Round 2, Day 7
Match 13 – #5 Karmaburn vs. #69 Major Arcana
Design: I’m rather shocked that I’ve never visited Karmaburn, considering they’re way up at a #5 seed. In any case, I seemed to get link overload from the double sidebars on the page. It just seems distracting to me. The list of links almost just needs to be in their own dropdown, like tags are, or somehow better organized so it’s not just a link-plosion. Major Arcana has a pretty large header image (300px tall is pushing it for me), but otherwise the design looks pretty good, so I think it wins the design category by a mile. Winner: Major Arcana
Post Rate/Style: Posting rate for neither blog was to the point where I just stopped counting, but they’re still OK, and they’re pretty much equal to each other, so I don’t think it’s really an issue. Karmaburn is another blog with a bad case of IPIP, and the fact that it widens full screen on my 1600×1200 resolution screen doesn’t necessarily help. Maybe if it were a bit narrow, it’d be better, but the paragraphs are still rather short. Again, I think I just like Major Arcana’s post style better. Not as broken up with images, and just overall cleaner looking. Winner: Major Arcana
Content: I guess Karaburn’s writing is OK, and most of their posts seem to be review instead of recap, which is good. I’m not sure there is very much that I saw to say anything beyond what I’ve already said. There isn’t very much good or bad about the content from what I see. Meanwhile, Major Arcana writes just as good, if not better. And they have pretty pictures. Winner: Major Arcana
Overall: Sweeps seem to be becoming more common
Winner: Major Arcana
Match 14 – #28 Mega Megane Moe vs. #92 Mecha Guignol
Design: 3M (what I’ll call Mega Megana Moe) has a super-slick design, though it’d be nice if one didn’t need JavaScript to view the sidebar. However, having said that, the buttons to select different sidebar sections is sweet, though, being a reader of Web Pages That Suck, I do have to point out that the buttons are pretty much mystery meat navigation. Luckily there are only 5 so it’s not too hard to just click through them, though what the last couple are aren’t really obvious, even after you click on them (I’m assuming recent posts and recent comments). Perhaps they could use a header to let you know. Mecha Guignol is on wordpress.com, so there isn’t very much I can say about their design, though the sidebar looks a tad funky there, like there are two sidebars for a couple of things (categories, then search and calendar being next to each other), but then narrows down to a single column. I just think overall 3M’s sweet design wins out here. Winner: Mega Megane Moe
Post Rate/Style: 3M runs into a bit of a wall here: 7 posts for the entire year of 2010 so far, and while there are some months with some decent post totals, regular posting seems to be a historical problem when looking at the archive post counts. Mecha Guignol, meanwhile, has no problem with posting regularly. Mecha Guignol has a few borderline cases of IPIP (well, not really IPIP, but not having a lot of content between pictures), but it’s sparse. Also MG’s post rate would make up for it anyway. Winner: Mecha Guignol
Content: Since December, the posts on 3M appear to consist of: the 12 days of anime posts and very infrequent posts about ISML. Some of the content on 3M is some of the most interesting and potentially labor-intensive stuff. Unfortunately, there just isn’t that much of it. Mecha Guignol writes a lot of quality posts, and while some of them might not be as involved as a couple of 3M’s, I think overall there is a greater diversity and a greater amount of interesting content. Winner: Mecha Guignol
Overall: I really think this was a case of “what if” for 3M. I think if they posted a bit more often, even a couple times a week, and faced a not-as-fearsome opponent, they would have had a serious shot at getting my vote. However, 3M just posts too infrequently to get it, especially against a blog that posts quality content as frequently as they do, like Mecha Guignol.
Winner: Mecha Guignol
Round 2, Day 8
Match 15 – #12 That Anime Blog vs. #53 Ani-Gamers
Design: For being a major blog, THAT seems to have quite a few glaring design flaws. First, their new banners have a mysterious gray space below them, probably because the height for the banner area in the CSS is set to be taller than the banners themselves. Also, where’s the categories? Archives at least have a link, even if shoved to above the banner. Also, while this is more minor, the text in the footer is utterly unreadable. Ani-Games doesn’t look quite as slick as THAT, but they at least have “labels,” which I guess are the categories, even if they’re a bit broad (like “anime”). I like the concept of THAT’s design better, but those flaws start to add up. Winner: Ani-Gamers
Post Rate/Style: Neither blog has a problem with post rate, so that’s a non-issue in this contest. THAT has a bad case of IPIP (and in some cases it’s more like IPPPIPPP on a couple posts). On some of their non-episode posts it’s OK, but episode blogging is what they do most. Worse, this seems to be an overall post design decision, since it doesn’t seem to differ between authors (except maybe Crusader). Ani-Gamers doesn’t have a lot of pretty pictures, but they have a good amount of readable content. Winner: Ani-Gamers
Content: THAT has a good number of writers, all whom write pretty well. However, beneath a few paragraphs and text and lots of large screenshots, I found that they had only about an average of actual “review” for each episode, with the rest being recap text. Meanwhile, Ani-Gamers writes more about more different things, with no real discernible drop in quality. Winner: Ani-Gamers
Overall: When I was about to start this match up, I thought it might be a sweep. I just didn’t think it would go this way.
Winner: Ani-Gamers
Match 16 – #21 Nigorimasen! vs. #44 Anime Instrumentality
Design: Is it just me, or is the background for the entire page on Nigorimasen! gray? Also, while it’s not a big deal, I kind of always disliked pages shoved off to one side of the screen or another instead of being centered. And the gray thing is bothering me. Anime Instrumentality may not be the slickest looking blog out there, but there isn’t really anything particularly bad about it. Winner: Anime Instrumentality
Post Rate/Style: On post rate, Nigorimasen! has posted only 10 times since the first of March, if my count is correct. That’s less than once a week, which is clearly in my danger category. Otherwise, I don’t see anything particularly wrong with their post style. Anime Instrumentality also has an issue with posting a lot, though they did decent in March, and it seems to be better than Nigorimasen! in any case. Though, I guess when one is writing mostly about anime OSTs, you can only write posts so often too. I also like how they have music samples intermixed in their posts. Winner: Anime Instrumentality
Content: I think Nigorimasen has a lot of good, well written content on his blog, especially about the CPM situation. He just doesn’t post a lot. Meanwhile, Anime Instrumentality is able to write quite a bit, despite being a blog about OSTs…and they have samples! I think this category is very close, but it goes to AI by a nose. Winner: Anime Instrumentality
Overall: Another sweep. I think Nigorimasen’s lack of posting and quirky design really hurt it.
Winner: Anime Instrumentality
Josh's Anime Blog 
Thanks for the review o/ especially since the grading commentary about Marcana that I could use to assess my blog has been sadly lacking, for both rounds ;-;
Never thought the header size would bother people, since it’s still 1/3-2/5 screen size on my browser and leaves much of first post exposed without scrolling. I purposefully expanded that from the original theme but… mmmh
Glad you like the art, since picking them sometimes takes as long as it does to write the post XD
Also, not sure if you’re aware of this: but with paged posts, only the first page shows up on feedreader and not even a link to the other two.
Ha, sorry if I started short-cutting some of the reviews by the time I got to today’s blogs, but it probably literally took me 4 to 5 hours to write this post lol.
I think 300 px is probably OK, though I’m not sure I’d go much larger. It’s fine on this screen, but personally I’m not really fan of having to scroll to actually get to the content lol.
And grr on the paged content on RSS thing. Thanks for letting me know about that. I’ll see if I can find a fix for it.
Yes, I admit my “quirky design” sense is not great (I need to actually learn CSS) and I’m up against a worthy opponent in zzeroparticle, who is more motivated to actively write posts than I am and has found a particular focus in anime music. The current background color on my blog is #F2F3F4 so I guess that’s in the realm of gray or off-white. Thanks for the compliments about the content itself.
I am actually delighted to hear that my writing is quite good :)
I must admit that I should post more often but that would be impossible for me considering many factors in my RL. I’ll just hope for the best and do my best for now.
btw, I’m glad I got featured in your blog ;D
I think my design is best described as being functional. I could probably use a facelift at some point though, so if there’s any specific suggestions on what I could change up, do let me know!
Also, writing about OSTs is hard not to mention it’s a weird niche in the anime fandom to begin with. I’m just glad that people have enjoyed AI thus far, and that’s all the motivation I need to keep on posting.
Thanks for the critique!
Hmm, got any suggestions on alternates to the IPIP format? I can’t tell you how long I’ve wrestled with it, but ultimately stayed with it, because it was the most linear and functional format.
The banner part is my fault. Will have to fix that in the weekend when I am free :P. Categories need to be cleaned up internally. We noted that, but I wasn’t back earlier to fix it. On content, I am trying to beef it up soon with some discussion among the authors, so we will be making improvements as well. Thanks for the feedback ^^. It was harsh but we take all constructive criticism with good faith. If you don’t care, you won’t bother saying it, yes? :D
The categories were not shown because there are major issues with replication and the likes when we move from ab.net to our current server. Not too sure what caused it because I wasn’t active when they moved the blog.
Then, I was happily on a hiatus when I was waylaid by work and the likes. As such, the other bloggers do not really know how to deal with the monstrosity of the issue. It was left totally messy (my fault), and it was not shown because it was KIV.
Now that I am back and kicking, I will fix that. It’s my top priority other than the banners. I will try to get that done before your next review to have a more positive post ^^.
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