If it Were Possible, I Guess We Had a “Good” Loss
The dust has settled on our campaign in the Aniblog Tourney and since then I’ve had a bit of time to reflect. Here’s where I’ll be honest: the loss stung. Of course it stung. Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t like losing. Now I’m not going to be as delusional as to suggest that we deserved to win. Of course not. We made a half-hearted attempt to do for a week and a bit what Random Curiosity has done with frightening consistency for over five years. They’ve built a reputation for unbending reliability and intimidating speed bit-by-bit for ages and they absolutely deserve their popularity, as well as favouritism in this tournament. We got a first hand lesson: if you want to win an Aniblog Tourney, you must be at least as good as Random Curiosity.
So, we’ll go away and lick our wounds, and try to figure out what we need to do to be a better site. Overall, the experience was a good one. We had a tough draw, but at least we can say we won as many as we lost. We also got a lot of constructive criticism. Comments about our content mentioned things like “professional“, “polished” and “balanced and analytical“. I take a lot of heart out of these comments, because I see them as an indication that, content-wise, we’re on the right track. Josh from Josh’s Anime Blog and Chikorita157 from Chikorita157′s Anime Blog also offered some meaty criticism of their own. Both mentioned our posting rate, which is by far our biggest flaw. We made a concerted effort to increase our posting rate in the face of our match-up with RC, and the result of that is that this is the eleventh blog post of the month. A couple of months ago, I would have considered four blog posts in a month to be a good effort.
The impact that the tourney has had on both the main site and this sideblog has been major as well. Traffic-wise, both have had their best month ever (and by not insignificant margins too), even with a couple of days left to go. More importantly, the subscription stats are way up. BtNHRV now has 97 feed subscribers via Google Reader, which is almost double what we had before the tourney started. We’re super pleased with the exposure that the tourney gave our site, which is why you won’t hear me criticizing the format. Every blog gets its time in the spotlight, and I like to think that we made some positives out of ours.
Now, I don’t like to think that we had no chance of winning against RC, even though, as I said, we probably didn’t deserve to. I make no bones about admitting that I wanted to win, and I didn’t want to look back on our round and realize that we didn’t at least make an effort. Along with our sudden surge of articles, we tried a few things, like a retweet campaign and our “just have a look” campaign. The reasoning behind it was that we figured there’d be a lot of people who would come over from RC and vote for them without even looking at our site, and we didn’t want that. Our hope was that if we could convince people to at least take a quick glance at our site before voting, maybe something would catch their eye and make them think at least one more time. What we didn’t account for was… well, Akira has already documented the general tone of comments that came from pro-RC voters on the tourney blog. What annoyed me the most about the whole ordeal was that, try as I might, I couldn’t extract a single bit of constructive criticism from these people. I fully understand that this isn’t at all representative of RC’s fanbase. It just would have been nice to hear some comments about what we could do better directly from one of the 245 people who voted against us.
I’ll briefly weigh into the whole editorials v episodics debate by saying its a fallacy. Neither is inherently superior to the other and both have their place. The format of the tourney necessitates the occasional comparison between the two different types, but it really ought to be other qualities, such as the content and the ability to deliver something relevant, meaningful, resourceful, or whatever it is you value in an anime blog, that should decide one’s vote. I don’t blog episodic, but that doesn’t mean I don’t find them valuable. Sites like Hanners’ Anime Blog and Unmei Kaihen have, to this point, had my full support, and I particularly hope that the latter goes deep into this tourney, because Shinmaru deserves it for his excellent work. As far as an overall winner goes, I endorse Baka-Raptor. I think his site deserves to win it all. (I don’t speak for other NHRV staff members here, they might disagree with me).
I’ll be honest, this month will be something of an anomaly for BtNHRV. The eleven articles posted in May from five authors came from a strange motivation that just won’t be there in the future. Our review staff is currently numbered at eleven, but only Akira, Kylaran and myself contribute to the blog on a regular basis. Shadowmage only contributes occasionally, while zzeroparticle‘s was a once-in-a-blue-moon contribution. The rest of the staff are reviewers (ignoring the fact that reviews have come pretty sparsely over the last couple of months). But, the fact of the matter is that we’re all busy people, with important real life matters to attend to. There’s only so much time we can dedicate to blog articles and anime and J-movie reviews. I want this site to be good, and to have good content, but good content needs to be incubated. What is increasingly becoming clear to me is that if you want to have a popular site, you need to be publishing regularly. Good writing alone only gets you so far; the next step comes when that good writing becomes frequent.
But I’m not going to ask any NHRV staff member to sacrifice any aspect of their real life for this site. This is a hobby, and it should be fun and I hope it is (it is for me). It presents its challenges, but it has its rewards, and I hope our staff members find both the challenges and the rewards fun and exciting to deal with. The next question is, what do we have to do to improve this site? The content, apparently, is at an appropriate level, so I’m not going to tinker with it all too much at this point. The easiest way to solve the frequency problem is having more writers. Now just as the championship coach will expound that the first necessity of a winning team is good players, my belief is that the first thing a respectable site needs is good writers. At the end of last year I decided that I needed to shake a lot of the dead wood off the staff list. For too long we were accepting new writers who weren’t that good, and showed little commitment to the site… writing a small handful of reviews before disappearing into the abyss. We’ve changed our recruiting policies, and now commitment, as well as writing flair, are two of the most valued criteria for new staff members.
We need more writers. This much is clear. Since recruiting kadian1364, Buttercup and Kylaran, who have all turned out to be excellent, we’ve lost royal crown and Fuu, and another staff member has just resigned, which we’ll be announcing soon. If we want to increase our posting frequency, both on the main site and the blog, then we need to top up our list again. We need more writers, but Tamashii and I disagree on just how many we need. (I’ve often said on the forums that if we were a crime family, I’d want Tamashii, who ran the site before I did, to be my consigliere. I don’t always agree with what he has to say, but his opinion is the one I want to hear first on pretty much every issue). My opinion is that we want a list of a dozen, or so, active writers, and to slowly increase that number as a response to an increase in traffic. Tamashii’s opinion is that we should take as many writers as we need to get the job done, and if that means we take thirty writers, some of whom may be prone to long bouts of inactivity, then so be it. My reasoning is that this is the best compromise between posting frequency and each individual author still maintaining a distinct voice. Distinct voice, IMO, is incredibly important, and my fear is that, under Tamashii’s model, so many voices coming from the site might blur and blend, causing each individual’s own subtle differences and idiosyncrasies to be lost.
I’m very happy with the blog right now provided we keep producing content at a reasonable rate. But the main site is in desperate need of an overhaul. It’s run off the WordPress engine, and it’s in this strange state of being awkwardly caught somewhere between Web 1.0 (or the late stages thereof, so maybe “Web 1.5″ is more descriptive) and 2.0. That’s our next project. There are a lot of things that I want to implement on the main page, but I don’t think I can do it by myself, so I’ll very likely be looking to turn to someone with website know-how for help. The Nihon Review will continue to evolve, because I don’t like the idea of it stagnating. To me, stagnation is the onset of the first part of the death of a site, and right now I’m thinking and planning seriously long-term about what direction I want the site to go in, into the future.
Like threaded comments?
I’ve said how much I like this site before so instead I’ll comment on the actual tourney match up.
If the RC hoardes didn’t hear of the match-up, then judging by how the vote count was going it would have been a narrow victory for BtNHRV. But that’s not the case and it’s why I’m starting to think one of these big episodic blogs will win the thing. Vote count for regular tourney followers between a great episodic blog vs a great editorial blog is pretty mixed, slightly favouring the editorial side, but the crowd who follow the episodic blog in question will only vote for that blog. Basically, it’s not just the hoardes that are voting RC and similar sites. Seasoned blog readers are voting for them as well. I shouldn’t be surprised by this I guess.
So yah, Star Crossed vs RandomC final?
I like both blogs. Other guys screen dump so I don’t have to and occassionally their episodic content can be a entertaining read (Crusader’s summaries of SOW). And I do remember occasionally they do have an editorial (there was one back about Mecha tactics).
But, the site often lacks consistent criticism so I come to Nihon Review.
Honestly, there is nothing wrong with the website, although it would be nice to have threaded comments, a feature that is built into wordpress. You might need to do slight modifications to the theme to add threaded comments.
Posting rate is a small problem. At times, especially during the semester, I get exams and I have to stop blogging until end of the week to focus on my exams. Of course, I post quite a lot during the months since I have a lot of ideas going on my mind. I won’t worry about too much about the content, but convince more readers to read the blog, basically attention… And you do that by posting good and interesting content, which shouldn’t be a problem.
This blog definitely has a unique feel to it. At Behind-TheNihonReview, it is much more common to see an article analyzing trends and motifs rather than episode-by-episode comments on series. Other blogs are much more personal and opinionated.
Now it’s your decision if you want to move away from the somewhat-elitist feel this website comes across having. I feel that the charm of this blog is that it is one of the few websites that provides polished, intelligent analysis. Hopefully in any expansion you choose to do this is not lost.
I would suggest to model yourself off of Kotaku. Kotaku works like a news site even though it’s a blog. The success comes from the ability to report within the hour its announced, allowing its readers constantly up to date with news. Now Kotaku tops its news off with intelligent criticism and an occasional polished article analyzing trends. I think this blog simply needs to report more news.
Overally, with a little bit of polishing and more activity, this could become the Ebert and Roeper of anime.
For your reference, the story behind the “elitism” debate in the RC match.
So after reading that thread, what exactly did you think your trolling accomplished? There was some sparked debate by Baka-Raptor, but the rest was just your own circle jerk. If anybody else chimed in, it was people defending their position or asking for clarification. I saw numerous times BtNHRV people just asking what it is that “you” liked about RC.
Akira’s post below was more of a general response to the idea of elitism that Baka-Raptor brought up than a direct response to your trolling.
So, again, what “success” do you think you had? And, remember, we’re elitists here, so you’re going to have to explain yourself.
You don’t have take things so personally. Sorrow-kun was exactly right above when he said that none of those comments were directed at this blog, even if Akira seemed to think so for no good reason.
The whole elitism angle wasn’t even necessarily what I believed, although the bias of the reactions to the RC experiment showed there’s definitely a lot of that around. When I say “you were trolled”, that just means people were prompted to express their poorly founded preconceived notions, and unfortunately many did. Thankfully there were exceptions.
You can spin it however you like, but it’s completely obvious that Akira’s post was a direct result of what I did. That’s not what I meant by “success”, however. Don’t make the mistake of assuming this had a lot to do with your blog just because I attached the announcement to a suitable post here.
Sheesh… I meant Sorrow-kun was right “above” in his response to Akira’s post.
You know I have to admit, that “social experiment” was pretty brilliant and ingenious. Even I couldn’t have come up with it and that says a lot!! After this entire ordeal is over, all sorrow-kun and his cronies will be left with are a few elevating discussions on elitism, intellectualism, and self-improvement — all worthless stuff that doesn’t improve your character or blog at all!
But you, on the other hand, have truly spent your time wisely in order to prove your “brilliance” to just about everyone in anime criticism!! I noticed that you posted links to your very explanatory comment on both the Aniblog thread and another BtNR thread. You know, just in case someone misses how “awesome” you are and how, through clever and elaborate deception, you proved that your opinions were more correct than anyone else’s! Some people might take this move as being full of ego, unwarranted self-importance, and a need to have your talents recognized by the very people you are criticizing — but not me!! I think it’s great stuff!!
geass, you are the lighthouse sitting on the edge of the dark, oceanlike abyss that “is” the anime blogosphere. To these helplessly lost bloggers who devote their time and thought to endlessly research and write about anime without any hopes of finding the shore of understanding that you rest upon, you are their one guiding light. No — you are “my” guiding light.
geass, thank you
lol @AuroraFlame
If it helps, I don’t think of myself that way. The reason I posted the links was to make sure people saw the explanation, because it wouldn’t have been fair to let Akira pontificate using bogus quotes that weren’t by fans of RC at all. I think people are focussing too much on my “very successfully” line, which to a large extent just meant that I successfully impersonated the caricature some take all RC readers to be and thus gave the excuse to some of the elitists to show how unreasonably biased they are.
@AuroraFlame: Not sure if serious…
@geass: Pretty sure you’re a douchebag. No, wait, I’m completely sure you’re a douchebag.
As for improvements: your blog layout sucks. What is this, 2004?
Also, quit throwing around buzzwords like “Web 2.0″ and shit. To be honest, I said I did say about a year ago that I’d be willing to do an overhaul of your layout and I’m still willing, plus I have the time to do it now. I have a template up on my blog if you’re interested. Just PM me or something and I’ll give you the link.
I don’t want everyone knowing all the nitty gritty details of how awesome my life is.
@Scamp
I don’t think that’s true. In fact, given geass’s revelation, it’s looking less and less likely. Hey, look, RC deserved to win, and we got quite a lot of positives out of the experience. Overall, I’d say the tourney was a good thing, and you should feel proud of what you’ve done, especially for shining a spotlight on sites that deserve it.
@LinGaiVa
Err… doesn’t Crusader write for THAT, not RC? Thanks for the vote of confidence. We think criticism is super important in the anime discourse. There was a time where I was afraid that criticism was being snuffed out in the anime discourse, but if there’s a common theme across the new wave of blogs that are coming out, there seems to be less of a fear to say things exactly as you see them. That can only be a good thing.
@Chikroita157
I have pretty strong opinions on threaded comments. In fact, I kinda think that they can sometimes stifle conversation. I’ll explain more in depth in a future post that I’ve been planning for some time (and that Scamp has been pushing me to publish).
@blue cheez
The “episode-by-episode comments” generally happen on the forums, which is why it’s somewhat redundant to post them here. I mean, this blog is a bit of a weird creation. I started it as a place for our authors to post thoughts that didn’t fit anywhere else on the main site. I’ve said it earlier, but review writing can be a little restrictive, and it’s easy to fall into formulaic writing. The blog is much more free, and writers can go in whatever direction they please and therefore I’d say we probably get a bit more “distinct” voice coming from these articles. The Kotaku model is a good one, and, while we’re not going to copy it directly, what we have in mind kinda resembles it. Anyway, I’m glad you mentioned Ebert and Roeper. I have immense respect for Ebert particularly. People might not always agree with him, but if there’s one thing he’s renowned for in particular, it’s always being fair. That, as a reviewer, is something worth striving for, IMO.
@geass
First, apologies for our spam filter swallowing your posts. Secondly, so what was the point of this social experiment? That the aniblogosphere is filled with group think? That anime fans are trollable and manipulable? Well, duh, you’re preaching to a choir. But, good for you, this is a bit like baby’s first troll. Maybe your next one will be a bit more sophisticated. Or maybe you’ll grow up and realize that this brand of trolling is a waste of, well, your time more than anyone else’s.
@TIF
Apparently asking people to justify their position on things is elitist. If that’s the case, then I guess we should be proud to be elitist.
@AuroraFlame
It’s a bright light, isn’t it.
@Seven
2004 was an awesome year. If you have a problem with 2004, then you have a problem with me. We’ll talk. I’d like to see what you’ve done, but I like the current blog theme. It’s the main site (and, probably the forum too, which, from memory, you said you’d also look at), which need a facelift.
@Author
I don’t post images that are unrelated. There’s something common about the three characters in the images that I posted, which is related to the post’s title. But, in all honesty, I didn’t know where the image came from, I just found it on /a/. So, good job tracking the source and thanks for sharing it.
On behalf of all The Nihon Review staff, I endorse Baka-Raptor for the AniBlog Tourney.
“Secondly, so what was the point of this social experiment? That the aniblogosphere is filled with group think? That anime fans are trollable and manipulable? Well, duh, you’re preaching to a choir. But, good for you, this is a bit like baby’s first troll. Maybe your next one will be a bit more sophisticated. Or maybe you’ll grow up and realize that this brand of trolling is a waste of, well, your time more than anyone else’s.”
I think Akira wasted as much time as I did, basing half his article on my quotes
The point, for me, wasn’t to preach; in some sense it was more of a hands on exercise in trying out the manipulation myself. If anything, I was a little surprised at how many people took the whole thing at face value, because I wasn’t sure I would be able to represent the stereotype well enough. I was especially surprised at how the initial near illiterate post was taken as “representative” by quite a few people. I thought I’d overdone that one for sure and someone would see through it, but I guess preconceptions make people blind.
I’m not sure what your suggestion of more sophistication entails, because passing off a completely bogus “incident” as authentic may be a bit too sophisticated as trolling goes. I mean you guys keep asking me what the point was as though it’s a hard one to figure out.
“Apparently asking people to justify their position on things is elitist. If that’s the case, then I guess we should be proud to be elitist.
”
I don’t really understand why you guys keep repeating that. The reason I didn’t respond to the questions about what’s to like about RC was because by the time I got to it, some others had already covered the main points. To critique your blog was something I didn’t have any interest in doing; in fact it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that your blog as such had zero significance in what I did, the only thing that mattered was that some people positioned it as inherently superior to RC. The notion that this whole thing was directed against you guys at BtNR is completely false, and I hope I won’t have to keep repeating that.
@geass
No worries, I wouldn’t take anything I say too seriously.
————————–
On topic: I’ve been reading RC regularly for a while now. While I had seen a couple of reviews here, I only started following BtNR post-to-post since the beginning of the year. Ultimately, I didn’t vote in the tournament because I didn’t feel I could say one of these sites is objectively better than the other. For what each is trying to accomplish, they are among the best the blogosphere has to offer.
Comparing RC to BtNR is like comparing a fast-food place to a restaurant. That could be taken the wrong way but I don’t mean any disrespect to either party, especially RC, as it’s my favorite blog to hang out on. Going to a restaurant, you will get a finely crafted meal memorable enough to discuss and recommend. You also have to get a reservation, wait an hour to be served, and remain unusually civil while dealing with a pricey menu. It’s not a place you can visit every day. Similarly, the posts on BtNR lend themselves to in-depth discussion more than those at RC. But they also need time to prepare and require your undivided attention, otherwise your arguments will get ripped to shreds and your opinions invalidated.
On the other hand, RC is a place that you can stop by on your lunch break every single day. The wait is only a couple of minutes, you can talk as loud as want, and you can play board games on the table while eating and no one will kick you out. RC has a much more liberating atmosphere. You are free to say what you want and like what you want without the thought of being derided for watching shows of a lower caliber. To continue that analogy — at the end of the day, a fast food place may get more traffic but a restaurant can still rake in more cash because of the high prices; similarly, RC may get more hits but the average quality of a comment on BtNR is probably a bit higher.
Were I to vote for RC, I would say the main reason is because I identify with the mindset of having fun and looking for shows to surprise you as opposed to counting how many mistakes a series makes. I don’t mean to say hard criticism is bad. It’s just that I like what I connect with it and that isn’t always quantifiable. Take Angel Beats! for example, which is a series that I enjoy well enough. Yes, the drama can try too hard, there are many repetitive jokes, the humor awkwardly breaks the serious atmosphere, so on. But it’s also the show I most look forward to seeing every week. I connect with the series on an emotional level, and I care about what happens to the characters, generic as they may be. Because of that, I can put this show above other series like Saraiya and Yojou-han, even though they have stronger writing/directing, fewer pacing problems, etc.
Another example is Clannad. If you really look at it, drawing statistics on a chalkboard about the declining rate of passing out wooden starfish at a high school and holding a meeting to discuss this problem is just downright ridiculous. But Clannad also happens to be one of my favorite series. Now, judging from one of sorrow-kun’s previous posts, I gather that he has a mostly favorable impression of Angel Beats!. But the first paragraph of that post summarizes my thoughts on heavy-analysis sites like these. The feeling that you have to say things like, “I can see that the execution is kind of sketchy but….” is not something I want to do with either Clannad or Angel Beats!. It’s not because I want to overlook their flaws. Rather, it’s because in the grander scheme of things, I just don’t care enough about them. Call it sentimentality, call it low standards, it doesn’t matter to me. To mention flaws like that is to suggest that I determine whether I like an anime based on some net value taken from measuring the mistakes it makes to the things it does right, and that’s simply not what I do.
I hope you guys don’t take this wrong way. I don’t mean to imply that you grade anime like that. As Akira said on the previous post, Strike Witches (haven’t gotten around to watching) is one of his favorite series so I’m well aware that people like what they like even on this site. Along that same line, sorrow-kun said Working!! was better than K-ON!! (which is a ridiculous opinion
Also remember, this is a just a hypothetical “why the scales would turn in favor of RC at Aniblog.” Had there been a huge discussion regarding this topic on RC, I could have just as easily written about why I prefer the Nihon Review.
The reason the site isn’t getting a whole lot of criticism is because you aren’t really doing anything wrong. Episodic blogs will always get more hits because, not only do they have 12-24 reviews per series, but people can discuss the series as it airs and without the need for in-depth analysis. Frankly, it’s easier. I read everything that comes out of BtNR now, and the sole reason why I frequent RC more is because I have to go back for each new post. There is no such thing as flawless, and there’s always room for improvement, but there is such a thing as being “as good as it gets” and that’s what Behind the Nihon Review is.
If you want more writers without diluting the quality or voice of the site, why don’t you make a few guest writer spots? Instead of having annual staff contests, you can have frequent blog post contests. You can buy into the niche of people that can’t commit or sustain their creativity for long periods of time, but have ideas that would be good enough for a post or two. Everyone’s looking to share their opinions, so giving them many more opportunities to do so would increase traffic even if they ultimately aren’t successful. You could also find the semi-regular contributors you are looking for in those winning posts. Just like you have the soundtrack section, you could scout for regular writers on things like light novels, visual novels, video games, or anime’s effect on the west. If they only have to write for their particular area, they will have no trouble finding topics for posts.
tl;dr!!!!!
geass totally like tricked everyone
@geass: The idea of trolling is to piss people off. It’s not a “social experiment.” I used to troll message boards in middle school, and while I tried passing it off as something of worth, I knew that I just wanted to make some people angry and not get my teeth knocked in.
Also, as an addendum, I hate internet arguments because people will quote and respond to each and every god damn sentence you write. Please stop doing this.
I just spent about 1 minute on Baka-Raptor’s blog.
Baka-Raptor would only win because he’s been doing a re-hash of The Best Page in the Universe, with a much less offensive approach, but with the same amount of stupidity. And I think we all like stupid entertainment when we’ve got all these editorial elitist blogs crawling around talking about statistics (with accompanying graph. Why?) and visual novels (with accompanying screenshots. Why?). Then we have the episodic blogs, which, I don’t really care about because I don’t watch anime.
Dude that shit is awesome. Did you see all those pictures and shit he used? Man, after I get done smacking my wife around I’m totally going to lol at all that shit.
I am still waiting for this fella’ to tell me who he is. I am genuinely curious. I am beginning to feel that he doesn’t want to tell me though, even though he was perfectly capable of telling us all that he easily manipulated us for his own experiment.
I’ll show you my identity if you show me yours.
Just wanted to say that your website is genius, do keep up your standard of writing.
I did come over from the contest, but don’t take the loss to heart. I do read random curiosity as well and I think that you faced a horrendous match-up, but still fared pretty well overall. =D
fuck you Sorrow-kun for hating RC. RC was cheated out and defending that means you’re an asshat.
@f_u
Thanks for the short comment, it makes it easy to respond to. First, I don’t hate RC. I have nothing but respect for RC. Second, I suggest you take allegations of cheating to the Tourney mods. If you think there was something suspicious about the result, describe your concerns to them and they will take you very seriously. Thirdly, so far the mods have said they haven’t noticed anything suspicious, so I can only conclude that to date, there’s been no evidence of cheating. So, unless you know something that the mods don’t (and I’m sure they’d be willing to hear if you do), then RC wasn’t cheated, and lost fair and square. RC could have won with better tactics, but chose not to employ them. Listless Ink won because its tactics worked. Kudos to them, that’s an impressive upset they’ve managed to pull off.
Let’s face it, you’re only calling it an “impressive upset” because you’re feeling like a chump, having lost to RandomC the way you did and now realizing you could have easily pulled a similar “upset” yourself with only a little more effort.
You can call this “fair and square” if that makes you feel better, but there’s absolutely nothing impressive about winning against an opponent who sits out the game.