So there was this chap (with an anime blog) who went by the name of Cameron Probert. This chap was looking for a 9th entry for his personal list of all time top anime. Something to rank up there with the very best shows he’d ever seen. As it were, a 10/10 show.

The reason I bring this up is my tendency to get to the end of a good series, enjoying the glow of its niceness, and then say to myself – “Right. Cool. That’s worth… 9/10″. It reminds me of his (nifty) articles explaining why certain series weren’t able to make his list of legends.

9/10 is a fair score for many a quality show, and I seldom fail to recall blemishes which justify the removal of that lone golden number which separates the 9’s from the 10’s. As a result, like Probert, the podium upon which I place my very favourite favourites (there are 3, I’ll not name them here) grows ever more remote from the braying crowd of the merely excellent. Especially because I reinforce the stature of those on The List by involuntarily allotting them the 10/10 in my head. The idea of #4 being out there somewhere in the world is tantalising and frustrating.

So while I don’t allot a score or ranking to every anime I watch, when it comes to the very best that distinction is still in my head. I’m forever asking whether this latest show is worthy of the list of best bests. Invariably I find imperfections.

But then, what can I possibly mean by referring to perfection? Should I just think about what would be personally appealing?

The reviewing systems I know and love are predicated upon the fetish of perfection. My favourite judgemental authorities (looking beyond anime) have always been the ones who refused to give their perfect scores to more than an elite few, or refused to give it ever. But what I’m interested in here isn’t the attempted objectivity of these reviewers, it’s the personal sense of perfection. The feeling that what you just saw was immaculate.

If there are flaws in execution, either the experience is damaged by them, or they are not true flaws. It’s redundant to try and measure fiction according to fixed criteria regarding direction or character development or the like.In taking this position I’m referring to perfection as the absence of blemishes in our own eyes. Not something concrete, but something subjective.

The difficultly of maintaining such an illusion of perfection over a TV series should be apparent. That’s a lot of perfect direction, and perfect dialogue, and perfect art, and perfect fucking everything which has to be right in place in the eyes of the individual viewer.

And for TV series, that’s a continuous experience – a repeated moment of admiration. Something completely different from, say, the polish of a perfect two hour film.

It’s perhaps because of this that anime forces an awareness of subjectivity upon us. In the moment of anticipation for the next perfect episode, we can see how our personal management of the viewing experience is central to how far we see a show as ‘perfect’. It’s not that serial stories actually are more subjective in quality terms, it’s that we become more aware of our role as viewer in maintaining that feeling of perfection. Which amounts to a great deal of “I like what I like”, and a general hesitancy to be objective amongst fans.

The fact is that the best show for the individual will always need more than this feeling of perfection – because the best experience relies on resonance.

I think of my personal 10/10’s as thing that have that perfect feel and are distinctly personally appealing.

There is a level above everything in a show being spot on. This is a level a show like Kannagi doesn’t ever reach, for all its virtues. It’s the level a show like Xam’d hasn’t consistently reached (so far), even though it shows many of the capacities necessary to do so. No matter how well made something is there has to be a strong personal connection for the true 10/10 experience to occur. A show can be resonant and imperfect, but in that case it still won’t reach the level of those series which provided both aspects.

There’s a link between this subjectivist quest for glory approach to anime viewing and the creation of a fan’s canon.

If I am in search of my #4, then I need to look to the right places. I need an idea of which shows might be candidates for the top spots. That is to say, if I know all the shows most likely to throw up few (or less important) blemishes, I’ll find more of the ones that proceed to rise above perfection. The ones that can reach the glorious list.

As such, I reject any canon which aims to tell me what’s “essential” to my understanding of anime. I have wanted to understand anime as a whole, I still kind of do. But I’m increasingly of the opinion that the ideal individual experience has to come before everything else.

It may be somewhat productive to explore anime in its own right – but we make a better fandom, and a better collective idea of “anime” if we insist on ideas of actual quality. A canon based on what’s socially important to us is a dead shark, it’s something which looses its connection to the experience of actually watching. It’s all fan-love and no art-love.

The right thing to do is base our canon on quality (albeit subjectively measured) rather than social relevance. Otherwise we end up in a circle(-jerk) of references and a calcified fandom. This obviously has a certain appeal. It may be better suited to creating an otaku culture. But it doesn’t suit my perfectionist-cum-hedonist ideal. The shows on that magic list means too much to me.

We should be picky – because once we’ve made the list, decided our personal perfect shows and then nominated the few which have that little bit more, we’ve learned something about ourselves.

Rather than using anime as a retreat world, an alternative reality of facts and ideas, we should see it as what it is. A subsection of a medium. A conveniently limited realm within which to act out our regular quests for understanding and connection.

We can learn a bit about where we should look for art, for meaning. The quest may be about finding 10/10 shows, but the highest value is (inevitably, infuriatingly) in the journey. Maybe if we do the job well, with honesty and critical judgement, we can figure out exactly why we’d choose to conduct the search in the world of foreign cartoons anyway.

That’s a knowledge that won’t come from the closed construct world of inter-reference. Understanding anime has to be based in understanding what resonates with us as individuals, rather than greedily seeking understanding of the culture.

That’s why we have to take those 9/10s to task for their imperfections or failures to connect. Because there’s bugger all point to anime for its own sake, that quest might as well be conducted in any one of a thousand geekeries. Obsession with the 10/10 is obsession with the shows themselves – and that has to make it the right quest to set out on.