Wikipedia:Featured article review/Madlax/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was delisted by DrKay via FACBot (talk) 1:45, 26 October 2019 (UTC) [1].

Madlax[edit]

Notified: Koveras, Anime and manga

Review section[edit]

I am nominating this featured article for review because it comes off as it being bare and not well-researched on the anime. This might be due to it being a Featured Article all the way back in 2007. Just thinking this needs a complete overhaul. GamerPro64 02:04, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

 Comment: As the original sponsor of the article's featured status back in 2007, I agree that it needs more work to match the current FA criteria for anime articles. Unfortunately, due to my current familial situation, I am unable to invest any serious amount of time or effort into editing. --Koveras (talk) 06:36, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
John M Wolfson[edit]

Just looking over it for the first time, Since the word "Bible" is derived from Ancient Greek: τὰ βιβλία τὰ ἅγια, meaning "holy books", it is likely that the artbook's title is a reference to the Holy Books that play an important role in the series' plot. strikes me as original research. I'll see if I can come up with some more stuff later. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 16:35, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

UPDATE: I found some other things

  • There is an uncited paragraph in the "Music" subsection, which in any case doesn't appear to be fully fleshed out.
  • The "Soundtrack" subsection seems a bit thin as well.

In both of these the article fails 1b, but I don't see anything that can't be fixed in the course of a normal FAR. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 00:05, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from RetiredDuke[edit]

I made a read-over the article and the following issues jumped out to me:

Lead

  • First, I don’t think the lead complies with MOS:REALWORLD, since it has a whole paragraph (~50% of the lead) that just rehashes plot points. Comparing it with the leads of recently-promoted media FAs Abby (on the shorter side) and Naruto (on the gigantic side), we can see that these leads deal with the real world perspective of the respective series, citing releases, channels, adaptations, sequels, casting, critical response… all stuff that is about ‘’the impact it has had in the real world’’ – quote from MOS:REALWORLD. Madlax’s lead is basically a summary of the series plot.
  • “The production of Madlax began in 2002 but it wasn't until Yōsuke Kuroda joined the project that the series took its final form.” – What does this mean? What changes did he introduce and how did it affect the series?
  • The lead tells me nothing about these series reception, if the critics liked, if it’s popular in Japan or elsewhere… falling face first into the article I don’t know if I’m dealing with an obscure anime or if it’s considered one of the leading works on the “girls-with-guns” genre, for instance.
  • “While the critics noted the resulting similarities between Noir and Madlax, they also acknowledged the diferences” – I mean. This does not bring much to the table, does it?
  • The lead has to reflect the whole article body below. I see nothing here about the series themes for instance.

Plot

I think the the plot section itself could be tightened, I got lost at times:

  • “she discovers that the origins of the book lie in Gazth-Sonika” – and? What does she do with this information? Why does this matter?
  • “but tips off his superiors in the wrong direction, towards Madlax” – why?
  • “whose parents died because of Gazth-Sonikan war,” – I’ve now realized that I don’t know much about these fictional countries, are they neighbors? We’re talking about refugees of war here?
  • “covertly supports the war by supplying both sides” – are they in war with each other? Is this a civil war confined to Gazth-Sonika?
  • “starts investigating its true cause” – of the war? I’m starting to think that this war is pivotal to the series, but I don’t even know who is at war here.
  • “who supposedly knows about Margaret's book” – what is the deal with this book, is it magical? How does a criminal organization know about its whereabouts in the hands of a private citizen, does it glow in the dark?

I’m sure that all of this makes sense in context, but I’ve never hear of the series and I’m struggling to follow the basic plot. The prose needs to be more precise, I think.

Themes

  • Ah, now we get an explanation about the war. This war/peace duality should be introduced earlier with more clarity. Still does not explicitly say who is at war with whom, you need at least two sides for a war to happen.
  • “…focusing on the central characters, such as Limelda Jorg”. You can’t just name a random character and then fail to mention why they are so particular in their suffering that their deserve to be singled out in a series about suffering and war.
  • Okay, this war/peace duality is good for a theme. Why is none of this in the lead?
  • “ Based on the Mashimo Menu theme titles available to her” – what does this mean?
  • This search for their psychological identity is good for a theme, but is not clearly explained at the moment. This is the first mention of “Gatekeepers” in the article, so I don’t know who these people are.

Writing

  • “the producer of Noir who once came up with its original idea” – what idea? Tell me what is Noir’s basic idea.
  • “but it was not until Yōsuke Kuroda was put in charge of the script that the series took its final appearance.” – I saw this in the lead before, it does not mean much to me.
  • “so he decided to make Madlax "really extravagant", blending as many genres at once as he could” – this is the first hint that I have that these series is supposed to be something different and extraordinary. What genres are we talking about here, other than girls-with-guns (that still hasn’t been explained much), war drama and action? Supernatural, I guess because of the book stuff? Mystery, because of the book stuff and war origins, I guess? Magical girl because of the picture with glowing floating girls I guess? Why was none of this clearly stated and referenced before?

I won’t go into much detail over the rest of the article (maybe another day), but I will say that the lead currently lacks content from the music, media (merchandise, light novel) and reception themes.The lead is suppposed to be a summary of the article body and we do have a significant reception section here, so it’s not like it can’t be done. RetiredDuke (talk) 13:16, 14 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

As I've noticed that we have an early contributor in this discussion, I'll say that I meant no slight to the contributor(s)' work with this long review. It's just that FA standards have changed a lot since 2007, especially around leads and referencing. RetiredDuke (talk) 14:01, 14 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment. I commented on the original FAC (although mostly on the talk page - Talk:Madlax/Archive_1#Ready_for_FAC?), although never actually directly supported it. Anyway, re RetiredDuke's plot comments, it probably verges into OR / fanboy speculation to answer some of those, unfortunately, and if you found it difficult to comprehend, rest assured that people who watched the show weren't much better off. For what Margaret does with the information about the book: travel to Gazth-Sonika herself, hire lackeys. (This is eventually stated later in the paragraph, so maybe it could be moved up? On the other hand, this doesn't happen until halfway through the show, so might be misleading to mention Margaret's travel there too early.) Why does Carrossea do weird roguey things? Because he's a hard-to-predict dark horsey character. (Eventually, you find out he was friends with Margaret / had a childhood crush on her, but that's covered already.) Gazth-Sonika is only referred to as one country/place. It's reasonable to guess based on the name that maybe one region is Gazth, and another region is Sonika (a la Bosnia-Herzogovinia), but if so, this distinction never comes up in the show and never matters. Not sure if there's a phrasing that makes that clear. (what IS relevant is that Nafrece = Europe = 1st world country, Gazth-Sonika = Central Asia = nobody cares about it, sell arms there, anything goes... but maybe that's more useful for "Themes"). It's a civil war confined to Gazth-Sonika, and yes, both sides are run by the same dark hand because, well, he's a villain and does things like that (but the sides aren't "Gazth" and "Sonika" to be clear, it's not even made clear what their ideologies are, it's not really important to the show). You might think the war is pivotal to the show, but it really isn't! It's an excuse for there to be people to hire Madlax and for there to be armed people to shoot, and to prove what a psychotic baddie the villain is. Very little is learned of the actual fortunes of the war. For why Quanzitta knows about the book, and why people know she knows, uh, that's a good question, it's just a plot point that she's the next person to visit, I guess she has a reputation as a sage or the like, this is getting into nitpicking a weird & convoluted plot. I don't know if the book itself is magical, but the words in the book are, they're the ritual/spell/something to unleash humanity's caged self or some such nonsense. I suppose that's currently covered by "Enfant's leader Friday Monday possesses supernatural powers connected to the three ancient books" but that could probably be made more explicit. Anyway, I don't know if that helps, but maybe might help somebody trying to give the "Plot" section some rewriting some context?

For your comments on Themes, per above, the show disagrees with you on wars need two sides. It's not interested in who will win or why people are fighting, merely fighting at all vs. not fighting or the like. I agree with your other comments though. (And as far as themes that do clearly come through - the idea of a seemingly peaceful first world country cheerfully sending arms to a war-torn third world country is a solid theme, but this isn't done out of callousness or greed like you might in an anti-war series, to be clear. It's done because there's a supervillain who thinks war is awesome.)

For writing, "it" surely means the "girls-with-guns genre" - can probably rewrite that to be more explicit easily enough. For "blending as many genres as he could", that's standard director I-am-so-awesome nonsense, I wouldn't put much weight on it (but Wikipedia often does include such quotes, so I'm not necessarily saying it should be removed... just I wouldn't "trust" that statement.). SnowFire (talk) 22:07, 19 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

FARC section[edit]

Issues raised in the review section include coverage and organization. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:39, 28 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • That "Bible" possible OR that I brought up in the review hasn't been addressed or acknowledged yet. I am currently busy with something else, but will return to make a decision at my earliest convenience. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 16:11, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • Delist In addition to the concerns raised above, several common words are inappropriately and erratically linked. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 18:10, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist - As the nominator, I have not seen any improvement made. GamerPro64 16:15, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you for the ping, this fell off my radar since the review phase (also SnowFire's reply, I only saw it now, sorry about that). Replying to @SnowFire: first, I do understand that the series' plot is complex and difficult to explain to anyone who hasn't seen it, but I feel like a FA's plot section should still be clear to the reader. I may have been a bit obtuse at times in my review, but I wanted to convey that I wasn't following the general plot points at all.
As it stands, the article's lead is still inadequate because half of it is plot and it doesn't reflect the entirety of the article. There is obviously a prequel (Noir) and a sequel (El Cazador de la Bruja) to Madlax, but it isn't clear how the three parts relate to each other. There are still parts of the article that should be clarified and expanded upon. Delist since there has been no improvement to the article since the nomination began. RetiredDuke (talk) 22:11, 12 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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