Green and Red Bracket Blog Critiquing – Part 4 of 4 and 1&2 of 4

Same routine, but I will examine the last four blogs in the Green Bracket and then, hitting the Red. If you are the author of these blogs, please take the criticism with a grain of salt. (Image Source)

Heart of Manga

This blog mostly consists of reviews of Manga. The content is good and the design is rather eye catching. However, the pages load a bit slowly. To fix this, I suggest installing a caching plugin like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache as WordPress tends to be on the heavy side, especially with a lot of traffic.

Ultimatemegax’s Blog

Honestly, the content doesn’t really catch my attention even though it’s well written.  The author of this blog basically reviews Japanese releases and posts some translation resources. If you buy these releases on a frequent basis, you might find it useful. For me, I wouldn’t since I don’t buy these releases, except for a few CD releases once in a while.

Also, the design is pretty dull. I can’t blame the author since you can’t really do much to customize it without the design upgrade.

Deluscar

Your posts are very enjoyable to read, although I did read one of the editorials a few months back. Also I liked the design, except for the minor issue with the categories. If you write more than one post on a certain series, it’s best to separate them as subcategories under the Anime category so people can view the posts for a certain series.

Kansatsu~観察~

The content is decent, but it doesn’t give me that much excitement. Also, if you are going to do a first impression posts, I would like you to go more in depth on what parts you liked since it’s too brief. In addition, don’t tag the show, but rather create subcategory for each title under Anime to make them more accessible. Most people just ignore tags since you can’t view all of them.

With that match over, this concludes the constructive criticism for the Green Bracket. During that time, I have compiled all the votes and put them in an Excel spreadsheet so you can compare how many votes each blog got in this bracket. I also included some extra statistics such as Blogging Platform and Domain Name to see the further breakup of the participants.  I will do this for each one once all the voting gets done.

Now onward to the Red Bracket!

Metanorn

Metanorn has evolved since the last Aniblog Tourney and now, they have some great writers. Although they do summaries for episodic posts, at least they separate the thoughts so people can just skip to it if they only want the person’s impressions. Also, Foshizzel’s screenshots are hilarious.

Aside from episodic posts, they have various features such as staff birthday posts, editorials, podcasts and the Aniblog Tourney coverage.

The Kotatsu

Bobbierob has a good writing style, which makes it a joy to read. His design look looks good too. The only downside is that he doesn’t update often, but I understand because of the schooling.

Avvesione’s Anime Blog

Finally, there is a blog that focuses on mostly opinion in its episodic posts, although there are others out there. Since I haven’t watched most of the series out there, I can’t really comment. However, the design could use a header image to make it look better.

The Otaku’s Blog

It’s nice to see posts focusing on various topics, but the writing feels rough. As a result, this makes it a somewhat dull experience. I know it varies from author to author, but I think they will benefit if they worked on making their writing flow better.  This way, readers would benefit since they will read something enjoyable.

As for the layout, it looks clean.

Ambivalence , or is it ambiguity?

I’m very familiar with Valance’s writing and he has improved through the years. Although there are a few typos here and there, it’s not too noticeable since his writing has a lot of personality. He also writes some Meta like the China post, but they are still interesting. As for the other authors who write for his blog, they have great posts as well.

Hachimitsu

Although this author’s writing is good, the problem I had was the advertisements since they were intrusive yesterday. It’s not the case now since the author was probably messing with advertisement plugins or something. Aside from that, the design looks good, except for the “I Like This” link sticking out from the rest of the content.

Shonen Beam

Since I’m not interested in any Shouen manga, I cannot comment on the content. However, the design looks really good. However, I like to see an archive page so people can view posts you made in the past by date or category.

Sequential Ink

While the content is not bad, the design instantly turned me off since there is no life to it. First off, you should choose a different theme since it’s overused. Second, add pictures to your reviews to bring excitement. Having all text will put anyone to sleep, even if the content is good.

Bokutachi no Blog

Considering that this blog is around for a long time, there is already a readership from it’s pleasurable content.

The G-Empire

Overlord-G focuses on various topics aside from anime like gaming and focuses a lot on Yuri. Although the content is okay, the writing is on the casual side and has a lot of personality. My only problem is the layout since the background makes it look cheesy.  I think its best to make a header image and just have a simple background.

Maserbeamdotcom & The Check-in Station

Both blogs are pretty much the same in post quality, so I won’t comment on that. However, the two could use better themes to present their content. Also for the latter, do not use hash tags in your post titles, they distract the readers. They belong in tweets, not in titles. ¶