How I Score — Off-Meta Reads

The five axes

Every series is scored on five axes, each out of 20. The total is the sum, so every review lands somewhere between 0 and 100. Five stats of 20 keeps the arithmetic honest and forces a finer judgement than a 1–10 scale, which matters when the whole point is noticing small shifts.

Axis	What it measures	Max
Story	Plot, premise, escalation, worldbuilding.	20
Art	Linework, composition, panel flow, colour.	20
Characters	Depth, voice, growth, likeability.	20
Pacing	Momentum, filler, arc structure, readability.	20
Payoff	Do the setups land? Arc and ending quality.	20
Total	The number you see everywhere on the site.	100

Verdict bands

The total maps to a band. Bands are fixed — they don't move because a series is popular.

Score	Band
90–99	Crit Success
75–89	Solid Roll
60–74	Serviceable
45–59	Filler Arc
30–44	Nerfed
0–29	Crit Fail

Build labels

The total tells you how good something is. The build tells you what kind of thing it is, from the shape of the stats rather than the sum of them.

Carried by Art — art is 5+ ahead of story.
Coasting on Premise — story is 5+ ahead of art.
Slow Burn Payoff — payoff is 5+ ahead of pacing, or the series climbed hard.
Relentless Pace — pacing at 16 or above.
Slogging — pacing at 9 or below.
Wasted Potential — the trajectory is Falling or Glass Cannon.
Well Rounded — none of the above, which is a compliment.

Trajectory labels

This is the part that only works because I re-score as I read. Computed from the checkpoint history:

Slow Burn — started at 58 or below, now 75 or above, gained at least 20.
Glass Cannon — started at 70 or above, dropped 20+, now 55 or below.
Rising / Falling — moved 10 or more in either direction.
Volatile — an 18+ spread between best and worst checkpoint.
Steady — none of the above.
DNF — dropped, and living in The Basement.

The rules I hold myself to

Old scores are never edited. If my opinion moves, a new checkpoint is added and the reason is written down. The movement is the content — a silently revised number would make every graph on this site a lie.
Chapter counts come from one platform only. Platforms split episodes differently. If I switched mid-series the x-axis would stop meaning anything.
I score what I actually read. A first impression at chapter 2 is labelled as a first impression, never dressed up as a verdict.
Spoilers stay out of the note. Enough to explain the score, never enough to ruin a turn.

What the score is not

It isn't objective and it isn't a ranking of quality in the abstract. It's a record of one reader's experience, timestamped, so that when I say "this one gets better" you can see whether I actually believed that at the time.

A static review tells you the conclusion. A checkpoint log tells you whether the conclusion was earned.