Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/Robot Ninja(Revised)

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Robot Ninja

Revised. Tried to follow the suggestions from the last review, but a more in-depth one would really be appreciated. Sir Oliphaunte (განხილვა)   15:19, April 8, 2011 (UTC)

In-depth is my middle name, as is "Danger" and "Bertrand". 24 hours (that one's just a nickname). --Black Flamingo 21:31, April 9, 2011 (UTC)

Humour:	6	Hi Oliphaunte, hope you're well. This article has some really good stuff in it, however there are one or two things that are probably holding it back in my view. As it's not one big problem; more a series of small ones, let's go through this section by section. Intro So right at the top we've got the opening quote from Oscar Wilde. Obviously I don't need to explain to you that this sets off alarm bells straight away for most of the regulars here. I have nothing against them per se, but looking at this one in particular I don't really see what's supposed to be funny about it. Wilde simply has nothing to do with robot ninja, so there's no joke here, just a randomly put together line. I would advise you excise it. The rest of the intro is full of good ideas; it introduces the concept well and has some decent jokes. The only problem is it shows signs of descending into "godlike-badass" type jokes - the kind we all recognise far too much from Chuck Norris facts - which are frankly a bit tiresome. I would strongly recommend getting rid of any reference to Chuck Norris, unless you're going to be really creative with it (ie. not making a joke about how badass he is). I would also advise you remove references to British ninjas, as I'm not sure they're really relevant here (or real, even). You don't really explain what they are, and even if you did it would be best left to a separate article, methinks. With these references gone, your intro should be in pretty good shape. History Again there is some more really good stuff in here, although again I have a few gripes with it. First off, the whole brackets-based illiteracy jokes, while funny, are a bit messy. For one they're punctuated wrong; you capitalise the beginning of the bracketed text, but technically this should still be part of the preceding sentence. Also, you need to put a space before you start brackets, as you don't always do this. As the constant interruptions from the brackets only serves to ruin the flow, it might be a better idea to move all the bracketed comments down and put them in the form of footnotes. The comments are too long and numerous to be sitting in the main body of the text, is just becomes a chore to read. Footnotes will look a lot tidier too, as having lots brackets can sometimes look unprofessional (Wikipedia rarely does it, by comparison). The jokes about clocks, on the other hand, are funny. Really, really weird, but funny. This is the kind of humour I'm hoping you do more of if you come to revise the piece. The second paragraph of your History section isn't quite as strong as some of the earlier stuff. You make the illiteracy joke again, but by this point it's not particularly interesting any more - I wouldn't say this is strong or broad enough to be a running joke, maybe just keep it in the confines of that first paragraph. Much of what you write here isn't really humorous but informative, which doesn't sit too well when what you're describing isn't actually real. Obviously I want to know more about robot ninja, but it would be nice to see some more jokes in there. What exactly is funny about robot ninja that you can play to? Notable Historical Moments of Ninja Robots Here we have another brackets-based joke that totally breaks the tone, addressing the reader directly. Again, this may work better as a footnote. You actually start making quite a few jokes around this part that break the encyclopaedic tone, using phrases like "mo-fos" "bull-puppy" and "flipping out". This really detracts from the article, and the inconsistent voice makes it look sloppy and unprofessional. If you're going to use phrases like this, it may be an idea to set it up in a way where it looks like a direct quote from some important historian. For instance; "Many historians discredit the claim that the Sanada Clan were robotic life forms, the most notable sceptic being Professor Hans Windermere who called the stories "complete bull-puppy" and affirmed that the Sanadas were merely "total badass mo-fos in their own right"". By keeping your own article in the neutral tone, you'll be able to make the juvenile language work by attributing it to others, and the idea that it was a prominent academic who said this will hopefully make it even more funny. The Modern World Again it gets a bit colloquial in tone at times. I think the biggest problem here is that you're describing the fighting too much, and as a result it gets a bit silly and sounds forced at time. All you really need to say is that they invaded China but then it rained. All this random-war stuff only detracts from the concept in my view. Same with the WWII section; it reads too much like the typical silly fictional-war articles we often get on this site (and that usually get deleted). Trim these parts down to the bare essentials (ie. the best jokes). Try reading this, possibly my favourite war-related article on here, which by some coincidence seems to have some crossover with your article. That might give you more of an idea on how to write about battles and still be funny. The author of that article does it with subtlety and keeps the jokes coming. It doesn't really feel like what he's talking about is mad, even though he has robots in his story too. The Post WWII section also feels a bit rushed and forced I'm afraid - overall I think it would be best not to focus on things like this. References to what the ninja might have done throughout history are fine, but to dedicate near-enough the entire article to real-life battles is probably a bad idea. It makes the article read like a whacky history article; we don't really learn anything about the robot ninja themselves, but instead get a really long alternate history story with added magical robots. I would much rather see a general article on robot ninja - what they're like, what sort of tactics/martial arts they employed, their shortcomings etc. etc. - I'm going to move on to Concept now because I feel this feeds through.
Concept:	6	It's an odd concept you've chosen. To be honest, from the title I wouldn't have expected it to turn out that well, and I would probably never advise anyone to take on such a topic, simply because it sounds so silly. It's also very stereotypically internet humour, if you know what I mean. Nevertheless you do good things with it, and a lot of the jokes are surprisingly tasteful. I guess what we need here now is more of this. Less silliness and more interesting, intelligent humour. My first bit of advice would probably be that you read more about ninja (and maybe more about robots too) for ideas. Try reading the Wikipedia article, and see what humorous spins you can put on that. As I said earlier, rewriting all the most famous Japanese conflicts in history is not an effective form of humour in my opinion. I suppose it might be a good idea to find more of an angle to this. You do already have a couple of running gags, like the illiteracy and the water-deaths, but I think you need something more concise to mock - a narrow perception of what the robot ninja is. It's something that's done all the times in our featured articles; like the article on Keanu Reeves which treats him as a one-note character whose only attribute seems to be his denseness - but it works, because it keeps playing off that running gag, which itself is just based on the popular conception of the actor. Does this make sense? I think your article could do with something like this; something to tie it all together. One other thing I should probably point out is that all the references to fighting and battles do seem a little out of place, especially since ninja were not warriors or soldiers in any traditional sense, unlike samurai. Ninjitsu was more to do with espionage, sabotage and infiltration. Obviously this doesn't mean robot ninja can't take part in open combat, but I feel that distinction needs to be obvious in the article.
Prose and formatting:	7	Overall I think the main problem here is that you need to make the tone a bit tighter. At the moment it veers from being encyclopaedic to colloquial. You basically need to choose one style and stick with it, or else the piece will look sloppy. I would recommend an encyclopaedic tone myself, mainly because the topic is quite typically juvenile, and it would be too much if the text matched that. Aside from that there are one or two hiccups in the prose. One sentence I found difficult to follow is this one: "warfare and death became less popular than living and having dinner with something besides fish everyday". It sounds muddled and I don't follow precisely what you mean; it's the fish bit that's confusing me, I think. The only other thing worth mentioning is that you constantly refer to your subjects as "robot ninjas", but the word "ninja" doesn't require an "s" to pluralise it, the plural is the same, like "sheep". At times you even use an apostrophe and an "s", but this is not right either.
Images:	6	Many of the images are stock robot images, and while some of these work; some of them do look a bit out of place. The British ninja, for instance, isn't really relevant at all. You should definitely find a better opening image; something big and broad that asserts exactly what the article is going to be about; it needs to establish your concept. A lot of the others are workable, although I was disappointed that none of the robots really looked like ninjas (not even the clock one really, although that was probably the best). As an alternative, it would be really great to see pictures of robot ninjas in historical settings, something akin to what this article does. The guys over at Image Request should be able to sort this out for you.
Miscellaneous:	6.5	The number of hidden ninja concealed within this review, waiting to strike.
Final Score:	31.5	So overall, there are some really good ideas in here. The article can easily be great, I think you just need to have a bit more of a think about the concept and tone, and try not to talk so much about the battles; see where else you can go with this once you've tightened up the foundations. Apart from that, good work. If there's anything I've said here that you want me to explain better, or if you want my opinion on anything I might have missed, please let me know on my talky page and I'll try to help. I hope the review is ok.
Reviewer:	--Black Flamingo 10:30, April 10, 2011 (UTC)

I don't feel like clunking up your talkpage, so I'll just say thanks here. The concept really wasn't my idea, I kind of just adopted this article from an IP a long while back and have been trying to tweak it ever since, but yea, the concept gets in the way sometimes. I can see what you're saying with the humour, I do feel like I strayed away from what I was meaning to do, the silliness of the original article may have corrupted me a bit...In regards to images, you have no idea how hard it is to find a decent picture of robot ninjas, that clock one was actually from the image center (thank you Lyrithya) and that blueprint one as well, but they tell me it's difficult to photoshop robot ninjas so...I'll see what else I can do with it. Thanks for the review, actually helps me out unlike the last one... --Sir Oliphaunte (განხილვა)   13:38, April 10, 2011 (UTC)