Comparing each score

 When rating things on a numerical basis, you have a few common point systems; usually it's out of 5, out of 10, or out of 100 or just as commonly out of 10 but with a single decimal point. Technically you could get by with a 2 point rating system 1 for I don't like it, 2 for I like it, but having lower amount of points means that the score would not convey much information. You can go arbitrarily high and precise, but you may not have enough precise feelings on a work to accurately rate it such, so your scores may fluctate.

I definitely could not do out of 100, there are too many scores and consequently the positions are too sketchy in my brain. The most common rating system and the one I use is the out of 10 system. It's very intuitive to me and I can easily say where anything in particular goes. The maximum I could go up to is 30, as I do have a sense of say a light 6 vs a mid 6 vs a high 6, but it does get a little blurry between 2-3 point ranges in a 30 point system for me. However people use the out of 10 rating system differently including in ways I don't think are taking best advantage like some people making 10 good, 8 normal, 6 bad, and everything below it terrible based I presume on School Grading systems? Or people that say "this show had one scene that angered me....1/10"

I wanted to give how I use the out of 10 system by comparing each point to the point above it. For each one I'm going to compare an "average" series from both scores, and because I'm a big Magical Girl fan to make it clearer I'll be using a Magical Girl for each average rating which should make it easier to see the comparison. I will also however compare the best series from each score vs the worst series from the score above, to show where the blurry line is. There ARE series that are near the edge and could be one of two scores depending how I feel, I usually am just saying what I feel on average towards it.

1/10 vs. 2/10:

In the same way people have a positive hierarchy of values, things they value more or less and so pursue more or less, we also have a negative hierarchy of values. 1/10 and 2/10 collectively make up the score 1/5 characterized by my feeling strong negative feelings towards a work of fiction. For a long time it seemed every single reviewer said the same thing which is that their most disliked thing in fiction was boringness, they'd rather anything than to be bored. Boredom is a negative value for me but it is not THE negative value for me. For me the worst emotion to experience is disgust. I don't mean moral "disgust", outrage or offense, I mean visceral physical disgust. The difference between 1/10 and a 2/10 is that while both are series that evoke a strong negative reaction, something highly unusual as I am not really prone to strong feelings about fiction usually, a 2/10 is a work that bores me, or annoys me, or offends me, or irriates me, or any other negative value. A 1/10 is a work that disgusts me, that fills me with the gross sensation. I cannot say they are on the same level, boring me to tears, offending my sensibilities, irriating my senses with blaring visuals and audio, I would take these in a heartbeat over grossness.

1/10 only has 3 works within it, three magical girl rape hentai I watched out of desire to see every single Magical Girl series one of the two big reasons I stopped was because I simply did not want to watch anything more like them (the other being some MG series are practically impossible to find.) These three series are series about the rape and humiliation of generally child-age magical girls. It is as opposite what I would want to see as I can fathom. Of the three Isuka is definitely the worst. It's particular flavor of awful is monster impregnation rape which is....perhaps the optimal combination to disgust me thoroughly. That would make the middle one Nami SOS which will be my iconic example of 1/10. If Isuka is disgusting * disgusting Nami SOS is disgusting * boring. It's particular flavor of degeneracy is chikan, those creepy public gropers which is barely above rape on my negative values scale. It's audio and visuals are so bleh and boring, it has even less plot and characters than the other two, even if that does mean less of Isuka's horrid characterization. It's humor is limited to "Nami fell and her boobs/panties landed on man's face" the most cliche ecchi joke ever. It really is iconic for 1/10, it's gross and misogynistic and boring, and there's no reason to ever watch it.

So the iconic work for the middle of 2/10 would be Naria Girls. Naria Girls is a series of 12 10 minute poorly CGI-animated (like the worst CGI I have ever seen) episodes with the exact same plot almost every time. Monster brainwashes Naria Girls, the actresses improv for several minutes without direction or script, they blast monster, the end. It's best part was just ripped straight from another anime. It's mostly boring, something annoying or infuriating, and has at the start a touch of lolicon fanservice, or as much as this show's animation can try to have "fanservice."  Naria Girls is definitely the iconic series for it's score, it's not bad in any one way strongly, outide I guess aesthetics, it's just sort of generally got a touch of every problem in a small amount.

Comparing Nami SOS to Naria Girls I think really well shows the difference between 1/10 and 2/10. I'd much rather watch stupid characters make stupid decisions and do directionless boring improv than watch sexual harrasment and rape. Naria Girls humor is pretty lame imo, relying on pretty dumb jokes that the actresses had to make up on the spot, but it's better than the most cliche ecchi joke. The Naria Girls actually technically have characters while Nami is almost literaly just a pin-up doll. Technically Nami SOS does have better action scenes, but these scenes are still so bad and so short I'd almost prefer Naria Girls single still frame action scenes for not wasting as much of my time. And of course the biggest point, Naria Girls have mild fanservice of lolicon characters, Nami SOS has graphic mass sexual assault including every male in a train car attempting to mass grope Nami under the logic that because of her magical girl outfit she must be an "exhibitionist." Naria Girls has actual bright spots, it's ending is ripped off from the legendary ending of Sailor Moon Season 1 which is something, and it twice tries for actual pathos and mystery elements. Granted the mystery is extremely obvious (There's Naria Spring, Summer, and Autumn" and they're fighting the "Winter Queen", I wonder where Naria Winter is) but the fact that elements of Naria Girls could be rewritten to be good, puts it a league beyond Nami SOS. The difference between 1/10 and 2/10 I think very often is that one actually has things that could have been done better. Almost anything could have been done better. The only works I don't know how I could possibly improve are the three 1/10s because I don't understand the "appeal" of such works. I don't like seeing people in pain and humilation, my immediate association is to the magical girl but even if it wasn't, I still wouldn't understand the appeal of works where the character one is supposed to be fixiated on spends the entire time suffering.

The highest 1/10 is Mahou Shojo Erena. Mahou Shojo Erena is another tentacle rape lolicon MG series. It's not in any way "good" let me make that clear, but it is the strongest 1/10 for me. I feel like the person who made it maybe saw a magical girl series once. While the actual main part of the series is still horrid, at the very least the characters have personalities I can describe, the MG outfit is nicer than normal for one of these, it attempts genuine pathos, it has more out there ideas like the villain being the Magical Girl's sister, jealous for attention, it rips off the end of Evangelion for it's ending...basically if Isuka is disgusting x disgusting and Nami Sos is disgusting x boring, Erena is at least disgusting x weird, it has points about that are not in any way good, but are neutral....or at least not terrible. Erena...if you removed the horrible tentacle rape stuff....the eps would be super short, but it wouldn't be terible then. I can give it the faintest praise I ever have in saying it really is the highest 1/10

The lowest 2/10 is FATAL. FATAL is a tabletop RPG that proclaims itself to be more accurate and realistic. In reality it is heavily misogynistic, on occasion racist, a terrible rules system that requires ridiculous set up and rolls to create monstrosities of characters nowhere close to "realistic", arrogant, inaccurate to any period of history, and has a distressing focus on sexual assault. The thing about FATAL is that because it's an RPG rulebook it doesn't disgust me. It describes disgusting things...frequely and often morally disgusts me, but because there's no narrative it doesn't physically disgust me. It just does every other negative value. It's boring, annoying, irritating, offensive, stupid, and more. 

Comparing Erena to FATAL. I think I would judge someone less for liking Erena than liking FATAL. I recognize our sexual desires are not always what we would want whereas someone choosing to play FATAL is pretty likely someone I would not want to associate with. The point of comparison for these series to me is...I said disgust is my lowest negative value, it is the worst of the worst to me. Erena is a series whose only flaw is that it is disgusting, and sometimes that it's boring. FATAL is a series that has every flaw except disgusting, and that's only because without narrative elements they couldn't disgust me. Does Disgust outweigh everything else at once? That's a tricky one and while I would give Erena a lower rating than FATAL, this is the border between 1/10 and 2/10, where I feel strong negative emotion towards a work but it's complicated negative emotions, neither the disgust all the way through of Nami or Isuka, and not the general dullness of watching Naria Girls.

2/10 vs. 3/10:

A 2/10 as mentioned is a work that makes me feel signicant negative emotion for, it's something that evokes something negative from me. A 3/10 is a work I think is inept and just generally poorly executed. The difference between them really is that a 3/10 I don't feel anything strong towards, I don't have the ill will the same way I do with a 2/10. There's only like one work in my 2/10s that is at all popular, almost any work that is at all popular I'd give like a 3 because almost every work I don't feel strongly enough about to give a 2/10. To me 3/10 is the kind of bad most people actually still talk about, it's the worst Big Budget Hollywood Movies as opposed to their awful knock-offs, it's the kind of score you will almost always get if you really try no matter how poor your technical skill. A 2/10 is like...something you have to go out of your way for, it's a type of bad most people could only get to if they tried to be bad.

The Iconic 3/10 for me would be a series called CosPrayers. CosPrayers is a Magical Girl anime that infamously had a meme about it asking about a bad series "But is it worse than CosPrayers." CosPrayers in other words is like...the normie type of bad. It's characters are pretty flat and uninteresting, its plot moves along ridiculously fast, constantly throwing names and jargon at the viewers with no time to adjust. It infamously had about 10,000 plot twists in an 8 episode series (and each ep is only 11 minutes) most of which make no sense. 

Comparing Naria Girls to CosPrayers, despite CosPrayers being the meme I would defy anyone to tell me Naria Girls>CosPrayers. At best I could maybe see someone saying Naria Girls is funnier just because it's so unexpected. That said episode 1 of CosPrayers has a joke where the main character Koto gets her magical girl transformation device and imitates what she thinks a Magical Girl would do and that one mildly funny joke was funnier to me than anything in Naria Girls. But comparing the two further CosPrayers has actual decent visual and audio design, personally I actually like the character designs for it. It's got lots of ideas, way too many for it's space while Naria Girls has max 0.5 ideas per episode, it has actual pathos and things happening, and there's a plot. And that's not to say CosPrayers is good at any of this but you don't know what you're missing until you lose it and comparing episode 1 of Naria Girls to Episode 1 of CosPrayers really cements the difference between a really mainstream normal type of "bad" and the weird kind of bad that no one talks about. CosPrayers actually feels like an anime, just a really badly made one. Naria Girls felt like a fever dream. That's the difference between 2/10 and 3/10. 3/10 is the type of bad you expect a series might be, the type of bad you can sort of brush off. A 2/10 bad is the type of bad you never see coming, the type that sticks with you.

The best 2/10 I recently figured was my least favorite DC Series, JLA: Created Equal. A weird pseudo-political tract about the nature of men and women. JLA: Created Equal is a DC story already, it has DC characters, it has a DC feel to it, but it really touches on some things that matter a lot to me and touches on them in a way that I felt was kind of sexist. It equated almost explictly men to capitalism, individualism, hierarchy and aggression while women were portrayed as the opposite. This isn't a particularly new association but it is a troubling one. That men and women are equal partners who should love and support each other, who together make the world a better place, is one of my most fundamental axioms and while that's obviously not ground-breaking and I should hope that would be obvious to everyone, but the implicit association in works like this are that the sexes are so alien to each other that women raising boys will inherently cause something wrong with them. The reason it's the best 2/10 I guess is that this message is pretty much my only problem with it, outside some weird storytelling decisions like making Superman and Lex Luthor the only male survivors of a cosmic space plague, something that sure can be justified in-universe but just leads to the awkward and at times mildly creepy "whose bloodline will win out" storyline that happened. I don't particularly want anyone to go up to Superman and basically imply with a nudge "well Superman you have to impregnate Earth's women for the good of humanity and the future."

The worst 3/10 I have for a while been mentally debating between the Last Airbender film adaptation and the Dragonball: Evolution film. These are two films that I probably would have put into 2/10 if I was super into Avatar or Dragon Ball respectively. As it stands I think they're pretty inept, but don't really care about them. Between them at the moment I'd say the worse is The Last Airbender. In fairness to Shyamalan he was adapting a story that was 400 minutes of television episodes into a movie that was 100 minutes. Anyone would have trouble with that. That said the actual end result is...pretty bad. Like just a lot of technical problems really. Pacing issues, effects issues, character issues. Much like Naria Girls and the SM ending, or Erena and Evangelion's ending, there's some points just for taking elements that are cool from a much better work, that being what it's adapted from. That said compared to other 3/10s it just feels so lifeless. Even Dragonball Evolution at least has a flavor to it's badness, this is just dull.

Comparing Created Equal to The Last Airbender I think almost anyone whose seen both would say the Last Airbender is worse going by reviews of the two which...I mean it's strange to me and it's not. I've come to understand some things just really tap into personal negative experiences for me and JLA: Created Equal is much more technically sound than the Last Airbender. That said the thing about them is the Last Airbender I saw once, thought was bad and then just put out of my mind. If I was big into the cartoon maybe that'd be harder to do but...maybe not. Things I like have had really terrible adaptations and they don't keep me up at night. Like even with cartoons I don't spend much time thinking about the 2016 reboot of Powerpuff Girls or Xiaolin Chronicles. Conversely JLA: Created Equal is a work that unfortunately comes to mind more often whenever I hear the worrying association of male=right wing, female=left wing politically, which I hope I don't have to say is not a broad rule you can just apply like that. I can totally understand why someone would prefer JLA: Created Equal to The Last Airbender, but I just care much more about the negatives of one than the other and the fact that JLA: Created Equal got decent reviews makes it in some ways a more worrying work. The border between 2/10 and 3/10 is the border of "is this a type of badness that is acceptable to mainstream thought?" or I guess another way to put is "are the flaws here indicative of a wider problem, or ar they just some weird novelty." 

3/10 vs. 4/10:

3/10 and 4/10 collectively make up the 2/5 rating, a rating which meant in general "I like this noticably worse than most series." A 3/10 is a work I consider to be actively bad and incompetent, but a 4/10 is a work that just doeesn't vibe with me. Like it focuses on things that aren't interesting to me, or it tries for artistic techniques I don't value, it has themes and characters that don't connect to anything in my life. The difference is usually something along the lines of a 3/10 has bad execution, while a 4/10 executed fine on a premise that I just didn't agree with. Another way to think of it is that a 3/10 is closer to the strong negative feelings of a 1/5, a 4/10 is closer to the neutrality of a 3/5. A 4/10 usually does a few things alright, but as a consequence are often more controversial for me to say because they usually have at least some people who really like them whereas with 3/10s people usually don't like that I gave them as high a rating as I did. 

The Iconic 4/10 for me is Mahou Shojo Site. After Madoka there was a boom of "dark" magical girls that wanted to be the next Madoka, most of which were like 4 or 5 out of 10. This is because most didn't seem to understand or couldn't replicate what made Madoka good and so instead just tried to be as edgy as possible. Mahou Shojo Site is the most iconic series of this trend, it's "edgy magical girls" the series. I am fine with Magical Girl series being darker; of the 11 MG series in my favorites list Madoka, Yuki Yuna, and Shamanic Princess are all darker Magical Girl series, and I could even argue the Sailor Moon Manga and Princess Tutu are. What I don't care for is this attempt to just be edgy as though edgy inherently makes something good. Mahou Shojo Site all it does for most of it's runtime is try to be as edgy with Magical Girls as it possibly can. The main character is abused at home and at school, gets Magical Girl powers and is forced to use them to kill people in graphically violent ways. Oooooh, so edgy. Madoka was obviously way more classy and elegant in its dark themes, and comes off way darker at points because of it but like even comparated to other MG in the post-Madoka boom like Daybreak Illusion or Magical Girl Raising Project, Site comes off as unneccesarily cruel and cartoonishly over the top in how edgy it tries to be. 

Comparing Site to CosPrayers it's hard to say Site isn't notably better if only because information is conveyed to the viewer competently and it doesn't jam a million incoherent twists in everywhere. You can watch any individual scene of Site and think to yourself it's probably the edgiest scene in a normal series, but any average scene in CosPrayers you'd think was incoherent and probably the worst scene in a normal series. Site's characters have far more defined personalities, even when they're being edgelords. Site also has to my knowledge the first explict transgender magical girl and given the type of series you'd think they'd make that super edgy but no surprisingly it's actually probably the sweetest thing in the series. Kiyoharu's mother accepts her daughter and is perhaps the only non-evil or inept adult in the series. I personally welcome this development. I will say outside that CosPrayers almost certainly has more worthwhile ideas to explore...the problem is that CosPrayers tries to do ALL of them while Site goes after mostly just the one idea which is "edgy magical girls." The difference between a 3/10 and a 4/10 is the difference a work that has an identity, a niche, a reason to exist that I might recommened to some people vs a work where I don't know if I could imagine a person I'd recommened it too. If you want to see Magical Girls acting edgy and killing abusers than yeah maybe you'd like Site. I don't know who I would ever recommend CosPrayers to outside people who want something so bad it's good.

The best 3/10 series is a series called Cutie Honey: Tennyo Densetsu. I love Cutie Honey but I love the Re and Flash versions of Honey. The original continuity is a set of three manga I don't like as much, Tennyo Densetsu being the last and the worst of them. In most regards it's fine though replacing Sister Jill with Mermedusa was a step down I think. There's one really big problem though which is the series' treatment of sexual harrasment and sexual assault. Sexual Harrasment was always present in original manga canon Honey, but originally it was either done by the antagonists to show that they were villainous or on one point the joke was that Honey had disguised herself as a statue and some guys were gropping the sexy looking statue with the joke being that they didn't know it was actually Honey. And bear in mind even then these were my most disliked parts of the earlier manga. That said the way Tennyo Densetsu handles it is outright wrong. Honey disguises herself as a timid gynophobic little man who is as assistant to a female private eye named Seiko Hayami. Seiko is a big strong woman who finds her new assistant's fear of women funny and consistenly sexually harrasses "him." There is even a chapter where Seiko explicitly dismisses female sexual assault of males as not that big a deal. While Honey disagrees with the notion, the narrative seems to suggest Seiko is correct and that Honey is just idealistic and naive. I have the feeling that based on how Seiko is often portrayed as a cool tough motorcycle riding-eye private eye who regularly presents herself to Honey even throwing herself at "him", this may be a fetish appeal type thing but the message it sends is morally wrong. Sexual Harrasment or Assault of males is not funny and it's not a small matter.

The worst 4/10 I know is the video game Metroid: Other M, specifically the Japanese version. To my understanding the English version had an additional problem of a Native Japanese-speaking director attempting to direct the English voice cast, causing Samus to sound stilted and unnatural. Other M was initially hated and loathed by fans when it came out but then a lot of people started defending Other M, and while I agree the hate was overplayed, that doesn't make it particularly good. That really describes everything about Other M to me, both story and gameplay wise its "I can give very slight praise and defense, but it's still not good." The gameplay is stylish looking but bland to play and repetitive, and while I don't mind at all a game exploring Samus' femininity, I really don't these were the writers for the job, as Samus comes across weak and unnaturally docile towards Adam. The plot is also very 4/10 feeling, not an incoherent mess but not good in any real way either. Similarly the visuals are kinda washed out and meh, and there's few audio and musical cues. It really is the epitome of a 4/10 type experience brought down further by its clashing with the established Samus characterization and Metroid lore, as well as the underlying unfortunate implication that Samus acting feminine means being weak, fearful and obsessive about the infant Metroid.

Comparing Tennyo Densetsu and Other M, the worst installments from franchises I love, it's interesting because both have a general layer of meh-ness topped off by a really notable problem. But while Other M's general construction is safe to the point of being repetitive and dull both in gameplay and story in all but its more constroversial aspects, Tennyo Densetsu includes some of the wackiest elements of the original Honey manga meaning it feels far more inconsistent, such as the good side things like Honey turning into a mecha, and on the downside things like barely any Panther Claw in it. This reaches its apex in it's biggest problem. While Other M has a sort of dull-ish main problem, a bunch of male writers trying to write a female character exploring her femininity and sense of motherhood at the less of "the baby" and getting it....wrong, Tennyo Densetsu is very in your face with a more glaring problem of sexual harrasment and assault depiction. The edge of 3/10 and 4/10 is sort of like this, where things are mostly mixed with one large problem pulling it down, it's the border as well between really obviously bad and subtly bad, things basically everyone can agree on are wrong and things people might actually defend.

4/10 vs. 5/10:

4/10 is a rating where I don't resonate with what a series is trying to do. A 5/10 is in contrast completely neutral a response. Playing Tetris and Pinball are 5/10 experiences, they don't enrich my life any, but they fill up the time fine. Eating normal plain white rice or normally prepared plain bread is 5/10 food experience. It fills you up adequetly. 5/10 is the easiest rating for me to express in almost every regard. a 5/10 chair is just a regular chair you can sit on without noticably distinguishing features. A 5/10 bed is just an average normal bed you can sleep on and feel good in the morning. A 5/10 instruction video reasonably and adequtely explains how to do what it instructs. A 5/10 review tells you decently if you should spend your time/money on something. 5/10 is the score for something fufilling it's purpose adequetly. Maybe it has something neat, or maybe it has something slightly off about it, but the overall experience is exactly what you'd expect.

A 5/10 MG series for comparison would be something like Hyperspeed Grandoll. Hyperspeed Grandoll is a three-episode 90s Magical Girl OVA. It has some things of mild interest, it's more sci-fi than normal, the main girl's parents are quirky inventors etc. it has some mild things that mildly detract, the main character's backstory is just ripped from Superman, her personality is just ripped from Sailor Moon, etc. That said overall it passes the time of 3 episodes worth of anime fine. I know many Magical Girl anime that could fill the 5/10 and 6/10 slot. 

Comparing Grandoll with Site, Grandoll is far more efficent with it's time. Site among its problems for me is it has mostly one time for most of it, and it's a tone I don't like. Grandoll has like 2 tones both of which I like fine, and fill the 3 episodes pretty decently. While nothing in Grandoll is as unique as Kiyoharu's arc, I'd much rather watch Grandoll again, it's far shorter and has more to appeal to me. If you really want sci-fi power suit magical girls....I'd probably recommend Cyberteam in Akihabara, but then I'd recommened Hyperspeed Grandoll. And that's an appeal I understand more than edgy magical girls. The difference between 4/10 and 5/10 is that 5/10 I would say was worth a single viewing, it was fine for the time it asked while 4/10 even if it has good elements, is something I just didn't think was worth the time it took. 

The best 4/10 I know is Vampire Knight, specifically the manga. Vampire Knight started as one of the quintessential Shojo manga. Then it kinda fell of...hard. It then fall off again...even harder. It started off as a really stylish vampire shojo story with a lot of elegant prettyboys. The main character was a cool female lead that wanted to bring about peace between humans and vampires. Then it got...pretty boring for a while....then it got infamously into the twists...and it started including incestual elements and spoilers but main character has children with both of her love interests...it's hard to talk about Vampire Knight in aggregate because it's relatively long for a Shojo manga, and it varies so much in quality. If you're interested in this kind of work I would recommened the first arc, just....stop after the first arc. I know you want to find out if Yuki ends up with Kaname or Zero, one of the most famous Shojo ship wars, just read first arc, imagine who you want or skip to final chapters, it will save you a headache. It's a really mixed work and while I don't really like it overall, I put it as the highest 4/10 because it started off pretty good. I liked VK back when all the cool girls did...

When I think of the worst 5/10 I know, I think very specifically of the 2010s when Toei took a bunch of their legacy series and made mediocre installements in their franchises which typically had very similar complaints of being made just to sell merchandise, poor visual design, inconsistent internal logic (and scaling) and poor character usage. These are things like Dragonball Super, Saint Seiya Omega, the new parts of Sailor Moon Crystal, to a lesser Cutie Honey Universe...because SMC and CHU are adaptations of a work I'd give a different score too, and I haven't actually seen all of Dragonball Super, I'll use Saint Seiya Omega for this. Saint Seiya Omega is a Toei original Saint Seiya anime that got signifigant critique for being inconsistent with Saint Seiya lore, the characters being pretty eh, the second season blatantly contradicting the first season, and the new designs of everything feeling very plastic-y and like they were made to be toys. It's a pretty normal series but on the lower end, I love Saint Seiya, but this is definitely not one of SS's better series. None of it's problems are that dramatic to me, I don't care that much about a lot of them, but together they do contribute to a general sense this is a lower 5/10

Comparing Vampire Knight to Saint Seiya Omega, I mean the thing Vampire Knight was pretty cool at the start, but SS Omega also has cool parts, like spoilers but the original cast for SS came back in S2 and they weren't used perfectly but it was still cool to see and there was the usual fun Saint Seiya stuff. Omega sometimes doesn't make sense, gets kind of a pull-y, it gets kind of Saturday Morning Cartoonish at times but it doesn't go anywhere near as bad VK did. The border between 4/10 and 5/10 is the sort of lower bound normal series where it has some cool parts but it's just sort of ok, has some faults that make it worse than average. The border is that place when you're thinking about it and your first thoughts are on how it could have been better.

5/10 vs. 6/10:

A lot of people view 5/10 and below as negative, and 6/10 and above as positive and while that makes sense and is intuitive to me it's more like 4/10 and below is negative, 7/10 and above is positive, and 5-6/10 is neutral. 5-6/10 makes up the 3/5 rating, the neutral rating. Almost all works I've ever seen I'd rate between 4/10 and 7/10, and most of those, I'd guess 80% I'd rate a 5/10 or 6/10. These two scores collectively form the largest breadth of fiction, it is what I expect going into any series. While a 5/10 is a work I thought was sufficient, that filled it's time fine, a 6/10 is a work that I felt had elements, if not that many or not so strong in potency, to compete with the greater scope of fiction, a unique identity and suite of positives to try and stand out. Now this isn't that strange, every work has something new, and I hate when people imagine a genre is only it's cliches and guess that everything in it is the boilerplate image. A 6/10 work is generally one compared to a 5/10 that has a bit more ambition, and can execute on it. It has elements I can point to as noticably strong, not just points of interest in comparison to itself, but points of interest in comparison to its whole genre. 

Like with 5/10, there's many Magical Girls series I could use as an example of a 6/10. For this I will use the manga Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch. Mermaid Melody has a fun cast of characters for the most part, I like Lucia, Rina and Hanon the main girls, and I really like Mikeru, he was on my list of top 100 favorite characters period. It's got a cool theme of mermaids and the ocean world, it has later on some really good artwork, I like it's comedy, and I think it explores some interesting themes in the second part. None of this is neccesarily groundbreaking, but it's a bunch of positive points I can say in it's favor that makes it at least noteworthy in the scope of it's genre. 

Comparing Hyperspeed Grandoll to Mermaid Melody, Melody is just so much more a complex ambitious work, even ignoring the size different and comparing the first three chapters to Grandoll, it clearly is trying for more, and it does so...fairly admirably I think. While I liked Grandoll alright, I can't imagine why anyone would pick it as their favorite series, but Mermaid Melody I could understand better why it has a continuing fandom which it does. The best character in Grandoll is Sigil. There's characters I like in Melody like Sigil and they're only mid tier for Melody. Similarly the best moments in Grandoll would only be mid tier for Melody. The difference between a 5/10 and a 6/10 is that a 5/10 fills the time fine, but a 6/10 has elements you will care about a day after you complete it, has a spirit, an atmosphere to it made up of all it's elements that contributes to and fills a valuable niche. For a 6/10 filling the time is the average, and it has peaks signifigantly higher then that. 

The midpoint between 5/10 and 6/10 is a magical place, the hypothetical midpoint of fiction, the middest fiction. At this very edge is the largest quantity of series, I would guess half of all fiction is at that exact point. When I first start a series, my assumption is always that it will be here, unless I've heard it's good where I think it will be 6 or 7, or I've heard it's bad in which case I expect it to be 4 or 5. This almost always works. Series here can jump from high 5 to low 6 and back easily, so it's kind of hard to say exactly the score of most series here as most could be either. For this comparison I could have picked a large number of things but I chose to compare two series I thought would be funny.

So a high 5/10 series is like Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. GX was initally recieved poorly, and while a lot of people have revised their thoughts recently, personally I still prefer the original series massively as I really don't like the tone and pacing of GX, and I much prefer the characters from original Yu-Gi-Oh! GX is a pretty good example of why it's hard to talk about series at the midpoint. I think of it as generally fine. It's got some cool ideas, it's got some dumb parts, it's got humor that is hit or miss. It's got some characters I like, some I don't, it's more entertaining and got more to care about then a mid 5, like playing tetris, but I don't find myself thinking about it very much. 

An example of a low 6/10 would be the series Chaotic. Chaotic is another TCG show, although this one was actually made in the West instead of Japan. It's fine, it's got similar to GX some really good eps, some really bad eps, some really good elements, some pretty poor elements, some hit or miss humor. It was pointed out to me that Chaotic actually has a lot in common with GX. Comparing the two, I did enjoy Chaotic a bit more; the humor was a bit more consistent for me, I liked it's lore and better eps a bit more (even if it's worse eps were arguably a bit more common than GX's) and I also didn't like how GX really seems to contradict original Duel Monsters in tone, but Chaotic is actually reverent of it's own mythos. I also care more about Chaotic than I do GX. But they're both fairly mid series. I like both of them alright. The midpoint of 5/10 and 6/10, the midpoint of fiction is the hardest to talk about in general because it covers the true scope of fiction, it's all the things that I liked alright, that have their own little niche, but which did not on the whole stir me from my neutral state. 

6/10 vs. 7/10:

A 6/10 is a "pretty" good series but a 7/10 is a "really" good series. A 6/10 is a series with some cool elements, a series with some points of interest in comparison to it's genre. In comparison a 7/10 is a series that seems to appeal to my interests more directly, a series mostly made of cool elements, where the neutral points are overwhelmed by the positive points, whose best is of interest even in comparison to the whole of fiction. These are series I can care about the best points of a year later. 

A mid 7/10 Magical Girl series would be something like Shugo Chara. Shugo Chara is one of the most influential MG of the 00s, and was most notable for it's characters imo, most of them managing to thread the needle of being fun dynamic characters while also feeling like real people with depth and complexity, and without easy analogies in the rest of the MG genre. It's also known for it's humorous tone, and it's interesting ideas. 

Comparing Shugo Chara to Mermaid Melody, while I like the Mermaid Melody characters, and I like Mikeru probably more than anyone individually in SC, Shugo Chara's cast is generally just as fun and funny to watch, while having notably more depth and each having their own arc as opposed to mostly just Lucia, Kaito, and Sara. While the beach and ocean aesthetic of Mermaid Melody is fun, Shugo Chara has more interesting and evocative ideas with the idea of peoples' dreams manifesting as floating characters around them. The character comparison holds for a lot of the comparison points. Shugo Chara's plot and humor are as fun and funny as Melody's to me, but also feel more realistic and have more depth. The difference between 6/10 and 7/10, is that a 7/10 is usually more multidimensional in it's appeal. While a 6/10 usually does a few elements really well, a 7/10 usually does most elements really well with maybe having a few weak points. 

The highest 6/10 I can think of is Dante's Inferno the video game series, and especially it's associated comics which are quite good. Dante's Inferno was a pretty well made spectacle fighter, with unusual source material and imagery. When it came out however it was unfairly compared to an amazing work. You'd think it'd be the original poem but it was mostly God of War which the gameplay mechanics are quite similar too. This was pretty unfair and unflattering for Dante's Inferno. Ignoring comparisons like that for a moment, it was a pretty solid game, with a story I liked pretty well, especially in the comics version which made the whole thing more ethereal and metaphorical. Even if it is as opposite as possible thematically to the original poem, as a work in itself it's pretty good I thought, with some really cool elements.

The lowest 7/10 for me atm would be the cartoon Star versus the Forces of Evil. Star had a really good start, and then slowly fell off. If you're noticing I had the highest 4/10 and the lowest 7/10 both be two series that started off good, but fell off, congrants, I was using it as bookends for the normal range of fiction, the tip of 5/10 and 6/10. That said Star is higher than VK because it started off a lot better imo, and while it slowly descended, VK dropped off suddenly a lot, twice. Star started out great, with some really amazing eps, a fun loveable pair of protags, Magical Girl homages, and even as late as the last episode it did things I loved. That said the show slipped more into political drama and relationship drama and less the fun adventures of a cool magical girl. I still like it a lot overall. 

Comparing DI and Star, I think these are both series that people look at some parts being hard to watch and dimiss the really great parts both have. I think DI's story got better as it went on, somewhat opposite Star's, although the gameplay degenerated overtime. Star is a bit more inconsistent than DI, being actually irritating at times, but also rising to some points far above DI's best. The best parts spoilers of Dante's Inferno are what? Dante asking the souls he's forgiven to forgive him? The comics Beatrice getting the mental better of Lucifer revealing he's actually impotent? Even the last episode of Star had parts that matched that with the scene where Star and Marco both left their own worlds, meeting in a collapsing dimension between which metaphorically hit me hard. The transition point between 6/10 and 7/10 is the place where series a bit inconsistent but reach into greatness for several points.

7/10 vs. 8/10:

A 7/10 is a really good series, a series which corresponds to my interests, where the majority of points about it are positive rather than neutral, where it's in roughly the upper fifth of fiction. An 8/10 is a great series, a series which changed me, enriched my life, highlights of fiction for me. Together the two collectively make up the 4/5 or positive rating, but while 7/10 is a more calm mild positive, an 8/10 is a series that a more active positive that woos my heart, that captures my interest and my interest. I can get excited for a 7/10, but an 8/10 makes me excited about it. I feel my thoughts and feelings return to these series from time to time and experience a desire to reexperience them, at least in part.

An iconic 8/10 MG series would be Princess Tutu. Princess Tutu is a beautiful MG work taking heavy inspiration from ballet and fairy tails, to tell a story about fighting against destiny and one's role with wonderful characters, intricate emotional depth, and really breath-taking metaphor in visual and audio imagery. I adore it.

Comparing Shugo Chara to Princess Tutu, Princess Tutu has an elegance and a classical beauty to it that Shugo Chara never reached for me and resonated with me more than Shugo Chara's more modern imagery. I understand if someone connects with SC more because the characters are more relable or the themes are more contempory because it definitely feels like a modern-type work, but what I love about Princess Tutu is just how not that it is, it's this archetypal world of literal fairy tale characters that capturse the elegant beauty of the archetypal, and that's really special to me because I don't see it as much want, that aiming for classical beauty. I am a Classicist to use the Scott McCloud 4 campfires, and Princess Tutu is maybe the most Classicist Magical Girl series ever made. I can get excited for Shugo Chara, but when I think of the great magical girl series, Princess Tutu is always one of the big ones, it makes me remember it for how good it was. The difference between 7/10 and 8/10 is that 7/10 is a series that I really liked, but an 8/10 is a series that has special meaning to me like that, that captures my heart so that I don't have to try to enjoy it, but it overwhelms my senses with how great it is. 

The best 7/10 for me atm is Fruits Basket. Fruits Basket is one of the classic iconic Shojo, along with things like Ouran, Skip Beat, Maid-Sama, and um...Vampire Knight. While Fruits Basket is not it's strongest part, it's vastly more solid than VK and even it's worst parts were on par with Vampire Knight's best. It's an amazing heartfelt story that I don't really wanna spoil too much but it was good enough that the 2019 anime version actually became number 1 anime for a time, despite not being a Battle Shonen. It's got a really cool cast of characters, it does get a bit slapstick goofy at times, and some of the mean characters are rather over the top, but the main girl Tohru is famously adorable and amazing, and the Sohma family is full of these really fun characters, and how Tohru helps them is really wholesome. It's the highest of my 7/10 because it's just so iconic and fills my heart with nostalgia.

The worst 8/10 for me is probably the 2015 Starfire series. This was a really fun cute series about Starfire's solo adventure on Earth and her friendship with some people in the town she was using as temporary base. It's great and I do love the tone and the themes of it, but it really light, and doesn't have much in the way of the dramatic thematic stuff I like. It's kinda like candy in that it tastes good but you absolutely can't just have  a meal of it.

Comparing Fruits Basket to 2015 Starfire...I know Fruits Basket is one of the big famous shojo series, and rightfully so, but Starfire is usually only considered a relatively mid superhero series, and I liked it much more than reputation. Fruits Basket has probably better more nuanced characterization and it definitely gets much more serious than 2015 Starfire, but it maybe gets a little too much at times. I feel more disdain for some of the slice of life antagonists in FB, than I do for some of the actual supervillains in 2015 Starfire. I also think I like the themes of Starfire 2015 a little bit better. Without spoiling too much though maybe mild spoiler, the central theme of Fruit Basket is overcoming a toxic or abusive family dynamic, healing from it or reparing it. And that's sweet and I feel for the characters but it's not something I really relate to very much. Starfire 2015's themes of the oddness of human sexual norms, and the feelings of being far from home I connected to more. But that is like the boundary of 7/10 and 8/10 where I feel really positive things towards the series, but it's a bit on the lighter side, either because it's short or because it's light-hearted or because it's on circumstances unlike mine for things for me to connect too.

8/10 vs. 9/10:

An 8/10 is a great work, a work that captured my mind and my heart. They're works that I love the spirit of, that I love to think about and to feel the emotions of. The 12 works of fiction I put as a 9/10 are the legendary dozen. I think about them more frequently, they influenced my tastes that led me to like the other 8/10s. While 8/10s are works that excel at the normal qualities of being good, 9/10 are works that for me introduced new dimensions to be good within, they are worked that didn't enrich my life to have consumed, but made me change the way I looked at life. These are reference points I use for what is and isn't good in fiction, the barometer for good, often containing moments that are among the best in fiction, and making anything below 8/10 pale in comparison. 8/10 works you can learn maybe something about me from, 9/10 works you definitely can learn a signifigant portion of what I think and feel from if you could understand how it influenced me.

An Iconic Mid 9/10 Magical Girl series would be Heartcatch PreCure. Heartcatch PreCure is possibly the best Magical Girl anime series for me, magical girls being the genre most close to my heart. Heartcatch PreCure, which I don't really wanna spoil, has one of the best set of protagonists I know of in fiction, all 4 of which being on my top 100 favorite characters list, Cure Marine being adorable and hilarious, Cure Moonlight being cool and elegant, and both Cure Blossom and Cure Sunshine's arcs being majorly touching and important to me. Pretty Cure is to me the most magical girl of magical girl series, it is the archetypal magical girl series and if Heartcatch is it's best season as I think it is, it can be said to be the greatest qualities of the Magical Girl genre most highlighted. Heartcatch's depiction of people, their insecurities and their connection to the Tree of Hearts is majorly evocative to me.

Comparing Princess Tutu and Heartcatch PreCure, both contain an elegant classical beauty to them, but Heartcatch does it while feeling even more alive than PT. PT can be in MG terms a bit of an abstract work and while it's majorly emotional at times, Heartcatch does a lot better at being goofy, without making it's civilian cast cold-seeming. Princess Tutu does have better villains, but Heartcatch has consistently better heroes. Heartcatch may a bit less a perfect piece of art compared to Princess Tutu but it is to me, a more perfect demonstration of the strengths of the Magical Girl anime. The difference between 8/10 and 9/10, is that an 8/10 series is an 8/10 series Princess Tutu I can feel deeply, but I don't really apply it to my life...it's themes of fighting against destiny and one's role is something struggle with, even if beautifully demonstrated. Heartcatch at it's best can match Princess Tutu in artistry while still being directly appliable to life, 9/10 works move me because I feel them influence me. I don't give a series a 9 or 10 after finishing. A 9/10 is something I find by it's enduring quality, it's ability to continually inform the situations around me, my ability to connect situations to the experience.

The best 8/10 is tough, I can think of 8 different works that might at any point be my favorite 8/10. At the moment I would say my favorite is the film Princess Mononoke. Mononoke is an amazing film that is important to me, reaches into the God Tier of fiction for me, and compared to my other top of 8/10 series, has no really downpoints, I like every character and moment in the film, with my biggest complaints extremely minor stuff like Ashitaka being a little TOO perfect. It's got themes and imagery that resonate with me strongly, though I don't think it's that special to talk up this movie basically everyone who's seen it likes it, even people who don't normally like Ghibli movies. 

The worst 9/10 for me I recently decided for now is the play Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar is amazing, and has some absolutely fantastic moments, particularly near the midpoint. I think compared to other 9/10s, it's got a pretty long section that's only good and not amazing, that being everything nearer to the end but that first part is fantastic, it has some of the most human drama contrasted with some of the more elevated language and some of the most resonant themes Shakespeare wrote.

Comparing the two I think both have some parts that are equally high end for me. I think Mononoke is more consistent than JC, and overall I do "like" it's characters more, but I also think that Mononoke is a bit simpler then Julius Caesar in character motivations. While Mononoke's morality is more complex, dealing with an equally grey subject matter (doing moral wrong for a politically noble end vs. the needs of man vs the needs of nature), and not giving as straight an answer, it's characters are moreso representations of positions on the man vs. nature struggle, and on some level I like that, it's powerful archetypally. Julius Caesar's strength in comparison however is that while it's conflict is given a more clear moral answer, it's characters do not represent as clean a position and are, especially Brutus, more conflicted in position. Both are obvious masterpieces and trying to compare them is difficult. The border between 8/10 and 9/10 is like that, masterpieces or works that continually blow my mind with how great they are, with "faults" I consider mild and strengths that dim most of fiction in comparison, and which side of the dividing line they are on mostly comes down to whether they happen to suit my tastes in the smaller details. A masterpiece is a masterpiece, but some masterpieces also have themes and aesthetics that more personally connect to you slightly. 

9/10 vs. 10/10:

A 9/10 is one of 12 legendary series, a series that dims most of fiction in comparison, that have a grandiose stature to me that makes it hard to truly compare with anything, that I feel shaped me in some way. A 10/10 is a series greater even then that, a transcendently good series, something that moved me to my core. I've only given 10/10 to 4 works, and that's not intentional, it's because I truly felt they were on a different tier for me. A 10/10 changed my approach to life, it made me want to make their message part of my life ethos. A 9/10 makes other series dim in comparison but a 10/10 brightens the rest of fiction down even to the 1/10s by showing me a whole new spirit to look at them in. 10/10 is the best moments of most 9/10s, and anything below 9 rarely has even single moments that reach into 10/10 (the 8 things at the top of my 8/10 are there specifically because they did have at least one such moment.)

Obviously the iconic 10/10 at the midpoint is the manga series Sailor Moon. This is obviously my favorite series, and no other series even comes close. The great moments of the other great moments are something Sailor Moon does every arc. Every arc of Sailor Moon would be a 9/10 by itself, and I can tell a work is 9/10 if it compares to an SM arc. Sailor Moon is not the least bad work here, but no series has come close to the influence on me in so many dimensions. I can and have gone on and on about Sailor Moon in the past so won't go on too much longer here. Sailor Moon is the only extended franchise I'd give a 10/10, and while the manga in general is Mid 10/10, High 10/10 consists only of the final arc of the Sailor Moon manga, and the film Sailor Moon R: Promise of the Rose. If you want to understand my values in art, read the Sailor Moon manga and watch that film and you will understand the majority of what I care for in art. I believe I may never find a series that I like more than Sailor Moon for my love for it is a love grown with the years. 

Comparing Heartcatch PreCure and Sailor Moon...I mean I adore Heartcatch but it's no question. Heartcatch is one of the few series whose protagonist casts might on average match the Sailor Senshi, but Usagi is my favorite character in fiction, and the villains of SM I much prefer. Heartcatch does have it's only beautiful style, and can reach into poetic imagery I find beautiful, but that's only reaching into the level I like the Sailor Moon arc's cosmic imagery normally. And those are the best comparisons for Heartcatch; characters and imagery. Sailor Moon is a work that is far more versatile to me, commenting on and encapsulating a far more complete world encorporating far more elements of the world from science-fiction to the occult, from psychology to astronomy, from fashion design to military tactics, from familial drama to metafictional fourth wall jokes. Heartcatch is essentially to me a single SM arc, extended to over a longer period. And that's great but it can't compare to the wholeness and the massive impact over the years the Sailor Moon Manga has had on me.

The best 9/10 for me changes with time but recently I decided that at the moment it's Cardcaptor Sakura the manga. Cardcaptor Sakura is possibly the first manga I've ever read, and one of the only works that is comparable to the nostalgic influence on me as Sailor Moon. While it hasn't meant as much to me as that work; Cardcaptor Sakura means more to me than almost anything. I love it's cast; especially Sakura, Kero and Yue. It's a work that to me has so much the innocence of childhood, especially with my nostalgia, but continues to reveal new layers to me, a work written with such inner layers that as one gets older, one learns to appreciate it in new ways. It's fantastic especially at capturing the magic in the mundane, at making one learn to appreciate the fantastical elements in the world we overlook so often as we go about our days.

The two low 10/10 works I know are Cardcaptor Sakura Movie 2: The Sealed Card, and The Sandman comic series. For the sake of not comparing CCS to itself, I will compare it to The Sandman. The Sandman is the perfect archetypal work. There is a dichotomy I despise between the idea of "real art" and "entertainment." The Sandman to me is the ideal refutation to this. It's a classically beautiful piece of art that remains a fun, funny, piece of pop entertainment. It's characters are diverse and strange starring one of my favorite characters, the grim-faced stoic embodiment of dreams. It is a comic that encompasses seemingly everything in it's grand epic, and yet never does it become so distant that it feels disconnected from emotionality. I've seen no modern work as classical beautiful, yet it avoids the alienness of more archaic works and is always relevant and emotionally easy to connect too. In a work that celebrates the the Dreaming, that domain of all that is fantasy and unreal we travel at least every night, it captures the very spirit of fiction.

CCS compared to the Sandman is an interesting comparison. Both are of course masterpieces that have meant lots to me. Both are uniquely suited to me in their temperments, but their temperments are undeniably massively different. CCS captures the innocence of childhood, aided by my childhood nostalgia for the series, something the Sandman does not. The Sandman is a weighty work, with occasional moments of levity. Conversely the Sandman reaches heights of drama and dignity and classical grandeur. CCS is rarely dramatic, and while it does those alright, the Sandman clearly is superior in the depiction of the deeper strifes that define the human condition. CCS is a series that evokes to me a spirit of light-hearted joy, with occasional fits of drama. The Sandman is a series that evokes to me a spirit of the dignity and occasional humor of the human fantasy. While I like the Sandman a touch more, hence it's higher rating, my life wouldn't truly be what it is without a little of both. That to me is the boundary between 9/10 and 10/10, the the realm of fiction that it feels to me so personally defining for me, that I can say they define a part of my world, color part of my vision. 

TLDR/Summary:

This is what the scores mean to me

1/10: Vile. I feel actual disgust towards this.

2/10: Awful. I feel signifigant negative emotions towards this; be they boredom, offense, irritation, or annoyace, but at least it's not disgusting

3/10: Bad. I don't bear it any ill-well or feel anything strong about it, but it just seems kind of like a mess to me.

4/10: Dislike. It had potential or stuff I did enjoy, but overall I just didn't like it or thought it wasn't for me.

5/10: Fine. Watchable. Served it's purpose, filled time. Wasn't bored or anything. No particular feelings.

6/10: Pretty Good. Has some cool parts, liked it well enough. Had a good time with it, glad it exists.

7/10: Really Good. Has mostly notably good parts. Sometimes great. A real stand-out in its genre. 

8/10: Great. I love this, think about it sometimes and become happy. It made me like it and I get excited thinking about viewing it again. Feel strong positive emotions towards it.

9/10: Legendary. One of the definitive great works to me, works I know I'm never gonna tire off. The Hall of Fame for works that stand the test of time for me, that I think about a lot and influence me. 

10/10: Transcendent: Beyond good, shapes my view of what is good because it means so much to me. Works I think influenced who I am and I want to take their meaning as part of my life ethos.

so when I say a work is X/10, you'll know what I mean. About 50% of works are in the general 5.5 midpoint of fiction between high 5/10 and low 6/10. Abotu 80% of works are within 5/10 to 6/10 in general, and about 95% of works are between 4/10 and 7/10 to me. This is not intentional, this is just a consequence of the fact that I am generally a rather neutral person towards most things.