Talk:Flash Sentry/@comment-26190067-20150319130514/@comment-7345250-20150320204344

When it comes to analysis, personal is better. Let no one tell you otherwise. The more personal your thoughts are, the more original they are. Personal thoughts are generally more interesting.

Ask any teacher or professor who regularly grades dozens of essays on the same general topic, especially one that works in an English department. Teachers do not want summaries of what is being analyzed, nor do they want to hear the same argument as the one in the essay they just finished reading. They want the writer's own unique interpretation of the subject matter. They want a personal thesis.

So, to kind-of answer the question, I will not judge whether it is better or worse than the video, since I have no interest in the video itself. Pardon me if I sound a little hypocritical, but that is the way it is. My initial point was about originality, not quality.

Relying on someone else's review for "analysis" is called parroting. (Incidentally, parroting is why I hate sites like TV Tropes, which coins terms for the sake of coining them.) The most refreshing thing in a review is originality, and originality comes from deep, personal thought. I cannot judge which of the two reviews you've linked is more personal, so I will not even bother trying. It would be a matter of which one I agree with more, not actual quality.

But again, in almost every case, personal is better. I have seen many reviews, theories, and analyses which are only either a popular consensus or someone else's idea padded with fancy wording. I myself have admittedly done it once or twice before. Did it look nice? I sure thought so. Was it interesting? I sort of thought so. Was it actually a good read? On close inspection, it was the exact opposite.

Anyways, before I start rambling more than I should, I'll just say that the true merit of an analysis lies in its freshness. Old ideas, no matter how intelligent they may sound, are almost categorically stale. So stay fresh. Think about what you mean to say, and say what you think.