Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Fruits Basket
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Oy, arbitrary someone. Review this so I can make it suck less.
Eventually. When I get around to it.
...please?-- 20100901 - 01:05 (UTC)
- I'll get this. Friday night. Probably late Friday night, but Friday night nonetheless. --Black Flamingo 17:51, September 9, 2010 (UTC)
|Humour:||5||Ok Lyth, you've got a decent article here but I think I've identified a few things you might want to take another look at, should you choose to revise it. The main problems, I feel, are with your humour, but they are all relatively minor. Anyway, let's begin.
I think a key issue is that the article doesn't contain a huge number of jokes. There's a trap I've noticed a lot of users fall into, where instead of constantly telling jokes and playing with reader's expectations, they simply talk about a subject in a slightly chattier way than Wikipedia would. Your article, sadly, is one such example of this. As I'm sure you realise, this isn't going to make for a particularly humorous read, regardless of how inherently funny the subject matter is. It's a real shame, because it really does feel like there's a lot of untapped humour in here, and the subject matter is certainly funny (and bizarre) enough for treatment. Take your Plot section, for instance. You mention that the characters have lots of crazy adventures, and imply that these adventures are humorous, but then you don't actually explain why, or what happened specifically. Simply relaying something funny doesn't work, however, it's like when someone tells an anecdote about how funny a joke is, but they can't remember the joke itself. This, incidentally, is why it's so hard to write a funny article about a comedy. A lot of this stuff is probably quite funny to people who've seen the show, sadly I do not have that privilege. That whole part about how "Yuki will strike Kyo when he's not looking", is a good example of this. It's like you're saying "remember when that happened? That was funny wasn't it?" to the reader, but those who haven't seen it aren't going to be particularly interested. Same with your section on the fish character, which although dealing with bizarre subject matter, reads mostly straight. The idea that it's a fish is funny, but that's not enough. You need to stop just describing it and make some humorous observations. A really good example of where you already do this is where you say "her presence offers joy and healing that only a rice ball can give" (although that should really be "the joy and healing"). This is better because you're subtlely pointing out how ridiculous the manga is using irony.
It also feels as though there's a smattering of random humour in here, although a lot of this may simply be because the manga itself is so random. For a lot of it, I couldn't tell whether you were making it up or actually relating it truthfully. Remember, a lot of this is quite obscure, so try and put yourself in the mind of someone who hasn't seen the show. Try to give it some more grounding and exposition. Also, the Reception section feels a tad random. It comes out of nowhere and totally contrasts with the rest of the article. This critical praise you talk about just sounds unreleastic, especially since you don't go into much depth here. You also mention its "subtlety and simultaneous blatant criticism of societal orders"- what are these criticisms? I didn't detect any from your material on plot and characters.
|Concept:||6||As for what the anime's about, I'm a little confused. Is it actually about fruit, because none of the characters you talk about are fruit? If not, I'd lose the whole thing about it being about fruit, and maybe just talk about how meaningless and confusing the title is.
The major problem conceptually is that the article doesn't venture into any interesting or original territory. I don't mean to sound harsh but it doesn't really go anywhere. Perhaps you need a more consistent running gag? Something to tie it all together and give it some meat. Think about the article as one long joke, if it helps. One that builds and pays off. Something about the absurdness would be nice. Have a play around with different styles, perhaps keep it really dry but contrast that with the madness of the show, something like that. Because just saying "look how mad this is!" isn't enough. Remember how I said the Reception section didn't work? Well I'll rephrase that. It doesn't work on it's own. It jars too much with the rest of the article, and seems inconsistent. The joke about it actually being really clever could work if you kept it consistent throughout the whole article. This kind of thing is a little overdone (in fact I did something similar once about another Japanese show), but hopefully it will give you an example of where you could go next with this conceptually. Just remember, keep it solid and consistent all the way through.
|Prose and formatting:||8||The prose is mostly good, but I would recommend you have a bit of a comb through it for any awkward bits. This sentence, for example, is a bit clumsy: "As time goes on and the series progresses, her presence offers joy and healing that only a rice ball can give, through love, compassion, and humour of the sheer ridiculousness of some of the situations that they encounter together, the primary focus of the anime". It's too long and I struggled to follow it. When it comes to spelling and grammar though you've done a great job.
The formatting is very pretty, if you like that kind of thing. I really like how you put the character section together, it would look even better though if you could line up the text to a margin on the left, so it's all straight and even.
|Images:||5||Your images on the whole are decent. The first, while not being funny in itself, is nicely illustrative. The character section is the same, and is actually very helpful in getting across just how odd the manga is. The last one, however, is considerably weaker. The caption is pretty funny, but the problem is that the image itself doesn't really look much like a piece of fanart. Perhaps this joke would work better if it was more obviously fanart; like a really ameteurish drawing or something. Other than that I would simply advise you to think about other jokes you could make via images, because there's nothing in here that really even tries to be funny.|
|Miscellaneous:||6||My gut feeling, nothing more.|
|Final Score:||30||Right, so there you go. Sorry it's not a particularly in-depth review, but I'm a little unfocussed right now due to intense back pains. Sorry if I also sound a little harsh, but I tend to only focus on the bad stuff when I review. Overall you do a lot right. So have a think about my ideas, particularly about getting the joke ratio up and strengthening the underlying concept, and you should be able to get this into great shape in no time. If there's anything you want me to take another look at, let me know, or if you want me to clarify anything I've said here. Whatever you choose to do, good luck with it.|
|Reviewer:||--Black Flamingo 18:36, September 10, 2010 (UTC)|