Talk:Aim for the Ace!/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Zanimum (talk · contribs) 17:11, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

A foreward: I don't take joy in criticizing an article like this. Sentence structure, referencing, all those things are pretty solid here. I was near to rubber stamping this article as a GA with just a few tweaks here and there.

But suddenly I stepped back, and realized how many holes in coverage there were. The article looked like a solid metal bowl, but it was actually a collander.

Please, please, take this review as a rallying cry to push on and find the amazing article waiting to burst out. This manga/anime sounds was loved and emulated to the point of cliché. It's a cultural touchstone in the genre. You truly do have the potential to bring something amazing to Wikipedia's table, but you've only built the factual pedestal for your sculpture, the art isn't there on top.

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Most of this article is about release dates. Most of this article could be told in a spreadsheet. You desperately need to research more, well, whatever, and add more true prose, not just sentences connecting numbers and corporate names.

Take away release dates and companies, and the Media section, which is the majority of the article, just floats away as dust.

You tell us when the projects were first aired/were released. You tell us when they were released on DVD/as a tankobon. You tell us when they were re-released on DVD/as a light novel, and how many discs they were burned onto/volumes they were printed into. You tell us when they were released onto Blu-ray/released in Italian comics.

Clearly Ace! was a success. We know that 15 million copies were sold of the manga. We know that the series inspired a young Shuzo Matsuoka to pick up a racket. But those are the only definable measure of success from the century in which the works were created.

While I suppose that it's possible, I find it hard to believe that no media outlet reviewed the project before this century. Even if the mainstream media was too staid to cover popular culture, did Japan's youth culture of the era not create fanzines?

The reception section says that Aim was "inspiration of another sports anime"... which one? Was this other anime also based on a manga? The series "set many of the conventions of shojo-ai", to the point where "it became a cliché." Which conventions of shojo-ai can be attributed to Ace? All of them? Just a few?

What inspired Sumika Yamamoto to create the manga originally? Did Sumika love tennis? Was it just an exotic setting to place the characters in? Or perhaps Margaret provided the plot outline, and Sumika just worked within tight guidelines?

Tokyo Movie: were they a struggling startup boosted by the chance to adapt a popular serial, or was it just another project for an established studio?

Was the first anime series based on the first 1973-1975 run of Aim in Margaret, or did they also adapt the 1978 to 1980 plotline at the same time? Or was the second run adapted into the second anime?

Did Japan have a television ratings system? In other words, was Shin Ace o Nerae! a result of big ratings?

Sit down, and imagine the year is 1999. There is no Wikipedia, but you've got a geocities.jp site. What are you going to write, that day, in 1999? Whatever you come up with, it's pretty much everything you're missing here.

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Here is my actual prose critic for part of the article. It is not complete, I can review further if the nominator is still wanting to pursue this GAN.

Drama

• One of my friends is teaching English in Japan at some private school, and she recently went to see a theatrical production of Sailor Moon. When I saw this heading, I thought this was another case of a playright mining familiar material for the stage. Perhaps "Television drama", "Live action television"? Does Japanese television recognise the concept of a mini-series? The fact it intentionally ran that briefly fits it into that category.
• Does the Japanese media report on television ratings, like the North American media? Were there any critical reviews of how well or poorly the story was adapted to this format?
• Given that you list the tennis supervisor, was Shuzou thus a major competitive tennis player in Japan? If so, I'd venture a number of English readers of this article don't know of their significance. If not, why bother listing them?
• "A special episode was released direct-to-video": Was this continuing the plot, a prequel, or a standalone plot?

Video games

• Is pachinko really a video game? They're mechanical, sure, but even the modern ones with video aren't video games.

CDs

• "VIP performs...": since there's no wikilink, you really should clarify whether VIP is a solo singer, a group, a flutist...

Reception and legacy

• Since TV Asahi has TV in its name, we can assume that the web poll was "Top 100" TV series? You don't specify.

Checklinks

• The only issue Checklinks can find is http://www.tv-asahi.co.jp/ace/ which is dead. The external links in the actual references all work.

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To GA Cup judges, I hope you don't interpret any of this as unnecessarily long text. I set out to do my usual sentence-by-sentence review, and halfway through I decided to abandon format, and write the larger commentary. I'm not looking for extra points, I'm looking to provide meaningful steering for the article. -- Zanimum (talk) 17:11, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Good introductory text, Zanimum. You write to do not demotivate people; it's very nice. I don't take it personally, so you can do all the critics you want to now or in another occasion. They are good and very constructive critics. That's why you're good. And, all your critics are very fair. However, I have my side too.

The media section generally is basically "the original release and broadcast information". About facts on early reception or creation, I can't do much for it. My main problem for this article is the lack of sources. I have almost literally gone through all the English-language sources that are available online. The lack of details in reception or production is because the sources don't give such details. Of course, probably there is more info on Japanese sources or even English-language magazines that I don't have access to. (In fact, I've just found an interview that I posted on the talkpage... Hm, may your friend be able to translate it?)

To your "actual" concerns:

• I really don't know if they use the term "mini-series" but none of the sources call the drama a mini-series
• I probably can find something on ratings (recent info is easier to find than info on the period the manga was published...). Reviews are more difficult because my Japanese isn't that advanced
• Fixed
• Hm... I've found the info on the source, and just noticed an error...
• They're kind of arcade games; changed to just "games"
• Again, the problem is that the source doesn't give specific information
• Fixed
• Fixed Gabriel Yuji (talk) 20:07, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

@Zanimum:? Gabriel Yuji (talk) 18:13, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Placing this back in the queue's since it's another one of Zanimum's abandoned reviews. Wizardman 14:42, 29 November 2014 (UTC)