A blog that consists mostly of reviews of the media that the author watches/reads, or perhaps a review site constructed with blogging software. Particularly common are anime blogs (usually on an episode-by-episode basis) and book review blogs. These can build up a community of readers who share the writer's tastes —in the case of TV shows and anime fansubs, considerable discussions can arise in comment sections for the entries, acting almost like a discussion forum.
Contrast Current Events Blog, a blog geared toward reviewing or informing about current events. Compare Video Review Show (reviews in video format published on the web) and Analysis Channel (a Web Video channel dedicated to analyzing/critiquing a series or a format).
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Anime Nano
is an aggregator of anime blogs.
- Animeblogger has a fair number of hosted anime blogs as well, and has its own aggregator.
- Anime Bites
Comic Books
- Atop the Fourth Wall started out as one of these for comics before it evolved into a Video Review Show. Linkara reviews crappy comics and analyzes why they suck.
- The Bat-Blog focuses on Batman comic, toys, collectibles, and more.
- The Comic Blog Elite is a veritable Justice League of such sites.
- The NewtCave looks at a wide range of comic-related subjects.
- Weeklycomicbookreview.com, where comics are reviewed.
Comic Strips
- The Comics Curmudgeon is a popular blog that reviews various Comic Strips on a daily basis. Found here
Films — Live-Action
- The Unshaved Mouse is in the midst of a project to review every single film in the Disney Animated Canon and The Marvel Cinematic Universe with the occasional foray into Disney's best-known live action films and other (mostly) animated movies. His lengthy reviews include interesting information on the history of the Disney company, Running Gags that include a Sarcastic Map of Wartime Europe and a Comrade-turned-Commie Crow, and plenty of humor and constructive criticism even in reviews for films he absolutely despises.
Literature
- Cinnamon Bunzuh! is a blog that reviews the Animorphs series. It uses an hybrid synopsis/stream-of-thought discussion format, with the authors starting with a description and then going into a conversational play-by-play of sorts of the notable moments in a book. Found here.
- Lila Gaela:
- She reviews Wattpad stories; both original and fan-created. She comments on the cover (a feature that the platform allows and is often critical at attracting readers), synopsis, title, plot, characters, narrative, and worldbuilding (for Speculative Fiction, mostly). Her focus is helping amateur writers improve, so she provides constructive criticism and includes explanations of useful concepts she thinks the writer might need to know—e.g., types of conflicts, multiple P.O.V.s, Central Themes, Master Plots, character arcs, the elements of storytelling, and anagnorisis; as well as analyzing fantastical elements. Here's an example.
- Claroscuro's first draft was reviewed by Lila Gaela on her Reseñas de fantasía review blog. She identified the central theme as being "the cyclic nature of history", something that a light-darkness motif helped to convey. On the characters' side, she praised how most of them were rounded characters, especially Trilero, even if some remained mostly unchanged throughout the plot (e.g., Ajofaina and the Duchess of Inquina). Gaela's only negative point then was that Roncefier's descent to madness could use some fleshing out, as the Time Skip meant it happened off-screen and, therefore, came as a shock for many readers.
- Débora Huentrul's Nocturno was reviewed as well, highlighting how much of the rich imagery of the narration originates from the painting its title and plot reference—The Starry Night—by means of the frequent mentions to stars, the sky, cypresses (nature, more generally), and struggling with mortality as a Central Theme. Gaela also discusses the nature of Adiel and Zand's relationship, which drives the plot by making the two of them undergo character development in different but complementary directions. Gaela also defends that she interprets the work as being primarily framed in Surrealism as an artistic movement, rather than Symbolism or Post-Impressionism (the latter being what Huéntrul's readers assumed to be the case).
- Give and you shall receive. Lila's own short story compilation, Crónicas de un gato a medianoche, was analyzed by fellow Wattpad writer, Ciara Sofi (read it here) on the platform's official Fantasy genre-oriented account. The review was positive, gushing about her "magic prose, rich language, and the easiness in which such emotions are exposed."
- She reviews Wattpad stories; both original and fan-created. She comments on the cover (a feature that the platform allows and is often critical at attracting readers), synopsis, title, plot, characters, narrative, and worldbuilding (for Speculative Fiction, mostly). Her focus is helping amateur writers improve, so she provides constructive criticism and includes explanations of useful concepts she thinks the writer might need to know—e.g., types of conflicts, multiple P.O.V.s, Central Themes, Master Plots, character arcs, the elements of storytelling, and anagnorisis; as well as analyzing fantastical elements. Here's
- Mark Reads Harry Potter, is a popular blog that reviews each Harry Potter book, chapter by chapter. Mark has finished the entire series and liked it a lot. Before that, there was Mark Reads Twilight. He didn't like it very much. He has since added more reviews, including The Hunger Games, Firefly, Doctor Who, and Avatar: The Last Airbender. His sites are collectively called Mark Does Stuff.
- Reasoning with Vampires is a blog dedicated to providing a line by line analysis of the Twilight series. This differs from most criticism of Twilight in that the blog focuses on grammar, rhetoric, and technical execution instead of plot. (Though there is still plenty of criticism of the plot.)
- Stainless Steel Droppings does this for science fiction and fantasy books, movies of all genres, and - increasingly - genre-related art and illustration.
- BloggerBeware is a blog that reviews (read: ingeniously mocks) every one of R.L. Stine's Goosebumps, Goosebumps 2000, and eventually, Horrorland books. Has its own main page here.
- KILL IT WITH FIRE! is an unfinished blog panning the first Twilight novel, run by The Twilight Snarker.
- The Blytonly Obvious is a blog run by Fen that gives short, entertaining reviews on some of the books written by Enid Blyton.
- Dottie Smith's Verbal Menagerie is a blog which reviews urban fantasy with female leads chapter by chapter. She's currently reviewing the Anita Blake series.
- SKJAM! Reviews is a book and popular culture review site run by SKJAM. It features a lot of small press books as those are the publishers that will send him review copies, but also has anime he's watched and books he purchased with his own money.
- The Bookie Monster is a website run by horror author Shana Festa (Time of Death, At Hell's Gates) which specializes in independent horror novels but has branched out into science fiction and fantasy. It is absolutely massive with hundreds of reviews across the horror scene and over 20,000+ followers.
- Now has its own page here.
- Beca Reads is a blog dedicated to reviewing the Fifty Shades of Grey series in the style of Mark Reads.
Tabletop Games
- Spaceships and Psychics: Reviews science fiction tabletop rpgs and supplement books, with a slant toward introducing the medium to newcomers.
Live-Action TV
- Animated Critic: Reviews over individual episodes of animated television show. He also does anime and animated movies as well.
- Deadcoders Reviews: reviews Code Lyoko episode by episode.
- The Critical Cablebox (formerly the Artsy Core) reviewed television dramas and comedies as well as other select shows.
- Lifetime,Wow! reviews and mocks the Narm Charm of Lifetime movies.
- Delta Blues by Jim "Reviewboy" Wright is almost entirely devoted to synopses/reviews of Star Trek: Voyager.
Video Games
- Critical Hit Point is a game review website that uses humor and illustrations to satirize popular current games.
- While Chrontendo is more well-known for his video's, he also hosts a blog.
- VGJunk is a (mostly) nostalgic blog that reviews video gamesystem classic and obscure.
Webcomics
- These Webcomics Are So Bad. It reviews bad webcomics (to the blog owner). It's a parody of Caustic Critic review blogs.
Web Video
- Eat Your Kimchi: The Stawski's talk about things other than music videos, but the biggest audience is for those reviews.
Other
- The Fire Blogger reviews mainly things that he considers overrated, including The Middle.
- SF Debris started as one of these and eventually moved on to a Video Review Show format. However, he has since created a review blog alongside his videos where he reviews things that don't quite fit into his normal purview.
- The Strawberry Dragon Project: Does not focus on one medium or quality in particular, except for a slight focus towards classic video games. Evolved into a Video Review Show.
- The Sturgeon Awards. It exists to review every bad thing in existence.
- The United Federation of Charles analyzes video games and science fiction/fantasy novels (largely) from a literary perspective.
- Now has its own TV tropes page.