Word spellchecker prior to C/Ping) there’s no cast-iron guarantee that what you write is 100% correct and meets the approval of everyone. Nobody likes being wrong; constructive criticism is good but there’s a difference between ‘constructive criticism’ and ‘splitting hairs’. Genuine trolls usually go by the username Anonymous so I’m giving this random passer-by the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s a misguided attempt at being helpful. So…
Writing intelligent blog posts is a time-consuming and labour-intensive process and inevitably, despite my best efforts, errors will occur. I have a contact form for private correspondance but a petty, single-line comment that ignores the main point to concentrate on trivialities will achieve nothing more than pissing me off.
This is why I won’t take back my annoyed reply; an explanation as to why I was annoyed in the first place is much more meaningful, right?
I don’t like to fall back on the excuse that this site is maintained in my own spare time and at my own expense in justifying this sort of thing; “this is my blog so I can say what I like,” is fair enough up to a point but it’s the start of a slippery slope. As much as posts that are inaccurate, offensive or just plain dumb can discredit me as an individual, there’s a limit to how much damage can be done. Multi-author blogs on the other hand are risky business because individual contributors’ writing, and quality thereof, reflects on the venture as a whole.
Which leads me onto the issues some of us are having with ANN’s current roster of reviewers. The article on Shigurui interested me in particular because it’s a title I know of by reputation but have yet to watch: I read ANN’s review with interest but was disappointed with the quality of writing, to put it mildly.
You know a reviewer has failed when the discussion that follows is more insightful and helpful than the article they’re discussing. As in, the commenters got a better gist of the subject matter than the reviewer did. In the case of bloggers who start being jaded and cynical towards the stuff they’re covering, it’s a sign of burn-out; Hiatus Disease follows and they take a much-needed break, end of story. In the case of a high-profile, multi-author venture such as ANN, the stakes are higher: the writers are presumably working to deadlines and have an incentive (financial or otherwise) to keep going. Remember Zac’s relief when he relinquished the reins of Hey, Answerman! to let a new writer step into his shoes? Zac’s a good writer I’m sure, but that was burn-out on an epic scale.
I think I know what to suggest to ANN, although implementing it is difficult, I’ll admit. The task of reviewing for their site, catering for casual visitors and dedicated fans alike, requires a clear, objective mindset. Getting the balance between giving fanboys/fangirls and haters certain titles to review is tricky when, say, moe shows aren’t popular amongst the current roster so the ‘right’ person for a given title may not be available. Apparently they have a shortage of good reviewers…but then, I saw some very articulate and entertaining writing in the comments forum thread that followed…
There’s also the problem of a Serious Misunderstanding again: a favourite site of mine once received a lot of flak for publishing a review on Grave of the Fireflies, for example. The admin decided to keep the review, which basically panned the movie, online; not because they agreed with the reviewer’s opinions but because the said opinions are representative of a portion of the potential audience, however minor that portion may be. I don’t agree with that review either, but I know the site well and don’t think any less of it for that; casual just-passing-through visitors on the other hand might not know this and as a result could make a Serious Misunderstanding…which may be the problem I recently experienced.
Perhaps ANN need to do a serious recruitment programme in order to top up their staff with some fresh, intelligent and articulate editorial talent to breathe life into a site that’s becoming increasingly distanced from the fanbase. They need to ask themselves a lot of questions: Are we honest and impartial? Are we in touch with the people we are writing for? Who are we writing for in the first place?
There’s a big jump between writing for your own satisfaction and getting some aggro from one or two visitors, and writing for a world-famous online site with the potential for getting A LOT of aggro from many visitors; but some rules still hold true in either case. Good writing still matters but honest mistakes still happen. Honest misunderstandings still happen too. What’s important is to do the best you can, which ought to mean an apology shouldn’t be necessary.
*This post was written with as much honesty, clarity and accuracy as I could scrape together, as always. It was also written in one sitting with no use of a spell-checker, so if that gives you cause for complaint it just proves my secondary point. It should also go without saying that I won’t change anything I’ve written, and won’t apologise for anything either.
Was there actually a follow-up about the comment in your Tsukihime post? I too don’t think you should have to apologize for your mistakes, but did anyone ask you to apologize for them? I hope you can just ignore those weird passerbys and concentrate your writing on what is actually important: The contents.
And hey, the first comment I ever got from Author was something along the lines of “Your blog’s font is too small.” (Read: “I don’t know how to type Ctrl++.”)
@Sasa: thankfully, it seems to have been resolved amicably (see GARbej’s comment below). The fact that Author told you via a blog comment is doubly amusing to me!
As far as ANN is concerned, I think they’re in serious need of changing their writing mindset. Every time I read a review from certain writers on their staff, I just can’t help but think that they’re really digging at the dregs when they belittle a series. While one can pan the show without making implications about the people who might enjoy it, ANN’s reviews seem to do so far too much for it to be professional.
They probably think they’re being witty but sometimes it’s just a cover for lazy writing!
Reviewing anything on the Internet is not just “serious business”, but a tricky one too – No matter your opinion or how well you form and construct it, someone out there will always be your polar opposite and disagree on every single point. In way it’s what makes this modern, connected world such a wonderful thing, but when those dissenters can’t express their views fluidly (or more to the point politely) it can be hard to swallow.
As someone who reviews “stuff” in various disciplines, I’ve gotta say that writing about anime well is hard – When I review computer hardware I can always fall back on theory and hard numbers, but when you’re writing about something entirely subjective sometimes you just have to agree to differ, and concluding such a review on some kind of scoring chart is the stuff of nightmares that leaves me waking up in a cold sweat shouting “I should have given it a 6!”.
As for ANN specifically, I’ve never paid much heed to their reviews as I’ve never enjoyed reading them for some reason, not out of disagreeing with their stance on a series so much as the fact that they never have any passion or verve to make them particularly readable from what I’ve seen. You’re absolutely right about the danger of burn-out at non-blog sites and you make a very good point about it, and it’s something I worry about myself – It happens to me short-term every now and then, but thankfully a short break is usually enough for my voracious appetite (or insanity, depending how you look at it) to return.
It shocks me just how burned out or straight-up cynical some major sites are – I listened to an anime podcast a few months back where everything from Death Note to Naruto got the eye-rolling treatment before discussion soon returned to how great Bubblegum Crisis was. If you’re that dismissive of all modern anime, then why on Earth would you still be watching and writing about it? If I ever get to that point of hating everything yet continuing to write about it, anyone reading this has my full permission to shoot me.
The golden rule for me has always been to try and understand your own biases and limitations when it comes to discussing any series (and we all have them with virtually everything we watch), and weave that somehow into the fabric of the discussion where possible for the sake of balance – It’s something that I’d say you’ve always done very well to be honest, and compared to a lot of ‘Blogs I’ve read yours is easily amongst the most objective and clearly well thought-out in its discussion.
Yeah, writing about TV shows and music is difficult but there’s the factor of older fans here – they need a balance between old-style fans who can remember the classics and newer fans who are familiar with the up-to-date stuff. UK-A has a nice balance like that, I might add. (:
I’ve never really enjoyed reading ANN’s reviews and have never relied on them for recommendations. After all, I rarely find a review when the anime is truly recommended over there. Furthermore, it comes with the caveat of “you may like this if your taste is far inferior to mine,” implied somewhere in there.
In any case, it’s hard to read anything that feels the author did not have any fun doing. Those guys may not be having any fun at all.
When it’s fun, you should stop ASAP, as a general rule. That’s why I think they are doing it for a living, which is a shame. Being paid to write would be awesome for me, but what if I get jaded like they do? Hmm…
ANN’s reviews are technically good but quantitatively no better than what you can find in mainstream American press on culturally off-the-charts Japanese animation. My problem with their reviews isn’t so much that they’re wrong, but they are philosophically misguided and simply not enjoyable to read if you are coming to it from someone who has seen the show rather than someone who hasn’t. Well, if you enjoy a good trolling, it would be pretty okay too.
The question is, the technical quality in their analysis only really engage serious fans who are familiar with genre tropes, styles of anime directors who have made good hits and bottom-barrel dregs, etc. Someone who just want an impression is not going to appreciate much of that. The rest of the review, however, does nobody justice, even ANN themselves. Serious fans just get incensed, or worse, discredit ANN for their jaded approach.
It’s sort of like the wrong framework for the wrong medium, IMO. Or worse, someone who is interested in consuming anime meets a reviewer who is just tired of having to watch some show he/she doesn’t enjoy trying to write about it. It’s sort of paradoxical.
I do appreciate this blog post for the detail tsun-tsun dere-dere description of a blogger’s relationship with his blog. Amusing :)
Misguided is the word I think. Writing a post like this for me is helpful because it gives a ‘reality check’ every now and then, just to make sure I’m keeping to my own standards. That ‘drift’ from the original intentions is probably what’s ailing ANN right now.
ANN has, I think, what I can only call “high-class hackery”, considering that their writers get paid for churning out that utter garbage they call a review–and sometimes not at all.
But this implies that there’s actually some sort of active viewing/reading on their part, which recent ‘reviews’ have led me to believe otherwise. At this point I’ve the impression that all they do now is pick out archetypes and tropes to slam before adding in a little bit of negativity and hitting Publish, or whatever it is they use over there.
Ouch @the Colony Drop article. I’m not their biggest fan either but I think they had just cause for a bit of vitriol there!
My comment was in no way done in ill-humor. It was more of a knee-jerk reaction on my part, and I should of used my brain more before posting something like that. I know that it takes a lot of time and effort to create an well thought-out, intelligent post and it is understandable that you would be pissed at a response like that after all the work put you into it.
I’m sorry for the aggravation I have caused. It’s because your blog posts are so well thought-out and insightful that I read them regularly. Next time I post a comment I’ll be sure to write something of substance, not just the first stupid thing that come to mind.
TBH my reply was a knee-jerk one written in a hurry too, so no hard feelings I hope. The fact that you’ve come back to reply is appreciated…besides, there seems to be some healthy discussion coming out of that and the ANN issue here, so it’s all good. ^_^
I didn’t get the impression that Garbej was trolling from that comment. I remember omo pointing out one of my mistake in one liner and I’m sure he did that without any trollig intent. I do often get one/two line comments every now and then, but I guess that’s better than no comments at all.
I don’t read ANN reviews but that Shigurui review sure sucked :/
actually yeah, no comments at all is worse…it implies nobody read any of it at all. I dunno whether I’ll watch Shigurui but the review was bad, even to my eyes.
What you need is to just chill out and not think so much over the comments you recieve. Sure, it’s great when you get comments that are on the topic and promote discussion. However, if you’ve been blogging, you’ll know that the interwebs aren’t all ponies and butterflies. Just take things in your stride and you won’t feel the pinch when you get a comment that isn’t all that desirable
yeah, I must admit I’ve had much worse in the past, and ignored them!
I imagine people will disagree with me, but I think when someone insults you on the Net, it’s never a real insult, because they don’t really know you as a person. Conversely, when you are praised on the Net, it can never be real praise, for the same reason. so, as double says, take things in stride :)
I do take online opinions with a pinch of salt but it’s still hard to completely dismiss everything you say or read online because we’re still people, even when we’re discussing things indirectly. It’s an interesting philosophical question though…
Hi, just a stranger just passing through. I’m not gonna rag on ANN because everyone else has already done that, so I’m going to adventurously take the opposite position, or at least make an effort at a defensible argument.
The title of this post is where it starts: ANN is not a blog. The content of blogs are solely up to the likes and whimsy of that particular blogger, talking about whatever thought or topic strikes their fancy at that moment, posting as frequently or infrequently as one likes. By contrast, ANN is a professional production, with deadlines, contracts, featured content, and daily news reports. Luckily enough for us, anime isn’t yet large enough an industry for us to hear about the pressures from marketing and competition, handling of PR calls, and the constant politicking that other industry critics have to face, unlike those long bemoaned video game reviewers or film critics. Other than Hanners, how many bloggers can say they’ve written professional reviews of products?
Look at Carlo Santos, I think one of the better writers on ANN’s staff. His regular column, Right Turn Only, covers over half a dozen various manga titles every week, from nearly every genre, publisher, and degrees of quality. The volumes he reviews aren’t determined by his personal likes or dislikes, but are based on recent available releases. This very post talked about how hard it is to write about something you want to talk about, so I can’t even imagine how difficult it is having to review all that shoujo manga every week! Bloggers can simply drop shows they don’t like and take a break when they’re tired, yet Carlo writes every week, illuminating the pros and cons in equal consideration of every volume that comes his way, even ones he doesn’t like.
OK, so your opinions diverge. It’s fair to say so, and why, and then get on with your life. That’s what the forums are for. It’s not fair to continue to disparage them just for holding tastes and values different from yours. So maybe their writing is not up to snuff. There are lots of people, doctors, teachers, judges, senators, who don’t do a good job, who aren’t qualified for their relative position of power and prestige. The world ain’t perfect, but what a random internet critic (or group of) says hardly justifies making a big hullabaloo about.
There’s certainly a different – and greater – set of pressures acting on the likes of ANN – remember how much stick AnimeOnDVD got for merging into Mania (and disappearing in the process)? The forum threads are essential too, I think, especially for something as controversial as Shigurui. Casey Brienza is an example of their other problem: a collective effort’s image isn’t necessarily the sum of its writers, nor is it the result of their best. One or two sub-par contributors are bringing the reputation of the whole staff down; it’s unfair on the likes of Carlos Santos, but sadly that’s how these things go.
The occasional meta article isn’t a bad thing, since it encourages writers to think about their own writing. It’s particularly interesting when people talk about ANN and reviewing, since, running my own review site, I have a vested interest in what people think about their reviews (partly so that we don’t fall into the traps that some of their writers have).
I think Hanners has kinda nailed the fact that anime reviewing is a challenge because it’s a constant balancing act. One needs to be honest, but also reasonable, respectful to their readers, but also informed and intelligent, articulate, but also accessible, etc, etc. I think the biggest challenge is to write reviews that are valuable. The highest complement that one can give to a review site, I think, is that it’s above the white noise. I like to think we’re almost there, and if we’re not, then it’s something that I really think we should strive for. For the writer in Owen S’s link to refer to ANN as “white noise” really should trigger alarm bells that they need to be better, especially since they’re a professional site.
The article that Owen S linked to is completely right, Brienza is a walking disaster zone and she has a history of missing the point. The biggest flaw of the review of Shigurui is also that it essentially missed the point, IMO. A few of the other writers also have noticeable burn-out, and I think we can conclude that excessive burn-out serves no one, neither the readers or the reviewers themselves. But I think a little bit of burn-out serves reviewers, because it puts them in a critical frame of mind. The next challenge is to justify one’s criticism, and make it reasonable and understandable to one’s readers, so they find the review informative and valuable.
I’m always thinking intensely about what makes a valuable review, but I haven’t (recently) written about it. It’s almost always a worthwhile activity, so I might write something up in the near future.
As I said in an earlier comment, I don’t mind the occasional bit of blogsturbation when it proves to be helpful but I have this irrational fear of getting hooked on it…Reviewing is indeed difficult – I don’t think I’ve nailed it either, and I’ve been reviewing anime on and off for several years now. Too many reviews go on lengthy synopses (which is pointless, because you’re regurgitating the blurb on the back cover of the DVD box or book); at the same time you have to be objective without being dry and devoid of feeling. That said, it IS possible so maybe a recruitment drive through the ANN forum would be a possible solution?
Ah, to fully examine this I would have to watch the anime in question to get my own feelings about it, but then, they would only be my feelings.
As a anime viewer and sometimes poster on other blogs I see very little difference between ANN’s work and that of the better bloggers out there. This is not to denigrate ANN. I’ve found the aforementioned “Right Turn Only” a very useful tool in my job of choosing manga for my library, and I’m always glad when a new one comes out. But even there, it’s one of many places I go. Most of the others are run by unpaid bloggers like yourself. I could make a connection between blogging vs. “The death of newspapers,” and ANN vs. bloggers, but that would be unfair. The latter is a smaller pool. But I wonder if, like me, most readers don’t consider ANN an authoritative source for reviews anymore, or at least not the authoritative source it once was. The border has turned grey.
That doesn’t answer the question of ANN’s drop in quality, but it suggests where we might all be headed.
I know it’s kinda unrelated but I’ve often wondered about the ‘death of newspapers’. As someone who checks out the headlines on RSS feeds and reads newspapers out of boredom when on my coffee breaks at work, I’m seeing the ‘papers trying to maintain readerships through comment and analysis (i.e. editorial content), and admitting defeat over the Internet’s superior capabilities of delivering the ‘news’ itself. I don’t think they’ll die out, but will take a more reactionary approach to their content.
Which makes me wonder…if ANN is the Anime NEWS Network, shouldn’t they focus more closely on news articles and editorials rather than individual reviews of the latest releases? As a reviewer who’s been forced to take a break recently, I have to say the grind of sequential reviewing can get monotonous!
1. gaguri. is. AWESOME. Srsly.
2. I think Peter and Sorrow-kun addressed the problem well. I think the Pokemon, Youtube generation isn’t going to care so much about “professionalism” or “authority” as long as the end work product is of that quality. May it be from a personal blog, a pro blog, or a site like ANN. That said, ANN’s reviews are not a monolithic thing so there are good columnists and reviews and bad ones. It’s easy to point and laugh at the bad ones but there are considerable countervailing factors…that may or may not matter to the readers in the end. And to a site like ANN isn’t its readership what matters the most?
3. Just speaking from my limited understanding of small web press ops, correcting your writers so they’re the lesser trolls that they would otherwise be might be one of the hardest thing to do. It involves ethics and all that nonsense. Sadly it is also a matter of managing your HR in general, having good metrics for feedback, etc, and having a plan to handle this. It might very well be beyond the capabilities of a relatively small operation like ANN.
1. Yes.
2. Hmm…are ANN dumbing down or is it the readers? Good question. For all I know, the dip in quality may be perfectly acceptable for the intended readership, and that readership doesn’t include those of us who are critical of their recent efforts.
3. There was a case fairly recently actually where I contacted the admin of a multi-author blog about a certain contributor, and the incident was dealt with…the admin guy was really pleasant about it but it still felt like a bit awkward issue for me to raise. It worked out okay in the end, but the ramifications could have been less pleasant if the site in question were as high-profile as ANN is.
“But even there, it’s one of many places I go. ”
This is it for me, personally. It is interesting to see how often an ANN review seems at odds with a review coming from other sources, but it also depends on the perspective of the reviewer. Too often, I do get that feeling that the reviewer would rather be reviewing something else instead of what they produce, and I think that can hurt how the final product comes out. And also shown, it does affect the opinions that people can have for the reviewer as well. That said, I wish we could somehow see where the ANN reviewers are coming from more often than not.
Ever read a book called Creme De La Phlegm: Unforgettable Australian Reviews? If you’re not an Australian who’s interested in arts criticism, you probably have never heard of this book. Essentially it’s a collection of the most scornful bile in the history of “professional” Australian arts criticism, where the critic’s job was supposed to evaluate and develop a discourse of the meaning of an artwork or literary work for example, but failed miserably because the critic somehow found it more fun to rip and tear into the artwork instead of develop on what it says and why it is relevant to society.
Print journalism, in the professional field, has become mainly divorced from the “effort” and “care” that used to go into an article because of the demands of modern media practices (so my editor tells me, sometimes people don’t read the whole newspaper, and so sometimes the journalists see it as hopping from one article paycheck to another).
Blogs are different because they can be more personal, but they risk being more uninformed.
I think one of the issues with ANN is that while it is marketed as a news site (as opposed to a blog), many of its journalists are so enamoured with their own egos that rather than execute reviews which try to remain contextual or retain a semblance of objectivity, they are more concerned with having their own “personality” come through. This basically makes for cringe-worthy reading in most cases. Anyway, I only really use ANN occasionally for their straight news/announcements.
The issue of criticism is one which applies to any blog with a readership. Like you, even after so many years blogging, I have yet to develop a thick enough skin (how does one go about doing that anyway?). Where a criticism is constructive and relevant, I tend to make the corrections dutifully, but uninformed or unduly caustic criticisms tend to suffer swift executive action ;P
This is subjective, but I agree reviews are hard, or at least they are hard to do properly. Maybe I’m an artsy-farty academic, but unless I am browsing for an overview of a new anime/manga, I will not read “reviews” which simply consist of a synopsis of the plot coupled with screenshots. With reviews, I look for something deeper, more involved, and more thought provoking. I recognise that they take hours to craft “properly”, and that’s partly the reason why I don’t tend to do them a lot. :P
Haruhi is not tsundere. lol