User:RedWordSmith

Attention Anime Fans

Sometime Really Soon (this month, the user system and Wordpress are already in place), FanCruft will go from being a one-man show to being a community-driven wikiblog. I need people who love anime and want to talk about their favorite shows (OVA, Series, Movie, or widely available ONA). I need people who are willing to heckle the anime they hate even more.

Definition of Anime

For the purpose of this new FanCruft, anime is either:

1. Animation primarily produced or directed in Japan after ~1975 (no really old stuff).
2. Animation created in other countries which is clearly intended to mimic the "drawn" 2D animation style of Japanese animation after ~1985.

For both of the points above: when in doubt, leave it out.

What Reviewers Do

Reviewers:

1. Watch Anime. For very, very long series (Bleach, Initial D, etc), it's ok to give up after a few discs, but try to watch as much as you can.
2. Write a review.
3. FanCruft Secret Sauce: Give the anime its initial ratings in the database on a bit over two dozen factors.
4. (Optional) Crop and upload some screenshots.
5. (Optional) Cross-reference the anime to some other sites.

That's it! If you're interested in giving this a try, go ahead and add your sig below, and I'll put a message on your talk page when things are ready to go. If you know someone that's not on the wiki that might be interested, let them know about this and have them email webmaster [at] fancruft.com

Interested in Reviewing Anime

• I'm not going to stop reviewing anime myself, of course. - RWS, FanCruft 06:08, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
• I am for you. >:| M.M. 06:44, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Style Guide

• "Anime" is preferred for the plural, "animes" is acceptable if you really have to use it. Avoid diacritics or accents.
• Thumbnails:
  • Are entirely optional.
  • Always need to be exactly 200 by 154 pixels, with a caption of some sort (one word to a few sentences), to avoid breaking things.
  • Cropping the image is highly encouraged, even when it's already the right aspect ratio. In particular, subtitles should always be cropped out.
  • Thumbnails that have a character looking to the right should be flipped or mirrored so that characters look toward the review text, as long as this doesn't harm image quality. (e.g. Avoid flipping the image when it would cause english text in the background to be unreadable).
  • Avoid other edits to images. Some older thumbnails have had contrast adjustments, but even this is depreciated.
  • Thumbnails should be no "worse" than the equivalent of a scene from a PG-13 film; if you wouldn't see it on a public beach in the U.S., it shouldn't be on FanCruft.
  • Up to 3 thumbnails for most reviews, up to 4 thumbnails for a review with an average quality rating of "Must-see," "Avoid," or "Worst Anime Ever."
  • When in doubt, leave it out.
• Reviews
  • Character names: The name that's most commonly used in the most recent official English dub is preferred. Other names that point out a distinct character are acceptable. When no official dub is available, use your best judgment.
  • NO HENTAI REVIEWS. If it's on Netflix, it's almost certainly ok. If it's got people doing it, it's almost certainly not (but note important artistic exceptions such as Kara no Kyokai). Tentacles doing bad things to people are way not acceptable.
    • In this case, when in doubt, go ahead and post (reviews can be deleted and archived off-site easily enough if you make a mistake). We'd rather have a temporary mistake of putting something in the database that doesn't belong than permanently leaving out an artistic work.
    • Reviews should be in good taste, even if the anime is not.
    • ALWAYS apply a high "fanservice" or "violence" rating for questionable anime; a 9 or 10 in either category, as appropriate.
  • Generally, use good grammar and spelling. American English is preferred (I'm from the U.S., so the articles that FanCruft is starting out with are already in this style). British English is acceptable and should be left as-is when possible. Anything else is acceptable as long as it's more or less readable.
  • Reviews should be at least a good solid paragraph. Longer is better, but don't go over three pages of text; no one is going to read your dissertation on the hidden Etruscan symbolism of Neon Genesis Evangelion here.
  • Keep in mind that the first hundred words or so may show up in search results. The first paragraph should be an introduction and give a broad overview of the anime.
• Ratings
  • There are no right or wrong ratings, but please don't leave all of the sliders at "5" just because that's where they start. Put some thought into it. Category ratings are the key ingredient for FanCruft's "Secret Sauce."
• Cross-references
  • Are entirely optional.
  • IDs for Netflix, ANN, Wikipedia, and CrunchyRoll are more useful than the others, if you don't want to look for everything (and you probably don't, it's time-consuming and not fun).