Since I started doing the 2008 in Retrospect series I have been left high and dry as to how I might actually better rate an anime series rather use an arbitrary and simple way of assigning it a certain score out of ten. Anime series have much to their content and I should encompass all areas of said content by giving attention in terms of scoring to various aspects, with key factors getting more “points” than others. Thus I have decided to come up with a more consistent way of scoring anime series for myself, and I should thus be using this rating system for all anime series I want to rate from now on.

Edit: After contemplating the discussion held in the comments for this post and some further deliberation, the scores’ weightage has been finalized and will be used for future posts dealing with anime awards for a year.

The different areas identified for me in anime that I consider to be important are the following aspects – storyline/plot, animation, music, characters and personal feeling. These can be further broken down in their own categories except the last. All will be explained.
 

Storyline/Plot

The biggest thing going for an anime series must be its storyline and plot. If an anime series has no organized or consistent plot going for it, it is likely to not hold my interest for long unless it has a few other things going for it in other aspects (such as humor). Since I look for a good story most of the time, the plot is therefore the most significant aspect of an anime series that I want to rate it for. As such, out of a possible hundred points it gets a full 25 in total, making up a quarter of the total summation.

A storyline can be good at the beginning and bad at the end, or vice versa, and it can be broken apart in the middle, or just be really disorganized but still coherent at the end. Thus, getting this large a percentage in the scoring will mean that I have to justify its final rating when the time comes, but quite frankly, I see no problem with it getting the lion’s share (so far) of the deal.
 

Animation

Animation makes up the next aspect – after all, anime is almost all about the animation whenever you mention it to a layman. However, animation quality can be really good and the show really bad when it comes to a storyline, so despite what people might think, animation hardly takes up a large percentage of the rating. Still, it does hold enough rank to require 15 points for full marks, since good animation helps a lot in making the anime series a lot better, even if it is not perennial to the show’s final success in a very large way (still big enough).

Animation can be split into character drawing, background and foreground differences, and the like. Thus when an anime is rated for its animation quality I still have to take a closer look at the studio’s way of animating the various aspects of scenes.
 

Music

After some contemplation, only the background music of an anime will be the sole determination of the music sub-category. The OP and ED are already rated differently, and do not contribute anything to the anime most of the time.

Some may think – why have a section dedicated to music? My answer to that would be – without the accompanying music (and sometimes, the sudden lack of said music), will we sometimes be able to set the mood of a certain scene? I find music to play a rather important role as a sort of “sub-aspect”, and thus it is included as a main category with the awarding of 15 points for it.

I originally wanted to place just 5 points for the BGM, but decided that, in lieu of the fact that I do tend to listen to the music more often than not, it gets an additional 2 points to make it a total of 7 in the decision for this area.
 

Characters

Characters do take up a large percentage of how I feel about a show. If you have a lousy male lead but an awesome female lead, I am sure it changes your perspective on the show as well. The lead and the side characters all play a part in the story, and thus it is only right I also give them recognition, if not by too much, with the points given to this category standing at 15 as well. It may seem that the two categories above and this one all share the same percentage, but it is difficult to split up the points evenly (or to lower or increase each of the section’s) without some form of better justification that allows for good emphasis on all three of them, and hence they all have the same number of points.

In any case, characters will be easy to justify for me, so there really is no issue for me as to why they get 13 points when it comes time to rate them.
 

Personal Feeling

Finally, no matter how much the others add up, if I do not feel good about an anime series, it will not be good to me. This is the subjective part of the analysis (though all of it might as well be since it is from only my point of view) that is included to account for the personal view of the anime series and stands at 40 points. This extremely large weightage was taken into account after deliberation of the due fact that rating an anime is almost always subjective, no matter how good or bad the other areas might be.

Only the plot has a bigger share of the scoring. Really, no matter what you might analyze or say about an anime, if it does not feel/look good to you, why would you say it is good, from your point-of-view?
 

So there you have it. As a recap here are the scores:

Storyline/Plot – 25
Animation – 15
Music – 7
Characters – 13
Personal Feeling – 40
Total – 100

This rating system is not meant to be objective. I believe I did mention that. It is to be used as a rating system to replace the old one (which I just used some score upon 10 and tried to justify it) in giving out awards at the end of a year when it came to anime series. I felt the old system needed a remake in detail because it would then give me some justification (and result) when it came high time to say why such-and-such an anime series made me feel good.

Thus, the personal feeling part comes in conjunction with all the other scores. Some good points were raised in the comments so far and yes I will address them one by one after this, but I felt that people thought this was going to be a completely “objective” look that was used to justify how I felt about an anime series, not the other way round. The scores do not justify my feelings; my feelings justify the scores. In a sense, the scores could be left out, but I just felt I needed the score for awarding an anime to be in the various good/bad categories when it came down to it.
 

By the way, all the pictures of the female characters in this post are from the year’s anime series. I do not have to identify each one for you now, do I?

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