| mar sat |
theme: saturn
There's no point in listing the requirements twice. I dislike fonts that make me squint. There's shouln't be a link to your personal site in the introduction, seeing a link makes me want to leave this site. a no-no. I like the organization, however, a lot of people don't scroll all the way through so you might want to put the tell a friend and mailing list seperate elsewhere. I'm pretty certain that not the whole page is supposed to reload with every link, so you must have done something wrong with the coding.
Hotaru-Her religion is Kali Hinduism? Prove it. Her marital status really isn't neccesary. This is manga information? or Anime? The Girl is one big lump of text which is ugly and annoying to read. I'm skiping it. There is a lot of info on Naoko, more than I normally see on her.
Myth-information about the actual planet is not mythology, but i'll let it slide. Seeing as this is a saturn shrine, get rid of all the stuff on pluto. I'm really not interested in reading this, I have a short attention span, but I can see you put a lot of effort into getting all this info. The stuff about name meanings shouldn't be here either, I mean, what does Rhea's meaning have to do with a cartoon?
Faces-why..why is the text in a box? are you just showing off your skillz? Otakura is mad funny. ^_^
Yuuko-every single anime site I have been to, EVER, has called the voice actress 'seiyuu'. so where did 'yuuko' come from?
Summery stuff-I don't like being spoiled, I haven't read this far into the manga. I can say that it looks entertaining, so you've written it well. Not like, "this happened, then this happened", so good job.
Fanart-get rid of the michiru crap! doesnt belong! I hope all these artists gave their permission.
Manga- I don't think you know what Doujinshi means. It's professional fanart, published in manga. This section is cannon manga, all done by Naoko, so there is NO Doujinshi art in here. I'm really sick of clicking ten thousand times. why have so many pages? just put all the different galleries on one or two page, with headlines to say this is anime, this is manga. sheesh. who made the pictures with poetry?
Wallpaper-do i really need to repeat? get rid of non saturn stuff.
music-repeat above.
gifs-i'm tired of seeing these! there a new ones made by others yknow.
mini movies isn't coming up and i'm impatient. what's this affiliation stuff? i dont see any affiliates.
free email got me a bad gateway message, but that isnt your fault.
gbook'ie'-hey, it's prince diamond from us. *waves* the colour sceme doesn't match the rest of the site. call on me made me think you were going to give me your phone number.
Overall, this is site has so much content I got very impatient about getting through this review. which is a good thing, really. you've got tons of stuff to read, for the saturn newbie and uberfan alike. if i didnt mention something it's because I liked it. this is one of those sites where all i can talk about is what i don't like, rather that complimenting what is done well, because so much of it is done well. cool layout, excellent content, devoted webmistress.
¤ It would be nice to tell us the name of your site on the splash. The splash borders on uselessness but it does warn me of the ever irksome chromeless windows. Here is a hint, don't use chromeless, it doesn't enhance youy layout any (it did at a time, but now any old idiot can cut and paste scripts; there is nothing wrong with cutting and pasting in moderationbut some people who know very little html and confuse java with js rip of scripts without appreciating or fully understnading the scripts). The font you use is unbearably small in my 1024 x 768. As an enterainment site you should try to serve as many resolutions and browsers as possible (also, if you do want to use a minescular font, go with san-serif to ease the eyes). The button/ pic next the 'Sailorsenshi Top 50 Sites' button is broken.
¤ Rule no. 1 for chromeless windows: ALWAYS use a black border around the windows and in most cases use a different color for the toolbar than the background. The formatting is horrendous. The bar for the navigation is not the same as for the content (you may have done this on purpose, but it looks silly). There is a dashed border around the conent window, but it does not go up the edge and the blank white space leaves something to be desired. Well I see that you have fallen into the cliche of tryiing to use as many cut and pasted DHTML scripts (which pardon my isolence, you don't have the foggiest as to what the syntax means). It took me awhile to figure out that the scrolling buttons were on the left (keep them on the left, the standard location where most people look for it and make them more conspicuos like arrows or make the ends pointed appropriatly). Another thing that bothers me is the randome switching of font styles. The content is verdana while the headings are in one of teh scripts, and the nav is comic sans. Anyways now that you are probably plotting my excruciatingly painful demise, I like theme with the rain drops and that the updates are on the main page. The disclaimer should list copyright holders and dates. Instead of having the home button take up space on the nav, you ought to make is a browse section with the brower buttons such as back, forward, reload, email, and etc. Finally, some the stars (which really ought to just be arrows) for the continum catagories are not properlly aligned such as the faces and manga under info.
¤ Wow, where one Earth did you get some of this info? I'm not sure it's possible to verify the measurements and Kali Hinduism is not a releigion. Kali is only a goddess and does not have a large enought contingent to have her own sect as other gods (trust me, she is my family's patron goddess). Okay I am absolutly positive that the legal info is fabricated. Judging from the second page, this is based on the NA dub. You fail to mention Kaolinite (sniff) and I don't think the school name is Mugen Gauken in the NA Dub; I think it was Infinitie or Academy something , but my memory is known to be a bit inaccurate. It would be nicer to habe the story half listed in the navigation than as a small link on the bottom of the page.
¤ Okay, in the Senshi part of the info you refer to the manga...please pick one or the other or stick with both, do not just present information on which ever is convenient at the time. Queen Saturn is not a known form, but I'm willing to let it slide, however goddes Saturn is known avatar (there are pictures of her in the artbooks). Sailor Saturn does not have any aliases, only Hotaru in human form does. The names 'Melancholic Fighter and Sacrificing Soldier' are only fan names, not standard epithets. I can't tell wheter the sotry part for the senshi form is the original manga or dub or what...there is not confromity as far as the references.
¤ The Mistress 9 info (if it is referring to the NA Dub) seems to be accurate.
¤ The Prof's bio looks alright with the exception of the age and legal record.
¤ Oh goody, credits are given for Takeuchi-sama's info. It looks pretty accurate as well.
¤ Mythology switches between Japanese and NA names. This section should not be labeled 'mythology' since it includes some etymology and scientific background as well.
¤ The information in the 'faces' sections are repreats of the stories in the bios, though parts in the manga half aren't completly redundant. Also, there is no need to have the info in form boxes.
¤ Thumbails are needed for the seiyuu section.
¤ Damn these manga summaries are long. Split them onto different pages. Okay I give up, there is no way I can read of all this.
¤ In the fanart sections you really should denote which pictures belong to which artists and give email and site links. Well, at least the thumbnails are done correctly.
¤ Wow one whole picture under favourites, of course that is not a waste of space/ link. The doujinshi and manga need to be on separate pages and all the thumbnails for that section can be condensed down to one instead of four pages. There is no need to have so many divisions in the galleries. Either use manga and anime or Hotaru, Saturn, and Mistress 9. Also, you can condense all the pages to have more than 12 thumbnails. Why do you even bother to have a 'wallpaper' section when all yopu have done is stolen another sites section and don't even link back?
¤ While looking at teh source for the 'music' section I noticed you direct link to www.geocities.com/silencescythe. My opinon drops once again. Why on earth are the CCS and DBZ/GT midi's? They are utterly irrelevant.
¤ Not much to say on the quotes, thought citation would be nice.
¤ In order to keep myself from being beaten and you from being enraged I will not comment on the poetry.
¤ Joyful day. Two pages of stolen game sprites and gifs.
¤ The buttons are standard size but the link banner is not.
¤ The free for all section does not need a intro page. Just link straight to it.
¤ Links are satisfactory.
¤ The disclaimer needs dates. I am glad that you have listed specific contributions, but angered that you are too 'lazy' to link them (so why are none except the bottom one linked?). Affiliates ought to be under 'linkage'. Also, I happily note that you have linked 'Giggling Gumdrops' for the form. Why do you have no listed affiliates?
¤ The 'free email' is non-existent.
¤ Once again, for the gbook you do not need a pointless intro graphic.
¤ Overall, one thing I hate about cut and pasted scripts is that the webauthers don't understand the algorithims and therefore the pages are not very free as far as personilization and movement, which consequently make it hard to navigate, and overall a rather unpleasant visit. This page is probablly the most annyoing to navigate since I could not use my standard browser options, which left me a rather disgruntled. Finally, I know this is a rather pointless comment, but the name for this site is rather cliche, but I guess it's appropriate since this site is cliche. Please be original and don't confrom to what everyone else does, it really drags down the SM webcommunity as a whole.
Splash: This is a rarity {gasp} an actual purpose for the splash pages of the two sites we’re reviewing this week. You should put the title of your site on the top title of the browser instead of the version title. I like the way the requirements are listed on the left side of the page, that’s very cool. I don’t know that much about dhtml so I won’t be able to point out any faults in the coding, but I’m sure Kaoli could. The requirements above the picture for entering the site are very hard to read. Medium grey text in text size 1 does not look good on top of a white background. The JavaScript boxes wont prevent anyone from stealing something off your site and they can easily be disabled (I find them very annoying). The picture of Hotaru is great, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before. You have obtained some wonderful scripts and coding, I hope you gave them all credit. I like your counter, but perhaps you should get another one because I find that anime.uinet is constantly down, thus it would leave a broken image on your page whenever it occurs.
Main: Generally I hate pop up windows, but if you are going to take the pop-up approach, then chromeless pop-ups do look much better. The chromeless is actually done right in the fact that I can exit the window whenever I desire. The menu is done wonderfully except for the fact that the blinking stars annoy me. The text that is centered doesn’t look like it’s in the middle of the page; it looks like it’s indented in a very odd way. The main page of your site certainly doesn’t suffer from lack of detail; it contains updates and a description of the site.
Information: By saying “This page is about Hotaru Tomoe”, I’m guessing that you’re going to be focusing on the North American version of Sailor Moon, so I expect all terms and explanations after this to relate to the North American version. I like the information of Hotaru, it was done in profile style, but it was actually an interesting profile. You used the profile method to explain a lot more about Hotaru’s than the average person would by using this method. I’d like to know the source for the fact that Hotaru is supposedly Hindu. There’s no such thing as a one-word sentence (ie. “Enjoy.”) Um…I don’t think Sailor Saturn ever has the form of Queen Saturn. The paragraph at the beginning of the Sailor Saturn section is a bit confusing. In the Mistress 9 section it should say, “associated with”, not “associate to Pharaoh 90”. You say that Mistress 9’s hair is over 20 feet long, I’m just wondering if you got that from a legitimate source or if it’s just an estimate. I might be wrong about this because I haven’t seen Sailor Moon S forever, but I don’t recall Mistress 9 ever trying to use Sailor Saturn’s, Death Reborn Revolution attack to destroy the world. Why would she have to use that attack if she had the power to awaken Pharaoh 90? I love Prof. Tomoe (hugs Tomoe plushy), anywho the profile is very short and doesn’t really give me any insight into the true nature of his personality when possessed by a monster and when he’s a gentle father. If you have a source for that Tomoe profile, then it should be cited. You don’t even mentioned the daimon that possessed him for a time in the Tomoe section, and I know that you know who the daimon is because of the “Mistress Nine” section. It’s still nice to see info on Hotaru’s father though. In the Naoko-san section, half of the last letter in each sentence is cut off by the setup. I can still easily read what is here, but that problem should be remedied. I loved the section on Naoko-san, I actually learned some things I didn’t know, that’s amazing because, I hate to sound cocky but, it’s not often that I come across new information for Sailor Moon anymore, that is information that I didn’t know yet. The mythology section about Saturn contains both mythology and information about the planet itself. You should separate these into two different sections. The mythology section was amazing, it dispels many of the rumors associated with Saturn, you might be interested in this article http://antares7.prettyodango.net/saturnpluto/index.html at Dies Gaudi about Saturn and Pluto. The introduction to the section was well done. Here’s a small mistake” Saturn is the 2cd largest planet.”, it should say 2nd. Most of the information about the planet Saturn was boring, personally I don’t really care about the axis tilt. I’m waiting…and waiting…and waiting for the Anime faces, this is a ridiculous amount of time to wait, I have no idea why it’s taking so long, but it’s making me become fed up. In the Anime Faces section I don’t think that an additional frame needs to be below every identity. You are forgetting toddler Hotaru and Super Sailor Saturn in the Anime faces section. Now I realize why the page took so long to load, it is graphics heavy and those additional frames probably add a bit to the loading time. This “Near the end, of course Hotaru is going to turns into Saturn” should say turn. I hate people spelling the word cool as “kewl”. Did I mention that I hate it when sites use dual terms (both the English and Japanese) in ways like Mamoru/Darien? All right, under Eternal Sailor Moon you say, “Even though the regular senshi never powerup”, what are you implying by saying “regular” senshi. Sailor Moon is just as regular as the next (in my opinion). Look over your Eternal Saturn info because there are a few more grammar mistakes. There are many errors in the spelling and grammar of your “Manga Faces” section. You need to include Princess Saturn in this section, and if you could find a picture of the supposed incarnation of Queen Saturn that exists, then I’ll believe you. The back button lead me to a dead page, leaving me to load the pop-up all over again because the disadvantage of pop-ups is no back buttons, how annoying. Information about Yuuko is interesting but you said that you “collected” the information, probably from sites all over the Internet, so I hope you gave credit. I can’t read half Manga summary because there are pictures was over the text and some of the text is cut off by the size of the frame! If the Manga summaries are based off of the Japanese version, then you should specify that. The Manga summary section have way too many spelling and grammar mistakes to point out, but from what I could tell, they were well written and detailed, however writing things like “blah…blah…blah” doesn’t exactly tell me that your enthusiastic about presenting the information.
Multimedia: You have some beautiful pieces of fanart in your fanart section, but this section should contain the e-mail addresses and sites of the people who contributed. Wouldn’t it be more fitting to only have Sailor Saturn art though? After all, this is a Saturn shrine. ALT text should be included on the pictures, but I’m glad you have the pictures in thumbnail form, and they open in a new window. Maybe you should include information about WHY that picture is your favourite of all Hotaru/Sailor Saturn pictures of all time. You have a nice collection of pictures, and I’m glad that you limit the number of pictures on each page to allow for fast and easy loading. Shouldn’t the wallpapers just be devoted to Sailor Saturn/Hotaru? You should include the wallpaper size in the wallpaper section. I can understand not having music that pertains to Sailor Saturn, but why do you have music that doesn’t even pertain to Sailor Moon (ie. Anime Music, Sakura's Midi (CCS?), Dragon Ball Z Midi, Dragon Ball GT Midi). When I tried to download some of the music, a download box did appear, but a dead page also opened in a new window. You should specify whether the quotes come from Manga or Anime and if you could get into the specifics of the Episode number or volume and act number, that would be even better. The poetry is okay, and is an interesting addition to the site. You could add many more animated gifs from the Anime. I’m sorry that I can’t comment on the short video section because my computer is causing my much grief at the moment (tries to strangle computer then kisses to make up for trying to kill it).
Linkage/Et. Cetera: It’s nice to see an 88x31 button made. Hurrah for “I Review” being linked! Your credits section is very complete. Your affiliates section was dead, causing me to have to get out of the pop-up window and load it again.
Overall: I’ve had mixed feelings about this site. There’s no doubt in my mind that you have great information and design, but your site created many errors and reloadings and crashings on my computer. My computer has been acting up lately, but I’ve still probably had to reload my computer at least six times to finish this review. You have quite a few small mistakes, mainly consisting of grammar errors. Your Manga summaries need to have the pictures not placed on top of the text, but overall you do have some great content.
Your splash page is attractive but confusing. There's no need to list the requirements twice. Pick which list you want to keep and get rid of the other one.
Maybe you should write "enter" on the graphic of Hotaru, or create an enter link rather than saying "click on Hotaru." What if I don't know who Hotaru is? Your email link says "Hotaru" - what if I click on that instead?
Ooh, I like the layout. Very pretty and professional. The blue divider lines in your intro look rather out of place, though. You'd do well to just take them out.
I love the navigation! It's easy to use. You have a lot of content, which is excellent. I can tell that you've worked hard on this.
Ack, you use both "scout" and "senshi" in the same paragraph. Please choose one and stick with it! I'd suggest "senshi," considering your site's topic is Sailor Saturn.
The mythology section is fascinating. I can honestly say that I enjoyed reading it, and I applaud you for taking the time to gather all this information.
The thumbnails in the image galleries are well organized, though I wonder why you have non-Saturn fan art in a Saturn shrine. It also doesn't make much sense to include DragonballZ MIDI's in the music section of a Saturn shrine. You might want to put those on your personal site.
The "free email" link appears to be broken.
I have to say that I am impressed. You have a staggering amount of content - and not the usual shrine stuff, but interesting and original content. I enjoyed my visit. Keep up the good work.
<> Diamond <>
Notes: Impersonal and DHTML-loaded, but educational as heck!
Crash Count: 0
I just want you all to know right now, before I start this review, that DHTML is not a big thing with me. Just so you've been notified.
Splash page, the requirements are loading. The DHTML list is really not nessecary here. It only takes up loading time, as there's a list in plain text right there.
After clicking the entry link, loading time is not kind to me. Ah, well.
There we go! The layout is attractive, yes. Admittedly, I'm not the biggest fan of DHTML scrolling. It's dfficult to control on the user end of things, and the lack of a scrollbar prevents me from seeeing just how long a peice of text is. That bugs me.
On to the sections:
Information: Stats and stories. The site author is very detailed. Okay, incredibly detailed. The sentence structure in the stories began to wear on my nerves, but it was just little things like lack of commas throughout.
The information is very well researched, but that's all it is, research. There were no opinions, very few times where the author came to her own conclusions. There's a lot of information here that you'd be hard-pressed to find anywhere else, but it's lacking depth. Although the layout is original, the content strikes me as being sort of wooden.
Poetry's not my place to judge, believe you me.
The galleries are efficient, and load well. A lot of these images are fairly new to me, bonus points. Very nice and organized, I like that.
There's a lot of music here. And I mean a lot. But, this IS a saturn shrine, and I'm pretty sure Dragonball Z songs don't have much to do with Hotaru. Actually, I'm pretty sure 90% of these files are not based on Hotaru. I think having the non-Saturn midis on a different site would help give your site a bit more focus.
The animated gif page. It really would be a better idea to use text links indead of just placing the images directly onto the page. It looks neater, and loads much more nicely.
Everything's credited in credits, but not linked to on the same page. It would be a lot more convenient for you and your visitors if you simply combined the links page with the credits page.
Overall? It's well-organized and polished, but has a unfinished look, and a very impersonal feel. But it seems to be getting better, and I'm sure that the author can make a lot of progress on this site before she's finished with it.