What are your thoughts on using reviews to decide on watching an anime? – Umai Yomu Anime Blog

I have my own way of deciding if I’m going to watch an anime. For example, I’ve never watched any anime YouTubers (nor do I have any interest in doing so), and I don’t read reviews about anything I haven’t yet seen. But naturally, many of those YouTubers are quite popular, and I know that many people read reviews regardless! And that dynamic is what makes this an interesting prompt to tackle in my opinion.

In my mind, there are two main reasons why someone would check out a review for an anime they haven’t seen in order to help them decide if they want to watch it.

First is because they’re interested in the review author’s opinion of the anime. This first point is where my spoiler free reviews fall, where I try my best to describe how I feel about the series while avoiding spoilers. But spoilers or not, the value here is in the opinion, and naturally, opinions come in all shapes and sizes. So for example, one reviewer’s “worst anime I’ve ever seen” could be completely opposite to other reviewers. Which means that I feel like you sort of have to trust the reviewer’s opinions or have an idea of whether or not your tastes align with theirs.

The second reason I can think of is that the reader is actually just interested in finding out more about the anime. Sometimes the synopsis, genre(s), tag(s) aren’t enough to really grasp whether or not you actually want to start a series, and so I could see reviews being a natural next step to see if you can find that push you need to start or move on. Spoilers or not, you’re probably going to get an idea of the anime from a review, although that idea you come out with may have a slant based on the reviewer’s opinion(s).

So, what are my personal thoughts on using reviews in this way?

Well, I already mentioned in the first paragraph of this post that I don’t read any reviews pertaining to an anime I haven’t seen. However, there is a good reason for this, and that’s the fact that I feel like the majority of reviews that I come across contain spoilers.

My personal view is that a review is something that has the purpose of educating others on your opinion on something, and so to me, it makes more sense that a review is spoiler-free but still gives opinions so that the reader can decide if they want to check out the anime and enjoy it, spoiler free, as intended. Like if you look up game reviews, or tech reviews, or all kinds of reviews, typically the goal is something along the lines of answering a question like “Should you buy this? Is this worth your time?”. And that’s how I approach anime reviews as well.

But a lot of anime reviews aren’t written with that in mind at all, rather I feel like they are written more to be discussion pieces amongst people who have already experienced the anime. Like as an example, there are a lot of “reviews” that read more like a rant that is just seeking validation from others. The kind that typically contain detailed complaints or praises of specific characters, moments, concepts, et cetera. I don’t have an issue with those kinds of posts, but I don’t fully see them as reviews.

Because to me, it’s sort of along the lines of something like a Tesla Model S review that can only viewed by Tesla Model S owners… you’re already past the point of needing a review if you already own the product, right?

Once again to loop back to the actual prompt, this time I’ll give a concise answer.

I think using reviews to decide on watching an anime is a great idea in theory. But in practice, with so many anime reviews containing spoilers and disregarding readers who haven’t actually seen the anime, I don’t think it works as well. A lot of series rely on you not knowing what will happen beforehand in order to deliver their intended experience, and so reviews with spoilers can upset that.

That’s my opinion on this one, I do know that many people don’t care about spoilers at all and likely enjoy checking out reviews regardless. I can’t relate, but that is an interesting way to go about things in some ways.

So my questions for you are:

Do you ever use reviews to decide if you want to watch an anime?
And what are your thoughts on spoilers in reviews?

Until next time,
Thanks for reading.