Anime World Order every so often will talk about how Letter and Star-based grading systems are a waste and don’t explain anything. For example, what’s the difference between a 4 star and a 5 star in animation quality? How can a show have like C’s in multiple categories but end up with an A rating overall? It’s generally better to just write something out, but what if you really don’t want to? In that case, let me propose some ideas for new grading systems.
1) The Descriptive Letter Grade System
I want to ask you, why should A be considered better than B? What if, instead of having your letter grades be ranked, you instead had letter grades which actually represent aspects of the anime beyond saying “this is good” or “this is bad?” What if, for example, if we were grading animation quality, A stood for high-budget high-quality animation, while R stood for “good use of a low budget” and Y stood for “often inconsistent?” You could have multiple letter grades per category, or you could choose the one that stands out the most. If everyone can agree on what all the letters mean for every category, we can then have a consistent rating system that anyone can use (provided they learn the system)!
2) Elaborate Star Ratings
The problem with star ratings or such is that they tend to be used in the most general sense. 5 stars for story, 3 stars for music, who is to say just what consistutes a 5-star story, aside from Nagano Mamoru? What if, then, stars were a quantitative rating given out for more specific categories, ones that can be seen clearly, where a 1-star is not inherently worse than a 5-star?
Possible categories:
Cast Size
Plot Consistency
Plot Arc Size
Recurring Villains
Amount of Stock Footage
Melodrama
These are not objective ratings now, but no review is every objective. Instead, what these categories tell you is that if you start watching the shows, these are things you might expect. Want to watch a show with a ridiculous-size cast? Go for a 5-star Cast Size show. Prefer something more episodic? Go for a 1-star Plot Arc Size show. The ratings will not tell you that show A is better than show B, but rather, just what A and B have that differentiate one from the other in a way which may or may not indicate that A is better than B.
Conclusion
On second thought, just write out your damn reviews.
OGIUE MANIAX 
I’ve got to say I enjoy Baka-Raptor’s reviewing system most, which fills an exhaustive checklist of semi-relevant topics said anime features, looking for such things as themes of suffering/hatred/revenge, recurring random characters, badass mid-episode transitions, dinosaurs, and a soft-spoken girl voiced by Mamiko Noto.
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(2) might not be a practical rating system, but it does sound like the beginnings of a pack of Top Trumps.
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I’ve always found writing and scoring reviews to be rather difficult.
On my own blog, I’ve recently started switching from my more complex percentage system to a simple 1-5 system just because it had become painfully obvious over the course of 2 to 3 years of using it that it was overkill. If you wonder what the difference between a 4 and a 5 is, then what is the difference between 85.4% and 85.7%?
I somewhat disagree about the argument that somehow people don’t know the difference between an A and a B or a 5 and a 4, though. While someone might know the specific rationale for why a reviewer scored something a 4 vs. a 5, I’d think it’s logical that, in the reviewer’s judgment, anything with a 5 is better than anything with a 4. Since there are only 4 or 5 scores one can give, they’re broad enough that they actually have meaning (as opposed to tenths of a percent, for example). Maybe different people have different opinions on what constitutes a 4 or a 5 (which may be the entire point of the argument) but I don’t see it as all that big of a problem.
I’ve thought about breaking down what I score down into small sub-pieces, I guess to somehow “justify” or quantify why I was giving the score I was giving. However, I figured that, in the end, it isn’t a quantification, it’s a review – my personal opinion about the show. I try to have a reason behind scoring something the way I do, but in the end it’s still my opinion and judgment.
The best I can do is try to portray what I think in a way that other people will hopefully find useful. If people find a scoring system useful, then great. If not, then they can ignore it and go by my written review. If they only care whether I “recommend” a show, then fine too. I just try to portray what I think in various ways so that it’s hopefully helpful to everyone in some way.
I think your idea of star system where “1-star is not inherently worse than a 5-star” is an interesting way to perhaps evaluate a show, but then you’re moving into the area of presenting information rather than your thoughts on whether the show is good or not. I’m not saying it’s a bad way of doing things, but I think you’re giving out fundamentally a different sort of information by doing it in that fashion.
For example, a show might have a 3-star rating on use of stock footage. OK, that might tell me something if I hate shows that use stock footage, but it doesn’t really tell me anything about whether the show itself is good or not, necessarily.
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