The Anime Rating Guide exists as a way to promote the anime art form and a means to give back to the anime community with, yet another, anime site. For more information refer to posts on the
History of Anime Rating Guide,
My Interest In Anime and the post commemorating the
20th Anniversary of the Anime Rating Guide. The following is a list of the anime (and a handful of U.S., Canadian and French animation titles) that I've watched or that I own, where ratings range from 5, for the best, to 0, the worst. A handful of items, yet to be rated, are listed as NR. The
Anime List list can be filtered using the graph labels or the buttons below. Click on the column headers to sort.
What Does It Take To Be The Best?
I've been watching anime for many years and have, over time, developed a sense of what I might like or not like in terms of genres of anime. I'm drawn towards comedy, action-adventure and science-fiction. I'm not a huge fan of ninjas or giant robots, but, I have enjoyed some examples of each of the aforementioned genres. Likewise, I'm not a fan of hentai anime, but, I have dabbled in the dark arts. Over the years, I've amassed a fairly nice sized collection of anime on physical media.
So, what does it take to be counted among the elite ranks of the best anime. The main criteria that I use is subjective and comes down to two questions -- first, did I enjoy the anime? And, second, how much did I enjoy that anime? Specifically, did I buy a physical copy of the anime? And, am I willing to sit through an anime more than once? Or, did I feel compelled to buy an anime more than once?
It goes without saying, that in this age of digital distribution, that if I didn't buy an anime on physical media, the anime cannot be counted among my best -- less than my best, certainly, but, not my best. Sorry, it just can't happen. On the other hand, I've been around long enough to know a time when anime was available on Laser Disc and VHS tape and when those formats became extinct, how many anime deserved to be repurchased in the new format of the time -- DVD? Or, a bit later, Blu-ray?
Obviously, if I chose to purchase an anime more than once, I really, really liked that anime a lot and want to keep it on hand for convenient re-watching. Back in the day, the
Bubblegum Crisis Hurricane Live music video was the first anime on VHS that I physically wore out and had to re-purchase. As for the original
Bubblegum Crisis series, I purchased the entire series on individual VHS tapes and repurchased them twice on DVD. Recently, the series was remastered, yet again, on Blu-ray, but, sadly, I decided not to take the plunge. I think, though, with three purchases of the series,
Bubblegum Crisis' place as one of my best anime is assured.
Mainstream and Other Ring Datasets
I've been collecting movies for many years and managed to amass thousands of DVDs. I kept a spreadsheet with the various titles in my collection and used to produce printed books with a list of movies, but, after the movie list began to exceed 200 pages of printed text, I moved to presenting the list in electronic format. Eventually, the simple spreadsheet that held my movie list became a bit too unwieldy, so, I migrated the movie list to an
Access database. This site has three web rings that derive data from my long-suffering
Access database. Most of the content is anime-related and will be represented in the
Anime List above.
Mainstream entries are TV shows, movies, short features and commercials that probably aren't anime. The
Other ring is for literally anything that doesn't fit in the
Anime or
Mainstream rings such as convention reports and site revisions. As with the
Anime List above, click on the column headers to sort.
