Now returning the larger question of what makes a review valuable, I think that it ultimately boils down to the entertainment value. Essentially, can a piece of writing hold a person’s attention whether it be by wit, humor, strong reasoning or being such a massive prick that it’s amusing. And you can’t just amuse a person once or twice; you need to do it consistently, and over time as people become used to satisfying their periodic fix of review reading, they will keep coming back even if you fall into prolonged periods of mediocrity. Also, once you’ve got a person’s attention, there is also a social networking component where we reach out to our readers (often fellow bloggers) and create a reliable viewership based on a sense of kinship.

Reading blogs is a form of entertainment in itself, but its utility is highly variable.

Yeah, but there must be some blogs in your feedlist that you keep coming back to, and chances are that some of them dabble in review writing. There must be something they do that separates them from the rest. What do they do different from/better than everyone else? That’s the interesting question.

@AC
I think this comes back to the idea of the “guilty pleasure” (a topic for a different time). I think a good reviewer recognizes that “entertainment value” and “critical quality” aren’t always the same thing. When an anime is entertaining, it must be succeeding at something, and due credit must be afforded but that doesn’t mean it might not be flawed in some way. Nor does that mean it’s necessarily in good taste (although that’s almost as subjective a concept as “enjoyability”).

I think a good review is a mix between reaction, which is a subjective thing, and critical analysis, which some people refer to as “objectivity” (incorrectly, IMO). Reaction sets up and colours an opinion, while critical analysis adds weight and reason to it. This is yet another balance to deal with in review writing, but I’d say it’s better to err on the side of analysis. Add weight to a review since people are interested in the meat and bones of what you have to say. That’s kinda why I suggested that a good review quickly reaches past the superficial.

@Kaioshin Sama
Yeah, but Miao is a douchebag, that’s not news. He obviously writes fanboy reviews and openly admits it, but he just comes off as an obnoxious twit and I don’t take what he has to say much seriously. I think there’s an interesting contrast between him and someone like ghostlightning who also admits to writing fanboy driven articles, yet doesn’t come off as anywhere near as obnoxious. I’m not sure what ghostlightning’s secret is, and whether he’s struck some sort of balance in the articles he writes himself, but I’d guess it has something to do with his obvious enthusiasm for what he writes about.

like everything to our rationalizations on anime analysis to our goals as anime fans in general and that drive towards self-improvement.

Since I’ll safely assume you’re not watching either Ristorante Paradiso or Cross Game… everything except our tastes itself, it would still seem. :p

The second and usually less subjective criteria is that the review feel personalized and like it’s coming from the reviewers own thoughts and reactions and not just an echo of a popular opinion or a counter to it. If a review comes across as such to me then I see little point in taking it too seriously. Though normally I tend to go with the review that covers the most middle ground on the debate between thee excellence and crap of a given work because more often then not it’s going to be the most accurate one. Oh and even then I always look for a second or even third opinion that looks at something the other doesn’t have or looked upon differently because I see it as foolhardy not to have at least one other view to compare and contrast.

Now I’ll briefly talk about myself for just a quick moment. Lately I’ve been trying to get away from writing up on the anime that I watch in a way that comes across as an attempt to assign a numerical rating to it that is just going to be subjective anyway. I’ve come to prefer in-depth analysis as a way to give an impression on an anime by simply disecting a show as thoroughly as I can while trying to leave enough room for the reader to make what they will of it. Of course I now have my Straight Up Saturday’s which is just pure unfiltered opinion to make up for that.

By the way:

“reviewers probably aren’t interested in serenading fanboys, nor should they be, IMO”

“respect” doesn’t mean telling your readers what they want to hear, as I said earlier, reviewers shouldn’t serve fanboys, IMO”

It shouldn’t be, but unfortunately it has almost become so. Remember that Jason Miao guy I linked you too…..yeah…..god we think so much alike it’s actually starting to freak me out….like everything to our rationalizations on anime analysis to our goals as anime fans in general and that drive towards self-improvement.

I think the main aspect of reviews that separates them from others is that reviews are for readers to gain insight on the anime in topic in a mainly objective point-of-view, which is distinctively different from anime blogs which in my honest opinion, is something the writers just feel like saying, ranting inclusive. The opinions in reviews aren’t always in consensus with the opinions of the readers, and in fact it should remain that way. Just like how an anime can’t please everyone’s tastes, it’s the same for a review. Agreeing and disagreeing is what I think makes reviews more interesting to read because as a reviewer and a reader, I would appreciate if I can see what others have to say about my opinions and then I can look back at my opinions from a different angle.

So what do I think makes a good reviewer? Well, I think that a good reviewer is one that knows what message he/she wants to convey to the readers, and how he/she reasons this message persuasively and reasonably. Plus, while it is true that striking the “perfect balance” in writing a review everytime is frankly impossible, endeavoring to strike it as much as possible is an important characteristic for a good reviewer. I believe that I still have a long way to go as a reviewer, as I’m still learning how to analyse an anime in order to write a good review.

The balance you talk about, so tough. So tough that I find it hard to read a lot of reviews because when it’s lopsided it hurts to read them. Truthfully, I end up relying more on recommendations from live conversations to find shows to watch [->]. Reading blogs is a form of entertainment in itself, but its utility is highly variable.