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There are almost no good manga reviewers on the internet.
(I'm not a hundred percent positive about print, but I'd be willing to bet a six-pack that there also aren't many good manga reviewers published in English-language North American print venues who aren't already making themselves known on the internet.)
There are lots--no, make that moderate sums--of English-language manga reviews on the internet, but very few of them rise above simple opinion, and most of the opinions are poorly argued. MangaBlog and Journalista do what I suspect is a depressingly thorough job of listing weekly "manga reviews," which is to say, reading reactions mostly in response to individual volumes of manga, which is an awful, just awful method of discussing serial stories.* First volumes, last volumes, pivotal storyline twists and maybe special content: these things may merit individual treatment; otherwise, issue-by-issue or volume-by-volume reviews are almost as silly as reviews of individual cartoons or comic strips in the funny pages. Serial art cannot be meaningfully judged by random selections.
Selections from serial art can be reacted to, or meaningfully discussed by readers invested in an ongoing storyline. I will read discussions of individual volumes of say, Nana, although I will only do so after I'm caught up, because I don't want to be spoiled, and non-specific commentary is useless unless I know what it's talking about. There is certainly a purpose to discussing how a story is advanced, and the mechanisms by which it is advanced. Generally, though, meaningful and lasting insight into a story is made after it's completed, or at significant intervals, which do not conveniently correspond to volume breaks.
I think this is a contributing factor to the inanity of so many manga reviews--even in the rare occasions when people try to tackle critical reviewing properly, they cripple themselves by focusing too closely on a small portion of a larger whole. It's like trying to review a painting by looking at a textbook detail, or a sequence of textbook details; it doesn't mean anything until you try to put it all together.
I think there is also another really big factor in the lack of good reviews and good reviewers: so many of the actually very tiny population of people writing what they think are manga reviews are amateurs, which is to say, they are not doing it not for a check, but out of love.
( Onwards. )
(I'm not a hundred percent positive about print, but I'd be willing to bet a six-pack that there also aren't many good manga reviewers published in English-language North American print venues who aren't already making themselves known on the internet.)
There are lots--no, make that moderate sums--of English-language manga reviews on the internet, but very few of them rise above simple opinion, and most of the opinions are poorly argued. MangaBlog and Journalista do what I suspect is a depressingly thorough job of listing weekly "manga reviews," which is to say, reading reactions mostly in response to individual volumes of manga, which is an awful, just awful method of discussing serial stories.* First volumes, last volumes, pivotal storyline twists and maybe special content: these things may merit individual treatment; otherwise, issue-by-issue or volume-by-volume reviews are almost as silly as reviews of individual cartoons or comic strips in the funny pages. Serial art cannot be meaningfully judged by random selections.
Selections from serial art can be reacted to, or meaningfully discussed by readers invested in an ongoing storyline. I will read discussions of individual volumes of say, Nana, although I will only do so after I'm caught up, because I don't want to be spoiled, and non-specific commentary is useless unless I know what it's talking about. There is certainly a purpose to discussing how a story is advanced, and the mechanisms by which it is advanced. Generally, though, meaningful and lasting insight into a story is made after it's completed, or at significant intervals, which do not conveniently correspond to volume breaks.
I think this is a contributing factor to the inanity of so many manga reviews--even in the rare occasions when people try to tackle critical reviewing properly, they cripple themselves by focusing too closely on a small portion of a larger whole. It's like trying to review a painting by looking at a textbook detail, or a sequence of textbook details; it doesn't mean anything until you try to put it all together.
I think there is also another really big factor in the lack of good reviews and good reviewers: so many of the actually very tiny population of people writing what they think are manga reviews are amateurs, which is to say, they are not doing it not for a check, but out of love.
( Onwards. )
