Article easily passed the "quick-fail" criteria. On to the full review.
Is it reasonably well written?
A. Prose quality:
Some minor prose questions from lead- what is issue 22/23? Unless someone subscribes (and even then) they won't know when that is - month would be better. Why "bound volumes" instead of the more accurate tankōbon (bound volume can have other connotations). Is baseball a genre?
Setting could easily be moved to start the plot. Its very short length violates WP:Layout regarding subsections. "Main characters" appears to have some kind of coding error as there is no double space between the paragraphs - would recommend either fixing to show breaks or merge into a single paragraph each. Ref 1, 7, and 31 are missing publisher info. The Manga News refs have no author; do they not note who writes their reviews? Ref 12 needs to be reformatted to be consistent with the rest.
Technically, the character second should be referenced, but for GA I do not see anything interpretive in nature, so not pinging for that.
B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary:
What makes the Multiply reference, #32, reliable? Looks like a self-published piece? Ditto #18. Ref #5 is a Freewebs fansite and not RS. Ref #6 is an ANN Ency ref...
Production info would be nice, but thus far isn't available so is as broad as can be.
B. Focused:
Character descriptions are a bit long for the size of the article and its having a separate list. Suggest tightening up some for the major points not already cover by plot.
Other notes that do not affect the GA review: The manga is the primary work, so why are the voices of the anime actors being listed at the top of the character section? Has no one beyond ANN reviewed the anime? -- AnmaFinotera (talk·contribs) 18:47, 2 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
They do look like quick fixes. Addressing some I can off the top of my head:
Reference #32 is the text of an academic paper presented at a scholarly conference; that we are using is the author's reprint does not affect its reliability.
Reference #18 is the publisher's catalog of publications -- which they host in this format, as entries in their official blog. Why this format instead of using a database hooked into their website, you'd have to ask their webmaster, but it *is* the publisher's official blog.
Why voices at top? Because, well, I hadn't realized that putting them there suggests that anime is primary. If this is so, we need to somehow note this in a guideline.
In English, I've yet to find a reliable reviewer aside from ANN. Fifteen tons of reviewblog posts, 3/4 of them calling it one of the best of the year and the other 1/4 utterly meh, but nothing reliable-source.
Identifying a weekly magazine issue by month would be inaccurate.
No, Manga News doesn't identify authors of reviews. Somewhat annoying, that.
Seriously...that's their official site? That's...sad.... :P But alright on those two. Would be better if the paper was available at the conference site, but as long as its confirmed its the author's site and that it was presented there too, then its fine. Can the magazine be identified by date then? Cause issue # is fairly meaningless to most readers, I think. The voices thing has been discussed before...can't remember if it was ever noted in the MoS directly or if it was left out out of fear of instruction creep or something. Poor anime...looks like an interesting piece. BTW, is baseball actually a genre? :D -- AnmaFinotera (talk·contribs) 19:31, 2 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Srsly. The publisher has an official website, but it's mostly forums -- their catalog listings are all on a separately hosted blogsite, with wretched search functions; most annoying. I confirmed that the paper was indeed presented at the conference (or that it was scheduled to be presented, to be hairsplitty) but never found a conference proceedings. Is issue number really not meaningful? It is, after all, how a bibliographic citation would be made. The voices discussion, IIRC, came to the conclusion that we didn't have consensus over whether to put voices at the start or end of a character list entry, so it's editors' choice. For the genre, I note that we have Category:Baseball anime and manga, a subcategory of anime and manga by genre. And one other query: references #7 and #31 already list Manga News as publisher -- did you mean another number? —Quasirandom (talk) 19:46, 2 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Issue # by itself is pretty meaningless. Yeah, for the citation its great, but in the prose it tells a reader pretty much nothing other than that the series was released that year sometime. Unless you have the magazine in hand or are intimately familiar with it, you don't know if issue 22/23 came out in March, June, December, etc. I thought the conclusion was end for manga, beginning for anime...but okay. -- AnmaFinotera (talk·contribs) 23:17, 2 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It's actually much easier than you think. As Weekly Shōnen Sunday is a weekly magazine, the issue number is the week it was released. The magazine sometimes skips a week and issues a combined two week issue (hence the "22/23"). So, it was the issue for the 22nd and 23rd week. As the magazine always comes out on the same day, and about a week early, figuring out a date should be fairly simple. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe23:57, 2 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It may be easy if you are familiar with the magazine, but for many readers who are not, it is not. How would they know what date issue 1 is, and that the magazine might or might not skip a week? And how will they know if any weeks were skipped before the 22/23 issue? -- AnmaFinotera (talk·contribs) 00:42, 3 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't matter if they know or not as the issue number is the week number, regardless of any skipped (they are actually combined) weeks. So issue 22/23 is for the 22nd week that year, and in this case includes the 23rd week. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe02:41, 3 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
In any case, I'm still rather dubious about stating a month for a weekly magazine, as that could apply to any of four (sometimes five) different issues. —Quasirandom (talk) 02:47, 3 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Unless you can read the date (it's in really, really tiny print) here or here, you're just going to have to accept the week number as the date. The issue number is descriptive and accurate. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe18:33, 3 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This is where I say "d'oh!" again. Um, the ex-#7, Nihonjoe will have to address. ex-#31 does have a publisher -- the organization who puts on the conference/awards. —Quasirandom (talk) 22:05, 2 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Fujimidai StationI can't find it in any reliable sources, though if you look at the pic to the right and compare it to the one in the manga (or anime) when Kō sees Senda waiting for Aoba in front of the station, it's like they photocopied the image for use in the manga/anime. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe19:01, 3 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Does the current reference not count as reliable? (You're right that's the model -- right down to identical stained glass used in the anime). —Quasirandom (talk) 19:51, 3 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I consider this blog reliable as he's been publishing since the dawn of blogs and his information is always correct (I have yet to find something which isn't). However, there are some who likely won't accept that. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe20:24, 3 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not seeing how reference #12 needs to be reformatted - explicate please? Oh, duh -- I see what you mean (I miscounted changing refnumbers). I'll have to dig up the issue number for that. —Quasirandom (talk) 20:35, 2 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Update: I think we've addressed all concerns except the one Japanese ref, the debated date issue, and trimming the character section. I'm working the last in scratch space now (it's harder than it initially appears as there's less overlap with the Plot section than you might think -- I wrote those entries to focus on characterization rather than potted history -- but I'm hoping to get them down to a not-too-overstuffed paragraph each, and so evade the "coding issue"). —Quasirandom (talk) 16:35, 3 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
There -- character descriptions edited down, to focus even more on just characterization instead of plot. Does that address your concern? And does it fix the "coding issue" (which I never did quite understand, I confess)? —Quasirandom (talk) 19:51, 3 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It was hard to try to explain in words...basically the character list was looking like it was using BR tags instead of being actual paragraphs. All that's left now, I think, is the missing publisher name on those few refs. -- AnmaFinotera (talk·contribs) 20:10, 3 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
<outdent> I would prefer to move the statement into talk page until better ref could be found. This is a Japanese blog so RS statut need to be verified and checking blogger profile doesn't give argument to give it a RS statut see [3] & [4]. I think the information is trustworthy but one ref short of the main article space :( --KrebMarkt21:48, 3 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed all issues noted above have been corrected and the article now meets the GAC. Congrats! -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 01:52, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
