What factors go into a really good Animation ranking list?

B

bigred

New member
As everyone can no doubt see, there's been a lot of discussion over the last week or so about animation lists.

I've been taking some time myself to think about how a list might be best put together to get a list that is truly as good as it can possibly be.

Here's the factors I've been toying around with myself, mind everyone, I would probably divide them up in a way that made slightly more sense if you were filling out say a survey.
  • Animation Quality: This one is pure and simple, how good is animation quality as a whole?
  • Sound Quality: This one sounds straight forward, but not as straight forward as I think most people would take it. The mark of a truly great series is the use of its background and preferential sounds as well as the quality of the voices. Did the studio make good use of it?
  • Music Quality: This is a big one in my book. Outstanding music in a series can turn a mediocre series into something phenomenal, especially if its very well used.
  • Storyboard: Did the story have a very good story to tell or was it really just going episode per episode and trying to make it work?
  • Story flow: Did the story really flow well? Were their hiccups in the series that made it feel the flow shifted or didn't flow evenly?
  • Voice Actor Quality: Was there a good array of voice actors? Did they do a good job?
  • Aging: Did the series age well? Is it still very re-watchable and very enjoyable today?
  • Longevity: How long did the series last in its original run? Was it a series that had mass produced episodes to fill a TV void or was the series so good that it constantly got renewed?
  • Repalyability: Did the series get a lot of replay? Was it one of those "go to" series that can still fill in unused slots on the TV and garner a strong audience ?
  • Syndicationability: Was it a series that everyone wanted to throw on their networks to pull in a strong audience for those unused time slots?
  • Reception: Was the series viewed very favorably?
  • Industry Affect: Did the series have a lasting affect on the animation or any other related industry ?
  • Marketability: Did the series pull in commercial sales for the network it was broadcast on?
  • Generated Sales: Did the series generate a lot of product sales for the series?

Those are the major factors off the top of my head that I feel help us understand the total impact of a series. Is there anything I am missing? Does anything seem excessive or redundant?

If I were to build a survey for something like this, I would probably also group series by a few different categories to help everyone judge the series for its merit compared to similar series. This would probably also be for later sorting / filtering so you could look at say "Top 10 animes in the US" or "Top comedies series in the US".

On my Animation Spreadsheet, I currently use:
- Action
- Adventure
- Comedy
- Fantasy
- Mystery
- Sci-Fi

Right now I am kind of sticky about 1 category to a series and very often thats not apt. I'd probably have to move to more of a check mark list. (IE Does this series fit into this, this, this and this category?)

Thoughts?
 
The thing about animation ranking lists is that they end up being very subjective. You can try all you want, but you're gonna end up playing favorites. Take myself for example. I'm a huge action cartoons fan. So even when I'm trying to be as objective as I possibly can, I end with action cartoons doing very well in my list.
 
Similar to what ABrown said, the one and only thing I take into consideration when making a list (of anything, really) is whether or not I simply like the show.
 
Thats been a big problem with most ranking lists that have been made to date.

I had been thinking of ways to curb subjectivity in lieu of objectivity. Frankly though, I think you'd end up curbing a lot of subjectivity through sheer pool.

It would be interesting to get a questionnaire together and look for at least 1000 people to fill it out completely.

I had also been thinking weighting responses might be helpful, but I think simply having a large pool of persons participating would be the first way to try to make the list.

Like I've said in the Geek Cast thread, this is something that you can't do once and expect to get the best results. You'll have to do it several times and continue to compare results. Inside of that, newer animation releases are probably also going to change people's responses too.

That being said, what I am looking for is feedback from community members that if YOU were participating in such a pool, what factors would you want to see? What factors (particularly the ones listed already) are ones you don't think are necessary? Etc.
 
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