Hello,
Today we'll talk about a slightly different topic, compared to the usual episodic coverage of the summer season 2012, that I thought to be interesting to discuss with both readers and fellow anime bloggers.
Every once in a while, I find myself watching a very interesting/exciting anime episode and after writing a rich episodic article in a very short period of time, I end up losing more than half an hour thinking of a good title for the post.
Why? Well, while there are many titles that could do the job, I find myself questioning "will this title be considered a spoiler for the anime series or not?" or "What could the un-aware reader detect from this title?".
Yes, "spoiler" and the so-called "spoiler warnings" are words that started to be used on the net many years ago back in the USENET ages to describe "any element of a summary/description that could reveal some important detail of story's plot".
Did you ever search for info on a particular anime series (Light novel/manga based) you were watching only to stumble in a post on a unknown forum describing in detail the ending of the story (picking info from the original material)?
The debate between netizens about what is the good way to approach in these situations is still active and there are many different "currents" of users approaching the problem from different point of views.
How can you, as a writer, protect your readers from spoilers? In most recent blogging system you have access to "spoilers tags" that allow to create small hidden sections to protect your readers from knowing "too much" without their implied consent.
While this functionality is extremely good, what is considered a "spoiler" worthy of an hidden section of text? Is there even a unbiased opinion of what constitute a spoiler for all readers?
I got in the past criticized for giving out in my title that "Shinobu was going to appear in Nisemonogatari". I honestly felt a bit weird, because I didn't think that was really a spoiler or anything...
Being "mostly" an episodic blogger and hating big spoilers myself, I try to write all posts in a way that doesn't give out any important detail about the storyline outside of the post being discussed.
An example of this would be the discussions over Sankarea last season, I did read the manga months before and knew what was going to happen, but tried to write a post without using that information and basing myself on what they've shown in the episode.
The titles however, are still some sort of "problem" for me, because it really isn't easy to come up with titles that while looking "enticing" don't give out much of what is going to happen in the episode being discussed.
I'm, however, a bit curious about what is the "politically correct" approach when writing a full review of an anime / visual novel / manga series, especially as I almost never write any of these...
In those circumnstances, I feel that is almost necessary to use the story content in order to give proper reasoning for your votes/impressions, but by doing so you risk to alienate part of the community that still haven't watched that particular product.
I suppose that everything comes down to what is your audience and who do you want to cater for. Who are you going to target with your review? The veteran watcher? The random passerby? Both?
And you? What is, for you, the best way to approach spoilers in a review/episodic article? What is the level of importance you give to being spoiler-free in your anime experience?
See you soon,
feal87