Ratings

Wow, work can suck. My boss just got promoted and we've been scrambling to pick up the work while they start interviewing replacements. In a way I'm very sad (I liked my boss a lot), but hopefully this will be a good thing.
Anyway ....
Generally when I watch/read/whatever, I like to divide things up into groups. I don't bother to say "top ten" or whatever because ten is an artificial number and usually there are several items tied for that last spot. So generally I just give them a letter grade. I was going to skip this post and go straight to my mid-rankings on the winter 2005 anime season, but I realized there's no real way for me to do that without explaining how I'm ranking them. It's important to note that I almost never talk about how "good" or "bad" a series is, I only ever talk about them in terms of how much I enjoy them. Cowboy Bebop only has a meandering notion of the term "plot", but that doesn't prevent me from enjoying it.
A LIST: To be an A list item, it has to be an item that I would consider paying full, marked retail price for. For anime, that's generally $30 every 4 episodes.
B LIST: To be a B list item, it has to be an item that I would consider paying what I call "normal" price for. For anime, that's usually $20 every 4 episodes (it's easy enough to get this price at Best Buy or DVDPacific).
C LIST: To be a C list item, it has to be an item that I wouldn't consider paying normal price for. I'm either going to get it from Ebay, or possibly on sale or in a collected edition.
D LIST: D list items I might get if I was getting a complete collection at a steal. For example, Hanaukyo Maid Team La Verite is cute. I would probably buy it if I found someone getting rid of their set for $15-$25 for all of the disks.
E LIST: I wouldn't buy an E list item, but if it was given to me as a gift, I probably wouldn't return it either. I wouldn't buy myself a copy of Burst Angel, but I probably wouldn't get rid of a copy if someone gifted it to me.
F LIST: Not only am I not purchasing F list items, I'm selling, regifting, or liquidating them.