100 Ratings and Still Going: The Kamishibai Rating Site

by Tenchi

It's no surprise that with all of the many Kamishibai stories available someone would start a site dedicated to telling it's reader which stories are hot and which are not. Now that site reaches it's 100th rating, and it's webmistress Meagen (author of Codename: Sailor M!) is still going strong. When asked how the page got started Meagen had this to say;

"I was browsing Quova's website and found a section where she reviewed some Kamishibai stories and graded them on a one to five scale, and gave out some awards. This was about the time when the top 25 downloads table was introduced, and all the authors were complaining about the results. I thought the obvious solution would be to make a site with reviews like Quova's, to help people choose the good stories and avoid the bad."

Back in the earlier days Meagen had all of the stories clumped together into one page and used Otakuworld's rating icons to denote what kind of story it was. But now, the site's layout has improved as well as the addition of original icons. Some of the most important ones though are the author specific ones to show either "This story is really great!" or "Stay away from this one like the plaque."

Since the beginning days Meagen has been joined by other reviewers, thus adding some variety into the reviews. Chibi Alex-Chan, Rebo, Kusu Kusu and myself have all contributed ratings to the page as well.

On July 16th,2001 the page hit a milestone. It had reviewed 100 Kamishibai stories. The 100th review was of the Kamishibai classic "The Legend of Ika Takazushi." When asked why she chose that story for her 100th review Meagen had this to say;

"My reviews were supposed to help people decide if they want to download a story or not. Since Ika's story was included with the program, I thought it would be rather pointless to rate it. But Stephen asked me nicely, so I wrote up a review. I already had eighty-odd stories done, so I decided to hold off Ika to make it number 100. This marks both the occasion and the story as something really special."

We here at the Kamishibai Post would like to congratulate Meagen on her great accomplishment and wish her luck on the next 100 ratings.

And for the record you can find her site at: http://www.geocities.com/meagen_stuff/


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