As the first round is coming to a close, competition is becoming fierce. As always, my review criteria won’t change as we review the last 8 Anime Blogs in this round. I will be posting this early since next week, I need to spend time studying for exams for four subjects. The next 8 blog reviews will be posted on Monday…
Before going on, this review Digest will contain screenshots of the actual website and how they look on my machine, so slow connections, beware… I’m basing all content on quality, not the blogger’s overall opinion on issues and stuff. Also, if you want to vote in the tournament, you can do it over here. Make sure to vote for us on Tuesday!
In addition, there is a followup and suggestions on what I have observed overall and problems that I have seen that some blogs should fix in the future.
Note that this post is paginated. First page is the blog reviews and second is the Round 1 followup and suggestions.
Note 2: Fanart used in this post is made by るしゅーと.
Part 6 Digest
Day 15
Match 29
UNMEI KAIHEN is mostly an episodic blog, but looking closer at the posts, the author does go pretty in depth in giving some thoughts about what he have seen and some analysis. At least it wasn’t one of those old and tiring synopsis and thoughts post that is imitated from RandomC. The author does post a editorial once in a while.
Continuing World is mostly an editorial blog and mostly focuses on mecha. Although the content is good, from my personal experience, I don’t really have much interest in the content since I have zero interest in mecha. Compared to the former, this author doesn’t seem to update often but given the effort that the former put into his posts in being interesting, this match has to go to UNMEI KAIHEN for more variety than just focusing mainly on mecha…
Match 30
At one time, The null set used to update frequently… What happened? Anyways, looking at the content, the author mostly does impressions post, editorials and reviews. Looking closer at the posts, the author like with UNMEI KAIHEN goes in depth in the material… Although the author posts very good posts, the author really needs to post a little more since this author is quite interesting.
bad luck party is a tumblr blog on Anime/Manga/Asian Drama… The problem with tumblr is that it is not a open platform like with WordPress and you need a tumblr account to interact if the author didn’t use a commenting system. The good thing here is the author did use a third party commenting system. Another problem I found is that the layout is not a really good layout since it doesn’t list any categories or tags. Also, it looks pretty dull… Compared to the former, the content quality varies and also not as in depth as with the former. The vote is pretty obvious for this match. The author really needs to post more interesting posts, be a little more formal and also be more creative with the layout. Perhaps adding a banner. I don’t know about customization with tumblr, but I’m sure it gives more customization options than WordPress.com in terms of customization so that you can be a bit more creative.
Day 15 Results
UNMEI KAIHEN and The null set
Day 16
Match 31
Since I am friends with Gargron, I will obviously work for him… Anyways, from the look of the layout, Gargron have put a lot of effort in his theme to make it look really good as he is a web designer himself. Although Gargron had admit that he isn’t the strongest writer, from the look of the other writers on the blog, they produce pretty good content which is a mix of editorial and less frequently, episodic blogging, which I have to admit, the latest one is pretty creative.
Desu ex Machina is mostly a editorial blog focusing mostly on Anime and Japan. Although I’m not voting for them, their content is pretty good and interesting for the most part. Also, not as eye catching as the former, the theme is really clean and easily navigable. If I never seen We Love Maids before, it would have been a very tough choice since both blogs are really good in my opinion.
Match 32
Since I can’t really review my blog, I will review my competitor…
The problem when I first load Anime Princess is that the blog takes a long to,e to load, mainly because the blog seems to be very image heavy. Another problem I see is the banner… It looked like it have been done with very little effort (e.g. cropping the picture and slapping the blog title and that’s it.) and it’s too big! Banners shouldn’t take 50% of of the browser window since readers now have to scroll down just to view the content. At most, banners should be 960 pixels in width and 300 pixels in height.
Also, the content quality is a bit iffy with the lack of updates… It will leave most readers uninterested in the blog.
I also found that the navigation isn’t that great. The categories is one of those lists that you need to expand to just to view the categories of the posts. Also, tags and archives are missing… I suggest adding them to the sidebar so that navigation wouldn’t be that bad.
In my opinion, Anime Princess has a lot of flaws that it needs to fix. First off, If you are going to make image heavy posts, use the “Insert More” tag so that the page will view faster. Second off, use thumbnails! When you upload the image in a post, it allows you insert images as a thumbnail, which WordPress automatically generates. This will make the page loading a lot faster compared to using an unoptimized image. Third, avoid making lists unless you have a good reason. Forth, provide better navigation. Readers are going to be frustrated when they want to view older posts. Lastly, improve the banner. Most blogs don’t have a banner that is over 300 pixels in height. Also be more creative with the banner. Don’t just crop the image and slap the blog title on the banner and call it quits. It just proves that you haven’t put much effort in the banner to make it look cool. Overall, the blog really needs a lot of work to bring it up to what I consider a really well designed blog.
Day 16 Results
We Love Maids and Chikorita157’s Anime Blog
Okay, that wraps up Round 1. When the next round starts next week, I will start to cover round 2 and review the other blogs that were given a “bye.” On the next page, I have a followup and a list of suggestions that bloggers in this round and the next round should take with a grain of salt to improve their blogs in the future.
Match 31 is tough. As you said they’re both good blogs.
I can’t wait for round two!
I think I pretty much have to agree with most of what you said in the Round 1 Followup.
I guess my only thought about the episodic blogs are that…while the Review-then-Thoughts format may not exactly be original, I think it still serves a useful purpose. I think it’s always nice to give at least a synopses of what went on in the episode, so that people who might not know have some idea of what you’re talking about. I mean, maybe you’re right and 99% of people who read an episodic blog post already know what happened in the episode, but I never like assuming that.
As far as the mobile stuff…huh, I thought I had added a plugin for that at some point, but I guess I was just looking at it but didn’t actually implement it yet. That’s really something I should do. The PageNavi plug in is also an interesting find (though aren’t paged posts already a built in function of WP?)
I looked in the WordPress Codex, and no… there is nothing on pagination. I think that is provided by the WP-Navi plugin.
I do think there needs to be a synopsis, but I don’t think the whole post should be mostly what is the episode about. The whole episode summed up in a few sentences are fine to just get a good idea what is about… but bloggers should avoid making synopses more than 1 paragraph unless there is a good reason. Also, combining it in the thoughts is fine also… there are always to do it what I have mentioned.
Anyways, I tested your blog on my iPhone 3GS and it doesn’t load the mobile site… If you using WP-Cache, it may present a problem, so set it half enable and it will run.
Hmm OK. The TinyMCE plugin I use has an option to include a “page break” in the post, so I assumed that functionality was already present. I guess that’s just in case you have a plugin that allows for it.
Yeah, I use the WP-SuperCache cause my host shut down by blog once cause it was blowing out their servers (doh). I guess I could try the half enable thing to see how it works too.
Agreed mostly with what you said in the follow up. I just realized I was missing an archives, so I’ve added that. Also realized that I post on the light side, but that’s not something I can do too much about. Time is hard to manage. 🙁
Yea, I need to put my archive widget back up. I forgot to replace it when I was messing with my blog theme. Thanks for the info.
.-= Andrew L. Budny´s last blog ..<a href= =-.
Funny how you mention Random Curiosity as fast when they’re not even faster than subs most of the time anymore.
At one time, yes. But since Omni quit so yeah…
I need to see if Blogger has a mobile tool because that’s a good idea.
As I mentioned to Josh, I’m going to try to start a shift in my episode blogging so that modern anime titles get less synopsis and older ones get my normal length synopsis. There are countless blogs covering “Angel Beats!” and so there are plenty of opportunities to get the story. However, how many blogs are covering “Dirty Pair” or “Urusei Yatsura?” In those cases, I think that a regular synopsis is justified since those could be helpful, especially for someone thinking, “What episode did Kei and Yuri stop at a gas station for a fill up?”
Also, I’m still remembering your other suggestion about my own blog and testing out some stuff. ^_^