I have a lot of doubts surrounding this topic, like, what even is the purpose of a review? Are reviews recommendations or are they intended for people who have already wachted/read? (or is there more than one kind of review?)
Second, what level of spoilers is considered acceptable, if its something greatly enjoyable and unexpected but it happens on the first 10 chapters, should that be mentioned?
Third, what are the areas that should be focused on? Are there any kind of common templates or is it pure freestyle?
I understand there should be a level of freedom involved as in when one writes an essay, but Im having trouble grasping on what the actual objective of a review is and thus what the limits are.
In case it helps, I would love to write reviews on anilist or MAL about small manga Ive been enjoying, but I just have no clue how to treat it or what to write, some help would be greatly appreciated even if its not answering any of the questions directly.
Related, if someone has any guides on hand, or books, even if they are for other kinds of media, could you please tell me about them?
I love this response, dont worry about length this is in part what I was looking for. Sorry for not replying earlier I have not been near my pc for a few days and replying on my phone is a pain since I’m clumsy and often delete long responses by accident. PD: I have really been enjoying the Cynic Clinic youtube channel.
Having said that, I think a better question would have been “what is a review”, my problem mainly is that I have trouble grasping the term and its usage in each page. To clarify, If I want to recommend something I call it a recommendation and media essays are essays, you focus on whatever caught your attention as long as you are able to convey it in an interesting or thought provoking way, what I thought at the beginning of what reviews where was a general thought about the work exclusively intended for people that have already engaged with the work. My doubt has come from two places, first steam calls the “reviews” section to something that is clearly recommendations, it is extremely clear you are supposed to recommend over there, not include spoilers and generally point it towards someone interested in buying, so reviews over there arent really reviews.
Then comes Anilist, I have been using that site a lot more in the recent years for tracking purposes and I thought it would be great to engage with it a bit more towards people there since I dont usually talk about anime or manga too much irl , I saw the “review” section over the front page on each manga and usually its left empty, so I proposed to myself I should write a review. Here is where the conflict comes, it being so visible made me think it was for recommendations more than reviews but then again you could find proper reviews, recommendations and a mix of the two over there.
I wanted to be cautious just in case the review section is used for recommendations only as it would be pretty bad if people were using those spaces to see whether they should read a manga and they saw a full spoilers in first paragraph review…
Having said that I still havent decided whether to write a recommendation or more of an essay style review, both have their pros and cons and are interesting in their own right