Insight to my Review System – Part 3

Now as for this third part of the post, I’ll talk about how I grade titles. It won’t be a massive wall of text unlike the previous post in case you’re worried. This post is basically just an expansion of this page.

This is how my grading usually looks like.

So this is how I grade titles, I think I touched this upon slightly in the last post but I’ll just go through with it again-I use a combination of traditional school grades (for grading individual departments like story, characters, music, etc…) and numerical grade (to illustrate how much I enjoyed the title as a whole). Now this is important to take notice of-these two grades are mutually exclusive. For example, a title can have really bad school grades but if I enjoy it as a whole, I will still grade it’s numerical value considerably high.

From here on, I’ll go into detail on the different scores and just what level of quality do they dictate. Let me get to the “numerical” part first:

1–4 – Bad
I prefer grouping some of the scores together, and this “Bad” evaluation ranges between 1-4, and honestly, the title has to be super, and I mean, SUPER bad for me to score it at such level. I seem to recall scoring some titles 4 or 3 if I were to name some very specific exceptions but indeed, other than those, very rarely do I score a title this low, because if it’s this bad, I honestly wouldn’t be even watching/playing it in the first place.

5-6 – Average
5-6 is to me pretty half-assed numbers, perfect to evaluate titles which are bad, but have enough good points to retain itself in mediocrity. Most titles that are “so bad it’s good” often fall into this category too.

7 – Good
7 to me is a nice, very signifying number. It’s great in the sense that the number is just right out of another number signifying mediocrity. So the number 7 is a good number to represent “good” titles, titles that are obviously above average but lacks something that prevents them from literally attaining true greatness.

8-9 – Great
Jumping straight out of mediocrity and above average, these numbers are when you know a title had achieved greatness. You will be able to treat these titles seriously, and you will be hard-pressed to find any flaws, and even if you do find them, these titles are just SO GOOD that these flaws meant little in the grand scheme of things. Some of these titles may be mildly revolutionary, but if we’re talking about revolutionary…

10 – Masterpiece
Masterpiece. It’s a really tricky word, especially when used in grading a title. I wrote on what makes a title 10/10 sometime ago (and honestly, it was so long ago my writing was kinda shitty, but my points in that post still stands today). Things like execution, technicalities and overall enjoyment are definitely things to consider, but originality and longevity are definitely the biggest factors. Originality is what creates revolutionary and inspiring anime, and when such anime lasted for years and are still in people’s minds even today, then you will know the series really -is- a masterpiece. Honestly, I had never once given a 10/10 in my review (at best, I gave 9.5/10 which is as close as 10/10 you can get from me), and when I feel the series really is legit 10/10, I hesitate to even review them because I feel being critical of such titles (combined with my shitty writing) kinda cheapens the title and my experience with them.

A-rank story

Now, I’ll get to my grading for the individual components of a title:

F to D – Bad
Similarly with my numerical grades, I very rarely grade a title’s component this bad. If it’s this bad, then there’s genuinely something wrong here, though since this grade is only for one single component, other components can perhaps somewhat salvage the title. Unfortunately, the title already made a huge negative impression at this point.

C- to C+ – Average
This C range is for a title’s component when it falls in mediocrity. A title with average music, or a title with average story for instances. Fortunately, this isn’t as bad as the previous grading so if one component gets to this level, the whole title is still entirely salvageable.

B- to B+ – Good
I mentioned the word “salvageable” twice already, now the B range are the scores where it can start to help in that department. The B range represents components of titles that definitely have nothing wrong with them, and are definitely more than serviceable.

A- to A+ – Great
When a component reaches the A tier, you will know that the developers definitely know what they’re doing. They are components which help tremendously in bolstering a title into true greatness.

S – Revolutionary
More than just creating very quality story/sound/art, the S tier is used to represent originality and revolutionary, and more often than not, requires special circumstances in order to reach them. To give an example, Corpse Party gets an S in the sound department because quite frankly, it’s sound design is so excellent it’s something I have never experienced in any other games. Other than that, I honestly don’t remember which reviews I gave an S before, because just like before, giving a title this high of a grade is just as much of a rarity.

And that’s officially the end of all these review posts! Again, I’ll link all these in my rating page too, to help expand on my “reviewer’s mindset”. Hope you enjoy these shitty posts.

Tags: 10/10, bad, good, great, longevity, masterpiece, original, reviews, revolutionary, scores, so bad it's good

This entry was posted by Kai.

• March 29, 2016
• Editorials, Review
• 2 Comments