Ranking Anime Is a Ton of Fun, Silliness
Ever visit a friend’s place and look at his DVD collection, only to see that they are alphabetized, after sorted by genre? And this friend has easily 500+ titles on his shelves? I have a few friends like that. One actually collects anime on DVDs, so it was a treat to see different art boxes and stuff neatly filed away in his library.
I am much more of a slouch, but I too can see the point in doing it besides just for the virtue of being organized (or to satisfy some mental compulsion). It’s fun. A while ago I took Libra and went at it with my R1 DVD collection (not sure how I’d index my imports via Libra) and it was pretty fun seeing all my DVDs making a hill on my bed. It made me want to take a dip in Scrooge McDuck’s money bin. It also gave me the opportunity to repack my shelves and make space for more figurescrap.
I’m going somewhere with this, if you can’t see it already. Libra is just the midpoint. Back as an undergrad I lived with people who indexed pirated wares in a similar manner. Without their physical bodies, games, apps, movies and songs are just files with filenames and meta data tagged away in a digital catalog somewhere. At best some scribbling on the CD-R or DVD-R with a permanent marker marks the only human-readable physical representation of the thing that is being collected.
I think the next step up is simple–we’re just cataloging our memories when we rank anime. Well, there are other ways to catalog memories, but a review seems like the most natural way to do it. Ranking in a review, in a semi-objective way, gives the review a new way to be indexed (hey, we can now sort by some inherent value instead by … alphabetical order?) and toying with the thought in your head is a lot of fun.
Swimming in a sea of imaginary personal possessions…mmm. I think this is why MAL is such a fun thing, despite that it’s freaking time-consuming to do a list if you’ve watched anime for years. It offers a very easy way to index stuff and it beats putting that junk into a spreadsheet (and…I know people who puts it into spreadsheets. Still.)
Disclosure time: I always wanted to do ranked anime reviews because it feels like it could be a lot of fun. But doing it by myself seemed a little bit lonely and I don’t think I could find another person who would do things the way I do things. Compatibility is important but the other person or persons have to share my vision and find it as fun as I do, if not more.
How would I rank stuff? Probably in some exaggerated, non-indexable manner, probably also encoded. The concept is simple–any review is a breakdown of a piece by using the reviewer him/herself as the measuring device. Accurate gauging is only second to internal consistency, so these two aspects have to be incorporated in the review somewhere. But at the same time, that is pretty boring, lame, and trollish (my favorite anime is better than your favorite anime, obviously). I think what makes more sense is actually, on the surface, construct a difficult-to-compare ranking system that expresses what are the pluses and minuses of a show, in addition to any notable aspects (narrow audience, for-the-family, etc). We all will have a laugh over that. Hidden between the LOLs there will be something that knowing readers can use to index the reviews in a more traditional manner.
What’s more, the entire review can be consisted of rankings. It doesn’t need complete sentences. It’ll be pretty. It will be pure. But I suppose that can be time consuming to make. Maybe a bit like these guys.
Ah, that was a nice pipe dream.
I rank everything and am constantly reorganizing my collections so I can see where this is coming from. I always have to feel like I understand my anime in the context of being an anime among anime or something.
Interesting. I’d never seen Libra before. Going to give it a spin tonight as it will be pretty useful for me - I have all my game collection in a text file, and for my DVDs I’ve been using DVDProfiler for a long time, but that game has its own set of frustrations and I haven’t kept it up to date recently.
Incidentally, my stuff is grouped pretty much randomly, and I just re-order it alphabetically every now and then.
My stuff is mostly organized by director or studio. Some stuff is organized by vintage (e.g., all the 90s-and-before OAVs go in their own binder).
I never saw the point of “My anime list”. Maybe because I was always directed to it via links to people’s anime-lists, not through the social-networking aspect.
And… I don’t have much fun to rating stuff, beyond, maybe, “would/would not watch again”/”would watch again annually”.
reading about Libra it sounds SO AWESOME but IM USING A MAC! ZETSUBOU SHITA!
@digitalboy: Maybe you’re looking for Delicious Library. Costs $40 though. Librarian might be a $30 alternative, but I haven’t used it.
Omo, you should rate anime in Geek Code.
…and you don’t think I’m cryptic enough as is?
yes, using MAL when you’ve watched anime for years and years is just too exhaustive… I haven’t even been halfway mine.
Sounds like a potential feature…but then again I see blogers write a weekly ranking of things they watch…
Agreeing with what schneider said… MAL is too exhaustive… I kinda gave up my list half-way, but then again I am still watching some anime that past by my radar.
Wait, but MAL will make spreadsheets for you! I did that recently to reverse-engineer my list of WIWFTWTW animus and find out if there were any non-shitty ones.
Yar, it makes lovely xmls. But importing to MAL is another matter…
I do believe you can bring something like that up with the creator of MAL, Xinil I think his name is. I was also wondering why there’s nothing that can be used to import to MAL from other areas, like ANN. Doesn’t he want to take over the world?
[…] express yourself. It’s like a game where you roleplay some nutty critic. Unfortunately I also despise the trapping that any ranking system comes with. I always thought to myself (usually after feeling the […]