Anime Cosmos Review of Sakura's Senshi Circle - June 2006
LayoutI think the top banner would look better if the stars were all contained inside the lines. As it stands, it looks a bit messy. It would also be nice if the column for navigation was as long as the column for content. It looks a little unbalanced right now. Normally I like a layout to look exactly the same from one page to another, but your use of different manga images works with your layout. The only thing I would mention is that (probably due to resizing) the lines around some of the images are grainy. If you can, try to clean them up a bit. I would also recommend containing your fanfics in your layout, since they are still part of the site. Usually the only time you need a link to open in a new window is if it leads to a different site or if it opens a picture (generally in a gallery, where the images might be too large to be contained in the layout).
Content
You have a lot of content, and while I didn't read the fanfics in full, they look like good works. Much of the artwork is pretty good to great, and those that aren't; well you did mention that some was from beginning artists, so no problem there. The articles are very well-written, with persuasive arguements toward your point of view. The resources page is also a very helpful page for those who want to get into the Otaku Senshi world.
Originality
The fanfictions, obviously, are automatically original. However, the thing that really stands out to me is the soundtrack for Return of Astera! What a cute addition! At first I thought this might be your only real original content (I mean other than the otaku senshi), but you have some very good, and unique articles, as well. It's nice to see actual opinion sometimes rather than just the same facts spewed out over and over. The "My Top Ten Most Pervasive (and Annoying) Fan Senshi Cliches" was quite and interesting read. You have some things like meanings of gemstones and colours, which really struck me as original for an anime site. Kudos to you! This is usually the area where people fail in my reviews, because every site seems to be a clone of another site.
Misc
The Forgotten Truth: All of the images are broken.
Guest Fanfiction (Blood Ties): "Kumi has written an beautiful tale about some powerful otaku senshi that help Sailor Moon and the senshi defeat Queen Beryl." should be "Kumi has written a beautiful tale about some powerful otaku senshi that help Sailor Moon and the senshi defeat Queen Beryl."
Short Stories: "If you are interested in submitted a Short Story for this page" should be "If you are interested in submitting a Short Story for this page"
There are a few other grammatical errors, but none of the others were bad enough to really disrupt the flow of the sentances or paragraph.
Otaku Senshi Fanart Page 3: First row, second picture link is broken.
Naming Senshi Article: "A senshi by any other name..." and then the following " . . . wouldn't make as much since." It should be "sense", not "since".
Articles Main Page: The first three links under Character Creation all link to "Sailor Senshi Get a Life!", as does the first link under Sailor Moon Debates.
When you get a review, I'd highly suggest copying it over to your site rather than just linking to it. That way, if the site goes down or they move the review, you don't wind up with a dead link. Right now your first, third, and fifth reviews lead to dead links.
On the sister site information page, you should link to the actual site, not just list the URL. Make it a clickable link. People are lazy. ;)
OVERALL
The content and originality of this site is definitely its strong point. If it were not for the problems (grammatical, dead links, links pointing to the wrong areas, and broken images) and if the layout was cleaned up just a bit, it would receive and almost perfect score.
Anime Cosmo gives Sakura's Senshi Circle a B+.
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