Forum - View topicWhat is 'Mediocre' and why do I put Tiger and Bunny there?
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PBCurious
 Posts: 7 |
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It seems to be human nature to 'rate' any given collection of things/objects/people. Here at ANN, the ratings guide varies from 1 to 10. In the forums, the question is often "What do you consider the best {$CATEGORY}?" or "What's your top ten {$CATEGORY}?". The ratings and the answers to 'top ten' queries are meaningless if you don't understand:
The key rating criteria. The rating 'curve'. The following comments on the ANN ratings guide are merely illustrative. Follow-on discussion of the ANN ratings guide are not 'in scope' for this post. I make the comments as an illustrative example leading to what I am posting about which is my personal definition of 'Mediocre'. I view the ANN ratings guide as a single point of interest. i.e. it's interesting information to have but I wouldn't base any decision to watch or not watch on it. There are several reasons for this but all of these reasons distill down to 'participants'. As soon as you have more than one participant, you're going to have different rating criteria and said criteria are applied on different curves. What this means is that the ANN ratings guide will always be very 'fuzzy' at best simply because what's important to one person in making a ratings judgment will not be important to another. In addition, there will always be people for whom, even though they'll hold the same factor(s) to the same level of importance for the same show, will scale those factors differently. i.e. On a scale from 1 to 10, one person who is always polite will never score below a '4' and group their average score around '7' while another person will make use of '1' and score on a true bell curve where average means a score of '5'. Mixing different criteria and mixing scaling will always result in a 'fuzzy' score. Interesting to know but not useful as the decision guide. The usefulness of asking for an aggregate of people's "top ten" or other list of what they consider "best" or "worst" is about the same as the ANN ratings guide. Nice to know but should not be used as the final arbiter of one's decisions to watch or not watch a given show. The value of the 'worth' of the answers to such questions is directly related to understanding the rating criteria and how well that criteria matches your own. Because I enjoy seeing discussions and because I'm actually interested in other peoples {reasoned} opinions, I posted my own inquiry regarding people's impressions of the current {2nd week May 2011} half way point Anime season. In that post, I give a category of 'Mediocre' and I place 'Tiger and Bunny' there. This should be an excellent example of how I 'rate' shows and what it might mean for you assuming of course, that you're actually interested. My rating criteria are very different and will either be meaningless to you or might actually be of benefit for you own future consideration. Fisrt, we'll start with my thoughts on Tiger and Bunny. A 'Mediocre' rating from me does not mean that a show is worthless trash. There's quite a bit to like about T&B. The good stuff: It's well produced. The animation quality reflects a decent amount of time, money and effort spent by the producers. There's a storyline. The parodies of corporate sponsorship are plentiful and well thought out. The not so good stuff: The storyline is minimal at best. Character interaction, which is probably supposed to be the heart of the series takes a back seat to gimmicks, parodies and tokenized action sequences. This is one of those situations where too much is crammed into too little time. T&B needs to decide if it's a complete 'corporate sponsorship parody show' or if it's an 'action' show' or if it's an 'odd couple' show or if it's a 'human heartwarming' story show. T&B tries to be all of these each show. You can do this in two hours. You can't do it well in less than 20 minutes at a time. If my rating criteria were how well produced the show is and it's plethora of shots at corporate sponsorships, then I might rate it 8 out of 10. If my rating criteria were how well it does as a 'buddy' show, I'd probably rate it '3' out of '10'. Since I rate on a bell curve, I'd say T&B has some really good parody points but fails as a human interest or buddy show. Action sequences are basically no more than a '6' out of '10'. All possible criteria considered, I'd have no problem rating T&B on ANN's rating guide as a '7'. These are strictly my opinions, I'm pretty harsh on my scaling curves. YMMV. But .. I'm not using ANN's rating guide. Instead, I'm giving my opinion based upon my definition of 'Mediocre'. So what does 'Mediocre' mean to me? When I start talking in terms of a show being 'Mediocre', the single most important criteria to me is my personal 'time'. i.e. How much of my personal time am I willing to spend on this or that or the other? I enjoyed watching T&B once. If I were by myself and I decided to watch an Anime show, the question becomes "Would I choose to watch T&B again?" In this case, my answer is "No." Let's be perfectly clear here. I enjoyed watching T&B once but would not choose to watch it again by myself. In my scaling scheme, this means that T&B will never be more than Mediocre. On the other hand, if the question becomes "I'm with someone I know who would enjoy some aspect of T&B. Would I watch the show {with them} again?" In this case, the answer would be "Yes." In my scaling scheme, this means that T&B will never rate below Mediocre. And in point of fact, I have several friends who work for advertising agencies. I know they'll just die laughing at some of the advertising parodies. In all likelyhood, T&B will most likely become their best introduction to Anime because of the excellence of the advertising parodies combined with the minimal plotlines and relatively superficial character interactions {in my opinion, much more suited for typical American audiences}. i.e. T&B will work a lot better for them than it does for me. Note that my 'rating' is not directly about T&B. This is an important distinction. Instead, my rating is related to my judgment regarding whether or not T&B is worth watching. This really is very, very different from what you may be used to. Generally, most ratings guides try to give you some arbitrary measure so that you can make a determination if you want to watch a show or not. My rating tells you directly that I thought the show was worth watching at least once. Now, if this post has interested you and perhaps given you a better idea as to where my 'rating' perspective comes from, feel free to go back to my post I linked to earlier and (re)read that post. It should probably read quite a bit differently than how it read the first time. |
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The King of Harts
 Posts: 6712 Location: Mount Crawford, Virginia |
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I haven't read the whole thing yet, but you should probably know how the rating system works here before using it as your subject. Basically, things like this:
don't happen. It's a well crafted formula Dan (the man who made the encyclopedia in case you don't know since you're new) has concocted and keeps under tight wraps so no one can learn how to manipulate it. Also, the scale goes from 1-11, not 10. |
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jsc315
 Posts: 925 |
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well from your definition you have it all wrong. "mediocre" means something that is just generic or average and is not good or bad in one way or another. It exists just to be that and emotes no positive or negative reinforcement. It's something that is bland and uninteresting.
mediocre adjective second-rate, average, ordinary, indifferent, middling, pedestrian, inferior, commonplace, vanilla (slang), insignificant, so-so (informal), banal, tolerable, run-of-the-mill, passable, undistinguished, uninspired, bog-standard http://www.thefreedictionary.com/mediocre You rate Tiger and Bunny as something that is mediocre yet never even gave it much of a chance at all. I'm with you the first episode. I did not care for it all that much but gave it another try and after the 1st episode and it became a lot more entertaining. As someone who isnt really a big fan of it but do enjoy watching it and can see that Tiger and Bunny is far from just Average. What you think something is and what something actually is much different. You may feel a certain way about something and that's fine but I think you misunderstand what even you are trying to explain. |
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egoist
 Posts: 7762 |
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Always considered it 0-10. I know that there's definitely a bunch of stuff out there that deserve a 0 rating, but I don't think I'd be capable of watching it, which is why my ratings nowadays are a bit more objective and rely on numbers rather than the simplified system imposed by ANN. I'd definitely make more use of lower ratings if I stuck with it like I used to, but after I started using the numerical scale instead it became very clear that a lot of stuff I'd otherwise rate very low really didn't deserve a score of 0/10, 1/10, 2/10, or 3/10. I believe at some point my average rating was 6, and I don't recall being satisfied with it. So instead I erased all of it and started rating only what I watched afterwards with the average of 7. Series that get a 7 are above mediocre to me, and often ended up there for being a little too generic for its own good, or had great stuff but too many flaws that weighted it down. Now 6/10 is a rating for mediocre shows. Not technically bad, but sub-par for the most part. Another thing that I noticed is that people who often rate stuff very low hardly take the art and animation into account, while others rating something too high will often overlook or just blindly ignore writing flaws (< guilty of that). |
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PBCurious
Posts: 7 |
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Definitely 'My bad!' Point of information: I've been favorably impressed with the ANN ratings system and found it useful for leading me to some other shows I found of further interest. I didn't mean to construe the ANN rating guide negatively. I also recognize the inclusion of descriptive phrases as a positive hedge against people's tendency for differential scaling. That said, it's not possible to guarantee the same scaling from everyone and I believe my point stands. And, despite the relatively refined descriptive phrases, different people will take them differently. i.e. The take away is that I respect ANN rating methodology as far as it can go but I still take it with a grain of salt. On the other hand, my 'rating' considerations apply in an area not addressed at all {I believe} by any rating system. It's this. Time is a factor in all considerations. How much of a factor is going to depend on everything in one's life. Therefore, the decision to do something always, either consciously or unconsciously, always incorporates time as a consideration. Time always passes and can never be recovered. Therefore, if you know you're only going to watch a show once, than how can you ever rate it anything other than Average or Mediocre no matter what you may think of it quality wise? It's my belief that people should stop and ask themselves: "How many times do I think I will ever watch this or that show?" before they ever sit down and gush about how great a show is. If they don't ever realistically expect to watch a show more than 3 times, how can they claim it's "Great!". This is certainly something to think about. As an example, take your own collection of Anime or Manga and make two lists: List 1 - List of the best shows in the order you think is best. List 2 - List of shows you've watch most often in decending order of most watched. I'm virtually certain those lists will not be the same. All give you some examples of my own from my collection of Science-Fiction/Fantasy books. I have over 3,000 meatlive volumes and over 10,000 ebooks so this is a meaningful collection. In particular, my '10 best Sci-Fi/Fantasy' would never include anything by Edgar Rice Burroughs. For those of you who don't know, he was the creator of Tarzan. Books include 'Pelucidar of Mars", "At the Earth's Core", "Land the Time Forgot", "The Moon Maid" and tons more. The reality was that he was a bad writer. He has very poor grammar usage and generally poor English skills. For that reason, none of his books simply would ever make my list of top 10. What he was good at was he knew how to tell a story. On my list of top 25 books I've read most often, there are definitely a few Burroughs books which would make it. In the opposite direction, Olaf Stapledon's "Starmaker" probably would make my list of top 25 Sci-Fi ever even though I've read it only once and even though no one anywhere has ever considered making a movie of it. Ratings are like anything else, you have to understand what's being measured and you have to decide if what's being measured is relevant to you. Applying my current rating scheme to these books would put about half of Burroughs books in my personal "Good" or "Best" categories. While poor Olaf's books would only be 'Mediocre'. And a sad day it is too. Especially since Isaac Asimov considered "Starmaker" to be the best Science Fiction book ever written. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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The King of Harts, empirical evidence that I have personally witnessed tells me your assertion is incorrect. There are indeed quite a number of people here at ANN who rarely go below "Not Really Good", even for shows they didn't like at all. Not only do I notice it when I'm browsing people's MyAnime listings, but I also hear it from people who actually straight-out state that they rarely rate low, only mid-to-high. I have also seen a couple of people who refuse - or are unusually reluctant - to rate things as "Masterpiece". Additionally, there is the small matter that people, on average, watch Anime they think they will like and refrain from watching Anime that don't appeal to them. Which means, it is skewed anyway towards the high end, especially for titles that people actually finished. This incidentally is why the average rating at ANN supposedly starts with a seven, not a five or six. Moral of the story? The rating which one person uses as mediocre, another person might think denotes bottom-of-the-barrel quality. |
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~~EpiC~~
 Posts: 243 |
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You know, I have to disagree with you on many of the points you raised. Particularly this issue of "time". I'm sure this may work for your own personal subjective reasons. But this does not apply to everyone. I rarely watch shows multiple times. Rarely. And quite frankly, the shows I would watch multiple times I usually wouldn't consider the best. Or if I'm watching it again its because I missed something beforehand. And you know what, many people do the same thing. For me, the best moments, the best "time" spent, is time I don't even have to go back to watch again or do again. It was magical the first time. If I only need to watch it once and I got the most out of it once, why should watching it again improve its value? What it appears you are trying to do is make "more time spent" = better = more fun. And just because you are willing to spend time rewatching a series, doesn't even mean you have to like it. As an extension of this, why should time wisely spent only be measured on how much time you spend watching it? What about all the time you spend talking about it with friends, researching it, thinking about it? Basically, I find your time logic rather flawed. And I a few more problems with this mindset that I haven't even listed. Also, I don't understand how you can fairly judge a show like Tiger and Bunny, only on its first episode. Its a 26 episode series. It is impossible to accurately say it will fail at character relationships in one episode. It's also nearly impossible to say its pace is too fast with one episode. |
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JaffaOrange
 Posts: 254 |
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If I ever had to rate, 5 (middle point) would be where I exacted an equal amount of enjoyment to boredom, repulsion, exasperation, etc.
It doesn't have anything to do with how much I will remember it or if I would recommend it to someone; after all, people like different things. My example of this would be Panty and Stocking. Half the time it was fun to watch, the other half bored me. Different ratings have different connotations. The mediocrity described in the OP seems seem suitably described in a letter grade. A rating of 1 to 10 has a different feeling to that of percentages and that of stars. |
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Kruszer
 Posts: 7992 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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Personally, something is "mediocre" to me if it's rating on a scale from 0-10 is in the mid-range, a 5, 4, or 3 in other words. For me that's about 137 titles. These are titles I felt has value as a time passer but were also kind of boring or possessed minimalistic characters.
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Mister V
 Posts: 1000 |
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'Mediocre' has extremely strong negative connotations (as evidenced by the definition a couple of posts up), and because of their weight it does not mean 'average'. If one is polite, calling something mediocre means it's absolutely worthless. That said, of course you're entitled to calling T&B mediocre, it's just that the "average" bar for me, personally, is somewhere between 'Decent' and 'Good'.
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NonoAsumy
Posts: 90 |
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It would be really awesome if the "average" anime were somewhere between decent and good ^^ |
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Jen526
 Posts: 124 |
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I agree with ~~EpiC~~ that this is a little off-base. Given the premise of your original post, maybe you didn't mean to make it sound like such an absolute? "How often I expect to rewatch something" is certainly a valid element for one's personal rating criteria, but it's far from universal. I don't generally rewatch series *at all*. I could count on one hand the titles that I've seen multiple times. And yet, it would be silly to assume that there aren't some shows that I consider "Great!" "Time" is simply factored into my ratings more in terms of "Was watching Show X time well spent?" and "Would I recommend someone else spend time watching it?" That said, I sympathize that it's not always easy to use ratings to express the range of one's opinion on a show. I've been updating my ANN list lately with full ratings and comments, and balancing the questions like "How much did I personally enjoy this?" vs. "Would I actually recommend this to other people?" vs. "What is the *objective* quality of the series?" is always a dilemma for me. |
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wcsinn
 Posts: 186 |
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Interesting topic, here are a few of my thoughts (in no particular order):
I like the fact that Jen526 finds it "a dilemma" to rank titles - it should be, it means he his struggling to find an objective and not a totally personal basis for his comments. It s very possible to think a work is well done and worth while, while not liking it personally. That is a wide spread fault I personally find amongst anime reviewers - the tendency to attack anything they don't personally find appealing. Frankly, some of my favorite series are ones which were panned horribly by critics and reviewers. |
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EireformContinent
 Posts: 977 Location: Łódź/Poland (The Promised Land) |
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wcsinn, often when I see ratings visualisation it looks like most of fans (not only anime ones) use binary system: 1 or 10, masterpiece or crap and nothing between. It's pretty frustrating to read comments to your reviews- you spend time writing about pros and cons to get an impression that everyone looks just on that stupid numbers. No, I;m not objective. No one is. Behind my opinion stays many factors like my age, experience, mood and other circumstances. That all is explained, but most of the readers in best case seem to catch first and last sentence.
I hate number ratings. What does they say? Nothing at all. You won't know from them that Utena had limited amount of money, but found the way to overcome that. Won't explain moral dilemmas shown in Black jack. Won't say that Dragon Ball once gave me so strong emotions that now I like it despite obvious flaws. And won't say that I've thrown Toriko away, because the protagonist's way of eating reminds me bulimic episodes. With longer opinions, based on certain arguments you can dispute, make a polemic, or see show in other light- that makes me a part of a fandom. With numbers and one word opinions it's terribly boring. Ps. Does the "mediocre" anime exist? I mean, plain, with no obvious flaws, but with nothing special to catch attention? Even if so I haven't gone across it for last 6 years. Is something catched our attention there must be an aspect that differ it from others: plot, ideas, characters, music or plain stupidity that makes it so bad that's good for waiting. |
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wcsinn
Posts: 186 |
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I agree - numeric ratings leave much to be desired, but they do have their place - it is a way to quickly assign a value or perception, and while they are of little real value when taken in isolation, they do take on more meaning when used in the larger context - i.e. I find a reviewer with whom I seem to share similar tastes, I may give his evaluations (even numerical ones) credence while I wouldn't pay much attention to the simple numeric ratings of an unknown reviewer. But where I feel numeric ratings come into their own is when you have a sizable user base and can implement them within a score comparison program, one of the the "people who voted similarly to you also liked" types of programs that are slowly becoming more common. When done right, they can be incredibly accurate. I also like your inclusion of age as a determining factor, I hadn't thought about age, but on reflection it may well be one of the bigger contributing factors. Also culture and ethnicity can play a part - some groups will naturally tend to have different tastes - especially concerning comedy. I didn't mean to imply I am totally objective either, as you said our opinions are all influenced by a variety of factors, but most people refuse to even try to be objective - quickly attacking and belittling anything they do not personally finding compelling. This is unfortunate when found in amateur reviewers, but it has been my experience that it is also found frequently in so called professionals as well. It seems to me that there is often an unspoken train of thought among anime lovers that you some how are not a 'true fan' unless you like certain series and agree with certain ideas and concepts. In general, I think many take the entire subject of anime way too seriously. |
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