Sometime before Ganriki.org went online, I discussed with friends my approach for the project by running down a quick list of everything the site was not going to contain: no listicles, no linkbait headlines, and — something that threw one friend of mine for a bit of a loop — no star or numerical ratings for reviews. My rationale for that last decision was simple: these aren't buyer's guides, but conversations about the substance of the show. Once upon a time, in a previous gig, I'd tried to provide some hopeless semblance of buyer's-guide objectivity, but all that did was made me realize a bigger truth: You get more interesting conversations about these things when you quit pretending to be "objective".
Objectivity doesn't exist when it comes to talking about entertainments, let alone art. We respond to these things from nowhere but ourselves — our experiences, our prejudices, our understandings. This is why the news-service review blurbs featured on Amazon and other such sites are always such non-commital, wishy-washy affairs — they're designed to get someone to buy it, save maybe in the most egregious cases, and so they err on the side of always saying something that sounds complementary to at least one set of ears.
Every time I've labored to put all that subjectivity aside and provide people with "balance" and "fairness", all I ever produced was porridge. I was under something of that kind of obligation in a previous gig, and during that entire period I think I produced maybe one or two reviews I would be proud to point to now. And in each one of those cases, I was talking about a show that a) I already liked and b) was easy to make a spirited defense for because c) there was an existing fanbase for it that would have been happy to hear such praise.
I'm under no such obligation anymore, and that's a relief. And that applies to talking about the shows I like as well as the shows I don't — in fact, if anything, I've found that being freed up in this way allows me to stop pretending the best shows are also perfect shows, and to stop trying to contrive my advocacy as if it were an objective proclamation of excellence. It's bogus objectivity I have the biggest problem with — objectivity that's really advocacy in another guise.
Some of my favorite anime made for a better discussion when approached from the point of view that it's their flaws that make them interesting at least as much as their merits do. Any discussion of, say, Evangelion becomes livelier once you get past the shopworn homilies about the show's greatness (its psychological dimensions, its intentional and unintentional allegories, etc.), and also discuss how the show's flaws and limitations have cast the longest shadow, how its influence on subsequent shows has been at least as much limiting and baneful as it has been liberating and bold.
If nothing else, such an approach helps people make their arguments as plainly and unpretentiously as possible. It lets you see your own arguments for what they really are, and not merely what you want them to be. I don't mind it when someone defends a show I think is lousy by saying it made them laugh; in fact, that's as valid a defense for a show as most people are likely to have when they're not critics. What I mind is when someone defends a lousy show by trying to pretend their tastes have nothing to do with it. The reverse, too: if I think a show is boring or trite, I know that just coming out and saying it is only half the argument. I've got to give some hint of where I'm coming from, and provide some idea of what isn't trite or boring in my eyes.
A friend of mine, with the same kind of critical and aesthetic passion for video games that I have for anime, once talked about how video game reviews often fall short for their intended audience. "Lots of people want this magical, 'objective' review," he said, "and the secret is that 'objective' means 'the same bias as me' the vast majority of the time." What such people want is not a discussion, but flattery. When they find someone who reflects their line of thinking, they turn to them all the more casually to prop up what in their heart they already know to be true. It's easy to talk about why something is great; everyone has an argument for that in their heart. It's harder, and more interesting, to talk about why something is great despite its flaws.
The best way to avoid the trap of bogus objectivity, as I see it, is to use one's illusion. Start with your subjectivity as an assumed truth, lay it on the table, and then proceed outwards from there. Everyone's got an opinion, and if all of them stink, we might as well own up to that as part of making them all stink a little less.
