review 004
reviewee Chibi Land
date reviewed September 6, 2005
Splash
That's a very cute fan art image of Sailormoon. Great job CGing it. The splatter brushes are a nice addition. You might want to make your background color an image because there is a very slight difference in coloration from your splash image and your background (since IE only supports "web colors" that particular hex you chose is not supported). To get rid of that scrollbar in IE use scroll=no in your Body tag to make it look like a seamless window.
Layout
Features a larger version of your splash page. The DIVS with dotted border is a simple idea. The Chibi Land's affiliates box is slightly smaller than your menu box. It makes the layout look not proportional. Your Alinks could use some spicing up. Try changing colors around instead of the boring black underlined link. There are quite a lot of sites online that teach you how to add optional Alink CSS such as lissaexplains.com. Since your layout is designed to work in IE, why not have a colored scrollbar? Again...many tutorial sites tell you exactly how to make a color scrollbar in CSS. Again, you have the problem with your background being a different color than your images. Have a blank image and color it the background color of your fan art image, then set the new image as your background. You'll have a layout that fully matches with its background.
Main
Great job on the main page. I enjoyed how you defined what Chibi and SD meant, very nice. Your updates open up as a new page into a whole different site, in this case your forum. This basically misleads your visitor. Although you also own this forum, you mislead your visitor by indicating that updates meant a page dedicated to updates at Chibi Land...not your entire site + forum. Remember to SPAM protect your email address (youremail@NOSPAMdomain.com).
Information
You have a few problems with consistency in your Character Analysis. You leave out stats that are in some characters and some that are not (i.e. English dub name). Sometimes you call the senshi with spaces...and sometimes you don't. These were also very unoriginal character analysis. Too many sites have these stats and a small summary of the character. Sailor Uranus and Neptune were missing summaries. The images you used to represent each character all looked very inconsistent (one was even direct linked). Choose good quality images and/or that match, and a small tip: have them the same size, visitors enjoy uniformity. The only thing that made your character analysis interesting was your fan art, which changed with each character.
Character Analysis - There are no such category as Inner and Outer senshi, merely fan created terms. Sailor Chibimoon's civilian name would be Tsukino ChibiUsa, not just ChibiUsa. Sailor Moon - you need to space that Sailormoon since you decided to label her Sailor Moon in the first place. Sailor Mercury - you included Sailor Moon's dubbed name...why not Mercury's? Sailor Mars - again spacing issues with names...this shouldn't be happening if your main character analysis pages have spaces between Sailor and Planet. I don't understand why in "Has trouble with" you indicate the manga trouble...I thought you said these character analysis were ANIME based. Mistress 9 does not have a zero before the nine. Sailor Jupiter - spelled "athletic", "cherry" wrong. You also reuse a paragraph from Sailor Mar's character analysis. Sailor Uranus - you again use manga information, when you clearly state in your character analysis that your information is anime based. Sailor Neptune - Spell out "Three Lights" it is the correct term. Michiru has trouble with sea cucumber not sea amber. Spelled "painting" wrong. Sailor Pluto - no where is it stated that Pluto ever has the power of death...that would be Sailor Saturn? Tuxedo Kamen - spell out "North American." Luna and Artemis - you forgot to add Diana in your navigation link. Spelled "Diana" wrong. Perhaps you could have more information in this section as well as pictures...instead of once sentence descriptions. Sailor Starfighter - your image is a direct linked image, thus it's broken. Seiya's power is not light...her power is derived from the stars. Spell out "Three Lights." Sailor Starmaker and Starhealer - again...their powers are derived from the stars not from light. Princess Kakyuu - she comes from the planet "Kinmoku." I don't understand this sentence..."saved in an censer and protected by Chibi Chibi." ??? She hides herself in an urn not a censer? Capitalize "Three Lights", "Light of Hope".
Romance Corner - There are so many anime images of all these couples, I wish you would have chosen better ones...ones that were not scanned in from the PP-K packs. Spelled "Helios" wrong. Spelled "many" wrong in Seiya + Usagi.
Sailor Wars - Ouch...this is called plagiarism. It does not matter if you added a few lines and pictures or changed a few words around...the entire page screams plagiarism. The ORIGINAL story entitled The Legend of Galaxia was written by Tom Cheng. I suggest you take this page off your site. If you love the story so much use the original and CREDIT T. Cheng...don't steal and try to make it your own. It is also very obvious where you decided to add in your own sections of writing because T. Cheng has a totally different style of writing than you do.
Multimedia
I'm happy to see an improvement in your site after the disastrous Information section.
Kawaii Collection - Very lovely collection of chibi/SD images.
Chiisai Group Gallery - An interesting collection. Why do you have large watermarks on the first 11 pictures that say Chibi Land if they were done by Ryutaro Hino...shouldn't they be watermarked by the artist's name since they are the one who drew these? And are these images suppose to be in your Fan art section since they were draw by a fan?
Fan Art and Comics - nicely done section. Remember to add your email on this page so it will be more visitor friendly for those who want to send in their fan art.
Animated GIFS - I enjoyed this section...although I'm not sure why you included the GIF with Luna changing into a human since it's not in any way "chibi" related.
Chibi Cosplay - A very cute section =) You might try going to cosplay.com to look for more cosplayers.
Music Theatre - "Starlight's" is one word. Remember to capitalize ALL words (except for common words such as the, is, a...) since these are song titles. Starlights Introduction Theme, Search For Your Love, Fate is So Beautiful lead to broken links. Overall, nice collection of song files.
Fun
There wasn't much to do here since your contest was finished and the quiz was a dead link. Try to think of ideas that are more chibi themed for the visitor!
Chibi Forum - did not grade. You may want to have this open up in a new window, since it's a different site.
Chibi Luck Charms - Thank you for linking your sources...it's much appreciated; you could have their links open up in new windows, so that the visitor will not lose your site in the process. Spelled "Diana" wrong in the Explanations of Charms. Capitalize and add an apostrophe "Let's" in your last sentence. Even though you provide explanations for each of your charms, they all contain the exact same symbol "luck." You may want to find the correct symbols to put on your badge that match your explanations. Could also indicate to the visitors what that symbol means if they cannot read Japanese/Chinese.
Adopted Play Room - Cute adoptable things. Most sites have their adoptable items located in the site unless the adoptable items were created by the site owner themselves. But, it's purely up to you.
Contest - You will want to note to visitors that again, the PGSM Live Action Art Contest opens up in a new window and to a whole new site. Hall of Fame - very nice archive and list of entries.
Moonie Quiz - leads to a dead link.
Quiz Awards - There are many easier ways to give out quiz awards as well as better scripts than Alxnet. If you don't have PHP access to create a quiz you can always use the simple JavaScript quiz such as Quiz Maker.
How to Draw Chibis - This is a nice tutorial section for those who want to learn how to draw deformed/chibi versions of Sailormoon. You might want to note to the visitor what the difference between Chibi and Chibis is. There is no plural form for Chibi so it's not Chibis if that was what you were going for. Chibis has an entirely different meaning. Chibis indicates that the characters are usually super-kawaii, have a childish voice, and tend to not have fingers or toes. Chibi is defined as small/little.
Site
Overall, great job on this section, but there were a few spelling issues and how some words are defined differently on the web, than in real life.
Gifts of Honour - You have an interesting way of categorizing your awards. Why do you have the ASA 2002 on top of all your awards and before your ASA 2003 award if most of your awards are categorized by date ascending? Why do you call this section "Gifts" since you label these clearly as awards?
Awards for You - What an unique way for site owners to apply for awards. Sometimes its better if you do not list awards that site owners cannot apply for, somehow they always misread rules and apply for them anyways. Capitalize "Lots" in #5.
Link Me - Nice selection of linkage buttons. Remember to SPAM protect your email address.
Chibi-List - Another interesting way of getting more visitors especially that step #3 of yours. You might want to actually have a list of your members on this page as well.
Credits and thanks - Great Credits and Thanks page. Huzzah! Remember to capitalize the "Thanks" in your menu.
Webrings and Links - You may want divide which sites are your sisters and which sites are your affiliates. They are somewhat defined differently on the web these days. Sisters - are sites which are owned by friends that are almost like "family members" whom you interact with (closer than affiliates). Affiliates - means you acknowledge that they are similar to your site and you interact with them as well. You can also put a title under links, which are your favorite Sailormoon sites that are not your affiliates/sisters, so that they don't look like they are also webrings.
About Site/me - Yay...Cantonese pride *looks around...* I enjoyed this page thoroughly where you provide information about yourself involved in Sailormoon as well as your site history and past layouts.
Overall
There were major issues with your Information section, especially the lack of uniformity and originality (I know it's hard, but even something small can make a huge difference, you have already taken one step by having all your layout images drawn by you!) as well as plagiarism. There were a few spelling issues around the site, but overall great job on spelling and grammar. I also wanted to note that throughout your site you called your site Chibi land (note the lowercase L). Your site is two words so remember to capitalize that Land on all of your pages. Try focusing more on the chibi aspects of the series, shrines are difficult, but when you dedicate your subject to something that no one else has it creates quite a beautiful effect. Good luck with your site!
Chibi Land's Reply to this Review
Firstly, I would like to give you a big thanks for reviewing my site. You've been very helpful with your review, and I will definitely take some of your advice in order to make Chibi Land a better site.
I feel your review is honest and have been reviewed in an unbiased manner. Surely, I feel bad about the 'Sailor Wars' section, and I feel quite bad about the Character Analysis, but I guess that's life~ accepting criticism. I need to learn to accept criticism, so I can learn from them and not make the same mistake again. Sometimes I wonder if its worth keeping the Information section up... despite how it looks, I did spend a lot of time on those sections. I've never really been good at writing things, so the main highlights of the site are the chibi and the fun. I do plan on fixing up the whole section.
About the Links and Webring section...I don't quite understand you there. There is a webring in it.. and I never said Deep Submerge and Moonlight Alliance are web rings. Although not many other links apart from affiliates, there are still links, so saying you don't see any links apart from sisters/affiliates is a little misleading (I get your point though).
Apart from that, thanks again for your time.
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