What makes a review good?

A good review has an opinion that agrees with mine. A bad review has an opinion that disagrees with mine.

Ok but a good review should have some sort of opinion and points to back up that opinion. Reviews I dont like are ones that just summarize the story but dont talk in detail about it.

Depends on the purpose of the review, if it's to review how good a series is you want to have as little opinion as possible and references where applicable.

If it's an opinion-based review where the reviewer wants to talk about how much they enjoyed something vs how good it was, then it helps to preface your review with that.

But to whoever was concerned about whether or not to post their review, assuming it was on anilist, they really ought not to worry, current standards couldn't be lower so at worst your review just won't stand out from the rest.

I think you might be referring to this thread which I created, asking if posting reviews of a show you haven't finished was allowed. Of course before I got an actual answer many people disregarded my points to give their own opinion and questioned my sanity without making counterpoints. I'll publish this Gabriel DropOut review eventually for the reasons which I presented in the thread when I have the time to rework on it. Then I'll see what happens.

I agree with ConTable... Reviews are not just to summarize the story but to talk about it...
The more worse it's when they put obvious spoiler into their review... what a pain in the ass !!
I Try to write review too, but to be honest it can be hard sometime to fill the 2200 characters minimum ^^ !! (I'm not fan of too long reviews either..)

(And by the way, note to the dev, the dislike button on review is bullshit... A review is a personal opinion, respect suggest that if you don't agree with it, you don't like it, but not dislike it !!)

I once posted some questions to try to answer in a review, as a comment in a thread that was directed at the author of that infamous Akira review a while back.

Another conclusion I came to since, was that there is only one objective quality to writing, and that is internal consistency, verisimilitude or really what ever you want to call it.
Our reality largely operates under the principles of cause and effect, and stories that follow this principle should be more satisfying than ones that don't. And any script that is great at elliciting emotion in the audience while breaking this verisimilitude, would still be better if it was consistent while hitting the same story beats.
Basically avoiding plot holes and non-sequitur progression of events. I further elaborated on this line of thinking in this thread here.

I like reviews that are fair. It's probably impossible to be objective when dealing with matters of opinion, but I appreciate it when a reviewer judges a work not only on what they expected, but also on if it succeeded in what it tried to achieve. For instance, sometimes people criticize comedies for not having enough depth, or criticize dramas for not having enough humor, which, I feel, kinda misses the point of some works.

Reviving this old thread to share a tip. Good reviews have good review summaries, and good review summaries are at least to some extent specific to the work reviewed.

Examples of (common) review summaries that imo tell absolutely nothing:

• "A series that could have been extremely good but ultimately was disappointing", "Lost potential", "Could have been better", etc (a lot of good reviews have such titles, sadly)
• "I absolutely adored/despised this", "this went straight to my favourites", "one of the best/worst anime of the decade", "10/10", etc
• "Good characters but bad writing", "good writing but bad animation", "sensational animation but boring story", etc
• "Better/worse than the prequel", "a good intro to its sequel", "as good as the first season", etc

Examples of good review summaries from the recent reviews:

• "Reconnecting long-distance relationships in space and time through letters"
• "A mark in trans representation in manga, but how does Hibari-kun hold op 40 years later?"
• "A shounen classic defined by its excellent wit and inescapable morality"
• "A speech impediment is not a character trait"
• "A gothic, cyberpunk dystopia filled with breathtaking architecture and stunning action"

A good review summary is specific to the work reviewed, can be funny, tells something important about the story and hints at the opinion of the reviewer through tone/terms used.

(^^^IMO)