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Design thinking was supposed to fix the world. Where did it go wrong?

An approach that promised to democratize design may have done the opposite.

• Rebecca Ackermann archive page

When Kyle Cornforth first walked into IDEO’s San Francisco offices in 2011, she felt she had entered a whole new world. At the time, Cornforth was a director at the Edible Schoolyard Project , a nonprofit that uses gardening and cooking in schools to teach and to provide nutritious food. She was there to meet with IDEO.org, a new social-impact spinoff of the design consulting firm, which was exploring how to reimagine school lunch, a mission that the Edible Schoolyard Project has been working toward since 2004. But Cornforth was new to IDEO’s way of working: a six-step methodology for innovation called design thinking, which had emerged in the 1990s but had started reaching the height of its popularity in the tech, business, and social-impact sectors. 

Key to design thinking’s spread was its replicable aesthetic, represented by the Post-it note: a humble square that anyone can use in infinite ways. Not too precious, not too permanent, the ubiquitous Post-it promises a fast-moving, cooperative, egalitarian process for getting things done. When Cornforth arrived at IDEO for a workshop, “it was Post-its everywhere, prototypes everywhere,” she says. “What I really liked was that they offered a framework for collaboration and creation.” 

But when she looked at the ideas themselves, Cornforth had questions: “I was like, ‘You didn’t talk to anyone who works in a school, did you?’ They were not contextualized in the problem at all.” The deep expertise in the communities of educators and administrators she worked with, Cornforth saw, was in tension with the disruptive, startup-flavored creativity of the design thinking process at consultancies like IDEO.org. “I felt like a stick in the mud to them,” she recalls. “And I felt they were out of touch with reality.” 

That tension would resurface a couple of years later, in 2013, when IDEO was hired by the San Francisco Unified School District to redesign the school cafeteria, with funding from Twitter cofounder Ev Williams’s family foundation. Ten years on, the SFUSD program has had a big impact—but that may have as much to do with the slow and integrated work inside the district as with that first push of design-focused energy from outside.

Founded in the 1990s, IDEO was instrumental in evangelizing the design thinking process throughout the ’00s and ’10s, alongside Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design or “d.school” (which IDEO’s founder David Kelley also cofounded). While the methodology’s focus on collaboration and research can be traced back to human-­factors engineering, a movement popular decades earlier, design thinking took hold of the collective imagination during the Obama years, a time when American culture was riding high on the potential of a bunch of smart people in a hope-filled room to bend history’s arc toward progress. Its influence stretched across health-care giants in the American heartland, government agencies in DC, big tech companies in Silicon Valley, and beyond. City governments brought in design thinking agencies to solve their economic woes and take on challenges ranging from transportation to housing. Institutions like MIT and Harvard and boot camps like General Assembly stood up courses and degree programs, suggesting that teaching design thinking could be as lucrative as selling it to corporations and foundations.  

Design thinking also broadened the very idea of “design,” elevating the designer to a kind of spiritual medium who didn’t just construct spaces, physical products, or experiences on screen but was uniquely able to reinvent systems to better meet the desires of the people within them. It gave designers permission to take on any big, knotty problem by applying their own empathy to users’ pain points—the first step in that six-step innovation process filled with Post-its.

We are all creatives, design thinking promised, and we can solve any problem if we empathize hard enough.

The next steps were to reframe the problem (“How might we …?”), brainstorm potential solutions, prototype options, test those options with end users, and—finally—implement. Design thinking agencies usually didn’t take on this last step themselves; consultants often delivered a set of “recommendations” to the organizations that hired them.  

At the same time, consultancies like IDEO, Frog, Smart Design, and others were also promoting the idea that anyone (including the executives paying their fees) could be a designer by just following the process. Perhaps design had become “too important to leave to designers,” as IDEO’s then CEO, Tim Brown, wrote in his 2009 book Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation . Brown even touted as a selling point his firm’s utter absence of expertise in any particular industry: “We come with what we call a beginner’s mind,” he told the Yale School of Management . 

This was a savvy strategy for selling design thinking to the business world: instead of hiring their own team of design professionals, companies could bring on an agency temporarily to learn the methodology themselves. The approach also felt empowering to many who spent time with it. We are all creatives, design thinking promised, and we can solve any problem if we empathize hard enough.

But in recent years, for a number of reasons, the shine of design thinking has been wearing off. Critics have argued that its short-term focus on novel and naive ideas has resulted in unrealistic and ungrounded recommendations. And they have maintained that by centering designers—mainly practitioners of corporate design within agencies—it has reinforced existing inequities rather than challenging them. Years in, “innovation theater”— checking a series of boxes without implementing meaningful shifts—had become endemic in corporate settings, while a number of social-impact initiatives highlighted in case studies struggled to get beyond pilot projects. Meanwhile, the #MeToo and BLM movements, along with the political turmoil of the Trump administration, have demonstrated that many big problems are rooted in centuries of dark history, too deeply entrenched to be obliterated with a touch of design thinking’s magic wand. 

Today, innovation agencies and educational institutions still continue to sell design thinking to individuals, corporations, and organizations. In 2015 , IDEO even created its own “online school,” IDEO U, with a bank of design thinking courses . But some groups—including the d.school and IDEO itself—are working to reform both its principles and its methodologies. These new efforts seek a set of design tools capable of equitably serving diverse communities and solving diverse problems well into the future. It’s a much more daunting—and crucial—task than design thinking’s original remit. 

The magical promise of design thinking

When design thinking emerged in the ’90s and ’00s, workplaces were made up of cubicles and closed doors, and the term “user experience” had only just been coined at Apple . Despite convincing research on collaboration tracing back to the 1960s, work was still mainly a solo endeavor in many industries, including design. Design thinking injected new and collaborative energy into both design and the corporate world more broadly; it suggested that work could look and feel more hopeful and be more fun, and that design could take the lead in making it that way.

When author and startup advisor Jake Knapp was working as a designer at Microsoft in the 2000s, he visited IDEO’s offices in Palo Alto for a potential project. He was struck by how inspiring the space was: “Everything is white, and there’s sunlight coming in the windows. There’s an open floor plan. I had never seen [work] done like that.” When he started at Google a few years later, he learned how to run design thinking workshops from a colleague who had worked at IDEO, and then he began running his own workshops on the approach within Google. 

Knapp’s attraction was due in part to the “radical collaboration” that design thinking espoused. In what was a first for many, colleagues came together across disciplines at the very start of a project to discuss how to solve problems. “Facilitating the exchange of information, ideas, and research with product, engineering, and design teams more fluidly is really the unlock,” says Enrique Allen, cofounder of Designer Fund, which supports startups seeking to harness the unique business value of design in industries from health care to construction. Design thinking offered a structure for those cross-­disciplinary conversations and a way to articulate design’s value within them. “It gave [your ideas] so much more weight for people who didn’t have the language to understand creative work,” says Erica Eden , who worked as a designer at the innovation firm Smart Design.

It makes a good story to say there’s a foolproof process that will lead to results no matter who runs it.

For Angela McKee Brown , who was hired by SFUSD to help bring the work IDEO had done on improving the school cafeteria to reality, the design thinking process was a language that bureaucracy could understand. In a district that had suffered from an overall lack of infrastructure investment since the 1970s, she watched as IDEO’s recommendations ignited a new will to improvement that continues today. “The biggest role that process played for us was it told a story that showed people the value of the work,” McKee Brown says. “That allowed me to have a much easier job, because people believed.” 

The enthusiasm that surrounded design thinking did have much to offer the public sector, says Cyd Harrell , San Francisco’s chief digital services officer, who has worked as a design leader in civic technology for over a decade. Decades of budget cuts and a lack of civic investment have made it difficult for public servants to feel that change is possible. “For a lot of those often really wonderful people who’ve chosen service as a career, and who have had to go through times where things seem really bleak,” she says, “the infusion of optimism—whether it comes in the guise of some of these techniques that are a little bit shady or not—is really valuable.” And it makes a good story to say there’s a foolproof process that will lead to results no matter who runs it.

Ideas over implementation

Execution has always been the sticky wicket for design thinking. Some versions of the codified six-step process even omit that crucial final step of implementation. Its roots in the agency world, where a firm steps in on a set timeline with an established budget and leaves before or shortly after the pilot stage, dictated that the tools of design thinking would be aimed at the start of the product development process but not its conclusion—or, even more to the point, its aftermath. 

When Jake Knapp was running those design thinking workshops at Google, he saw that for all the excitement and Post-its they generated, the brainstorming sessions didn’t usually lead to built products or, really, solutions of any kind. When he followed up with teams to learn which workshop ideas had made it to production, he heard decisions happening “in the old way,” with a few lone geniuses working separately and then selling their almost fully realized ideas to top stakeholders.

Execution has always been the sticky wicket for design thinking.

In the government and social-impact sectors, though, design thinking’s focus on ideas over implementation had bigger ramifications than a lack of efficiency. 

The “biggest piece of the design problem” in civic tech, says Harrell, is not generating new ideas but figuring out how to implement and pay for them. What’s more, success sometimes can’t be evaluated until years later, so the time-­constrained workshops typical of the design thinking approach may not be appropriate. “There’s a mismatch between the short-cycle evaluations [in commercial design] and the long-cycle evaluations for policy,” she says. For longtime public servants, seeing a project through—past implementation and into iteration—is crucial for learning and improving how infrastructure functions. 

In a 2021 piece on the evolution of their practices, Brown, along with Shauna Carey and Jocelyn Wyatt of IDEO.org, cited the Diva Centres project in Lusaka, Zambia, where they worked to help teens access contraception and learn about reproductive health. Through the design thinking methodology, the team came up with the idea of creating nail salons where the teens could get guidance in a low-pressure environment. The team built three model sites, declaring the work a success; the Diva Centres project won a Core77 Service Design Award in 2016, and the case study is still posted on IDEO.org’s website . But while the process focused on generating the most exciting user experience within the nail salons, it neglected to consider the world outside their walls—a complex network of public health funding and service channels that made scaling the pilot “prohibitively expensive and complicated,” as the IDEO.org leaders later wrote. Though IDEO intended to build 10 centers by 2017, neither IDEO nor the partner organization ever reported reaching that milestone. The article does not say how much money or time went into realizing the Diva Centres pilot before it ended, so it’s not clear if the lessons learned were worth the failure. (IDEO.org declined to be interviewed for this story.)

IDEO’s 2013 work for SFUSD—the project that McKee Brown later worked on from the school system’s side—has a more complicated legacy. After five months, IDEO delivered 10 recommendations, including communal dining tables, vending machines with meals to grab on the go, community food partnerships for fresher produce, and an app and interactive web portal to give students and families more opportunities to participate in lunch choices. (The food itself was a different issue that the district was working on with its vendors .) On IDEO’s website today, the story concludes with SFUSD’s “unanimous enthusiasm” for the recommendations—a consultancy happy ending. Indeed, the project was met with a flurry of fawning press coverage . But with hindsight, it’s clear that only after IDEO left the project did the real work begin. 

At SFUSD, McKee Brown saw instances in which IDEO’s recommendations did not take into account the complexities of the district’s operations and the effort it could take to even drill a hole in a wall in accordance with asbestos abatement rules. The vending machines the team proposed, for instance, would need a stable internet connection, which many target locations didn’t have. And the app never came to fruition, McKee Brown says, as it would have required a whole new department to continually update the software and content. 

An analysis a few years after IDEO’s 2013 engagement showed that about the same number of kids or even fewer were choosing to eat school lunch, despite a continuous increase in enrollment. This may have had several reasons, including that the quality of the food itself did not significantly improve. The original goal of getting more kids to eat at school would eventually be met by an entirely different effort: California’s universal school meal program , implemented in 2022. 

Nevertheless, IDEO’s SFUSD project has had a lasting impact, thanks to the work the district itself put into transforming blue-sky ideas into real change. While few of the recommendations ended up being widely implemented in schools exactly as IDEO envisioned them, the district has been redesigning its cafeterias to make the spaces more welcoming and social for students—after sometimes decades of disrepair. Today more than 70 school cafeterias out of 114 sites in the city have been renovated. The design thinking process helped sell the value of improving school cafeterias to the decision makers. But the in-house team at SFUSD charted the way forward after many of IDEO’s initial ideas couldn’t make it past the drawing board.

Empathy over expertise

The first step of the design thinking process is for the designer to empathize with the end user through close observation of the problem. While this step involves asking questions of the individuals and communities affected, the designer’s eye frames any insights that emerge. This puts the designer’s honed sense of empathy at the center of both the problem and the solution. 

In 2018, researcher Lilly Irani, an associate professor at the University of California, San Diego, wrote a piece titled “Design Thinking: Defending Silicon Valley at the Apex of Global Labor Hierarchies” for the peer-reviewed journal Catalyst. She criticized the new framing of the designer as an empathetic “divining rod leading to new markets or domains of life ripe for intervention,” maintaining that it reinforced traditional hierarchies of labor. 

Irani argued that as an outgrowth of Silicon Valley business interests and culture, design thinking situated Western—and often white—designers at a higher level of labor, treating them as mystics who could translate the efforts and experiences of lower-level workers into capitalistic opportunity. 

Former IDEO designer George Aye has seen Irani’s concerns play out firsthand, particularly in settings with entrenched systemic problems. He and his colleagues would use the language of a “beginner’s mindset” with the clients, he says, but what he saw in practice was more an attitude that “we’re going to fumble our way through and by the time we’re done, we’re on to the next project.” In Aye’s view, these consulting engagements made tourists of commercial designers, who—however sincerely they wanted to help—made sure to “get some good pictures standing next to typically dark-skinned people with brightly colored clothes” so they could produce evidence for the consultancy. 

Today in his own studio , which works only with nonprofit organizations, Aye tries to elevate what’s already being created by a local community, advocate for its members to get the resources they need, and then “get out of the way.” If designers are not centering the people on the ground, then “it’s profit-centered design,” he says. “There’s no other way of putting it.”

McKee Brown considers one of the greatest successes of the San Francisco cafeteria redesign project to be the School Food Advisory (SFA), a district-wide program in which high schoolers continually inform and direct changes to meal programs and cafeteria updates. But the group wasn’t a result of IDEO’s recommendations; the SFA was formed to ensure that SFUSD students would continue to have a voice in the district and a chance to collaborate often on how to redesign their spaces. Nearly a decade after IDEO completed its work, the best results have been due to the expertise of the district’s own team and its generations of students, not the empathy that went into the initial short-term consulting project.

As she’s continued to work on food and education, McKee Brown has adapted the process of design thinking to her experiences and team leadership needs. At SFUSD and later at Edible Schoolyard, where she became executive director, she developed three questions she and her team should always make sure to ask: “Who have you talked to? Have you tried it out before we spend all this money? And then how are you telling the story of the work?” 

What’s next for design thinking?

Almost two decades after design thinking rose to prominence, the world still has no shortage of problems that need addressing. Design leadership and design processes themselves need to evolve beyond design thinking, and that’s an arena where designers may actually be uniquely skilled. Stanford’s d.school, which was instrumental in the growth of design thinking in the first place, is one institution pushing the conversation forward by reshaping its influential design programs. Within the physical walls of the school, the design thinking aesthetic—whiteboards, cardboard furniture, Post-its—is still evident on most surfaces, but the ideas stirring inside sound new.  

In fact, the phrase “design thinking” does not appear in any materials for the d.school’s revamped undergraduate or graduate programs—although it still shows up in electives in which any Stanford student can enroll (and a representative from the d.school claims the terms “design” and “design thinking” are used interchangeably). Instead of “empathy,” “make” and “care” are the concepts that program leaders hope will shape the design education across all offerings. 

In contrast with empathy, care demands a shift in who is centered in these processes—sometimes meaning people in generations other than our own. “How are we thinking about our ancestors? What is the legacy that this is going to leave? What are all the intended and unintended consequences?” says academic director Carissa Carter . “There are implications no matter where you work—­second-, third-order consequences of what we put out. This is where we are pulling in elements of equity and inclusion. Not just in a single course, but how we approach the design of this curriculum.” 

The d.school’s creative director, Scott Doorley , who has been with the school for over 15 years, has begun to hear the students themselves ask for fundamental shifts like these. They’re entering the programs saying, “I want to make something that not only changes things, but changes things without screwing everything else up,” Doorley says: “It’s this really great combination of excitement and humility at the same time.” The d.school has also made specific changes in curriculum and tools; an ethics course that was previously required at the end of the undergraduate degree program now appears toward the beginning, and the school is providing new frameworks to help students plan for the next-generation effects of their work beyond a project’s completion. 

For the Design Justice Network, a collective of design practitioners and educators that emerged out of the 2014 Allied Media Conference in Detroit, slowing down and embracing complexity are the keys to moving practices like design thinking toward justice. “If we truly want to think about stakeholders, if we want to have more levels of affordances when we design things, then we can’t work at the speed of industry,” says Wes Taylor, an associate professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and a DJN leader. 

IDEO’s practices have been evolving to better address that complexity. Tim Brown says that toward the beginning of the company’s life, its unique power was in bringing together different design disciplines to deliver new ideas. “We weren’t looking particularly to help our clients build their own capabilities back then. We were simply looking to do certain kinds of design projects,” he says. 

Now, when the questions being asked of designers are deeper and more complicated—how to make Ford a more human-centered company rather than how to build a better digital dashboard, he gives as an example—IDEO leaders have recognized that “it’s the combination of doing design and building the capabilities [of IDEO’s clients and their communities] to design at the same time where the real impact can happen.” What this means in practice is much more time on the ground, more partnerships, and sometimes more money. “It’s about recognizing that the expertise is much more in the hands of the user of the system than the designer of the system. And being a little bit less arrogant about knowing everything,” says Brown. 

IDEO has also been building new design capabilities within its own team, hiring writers and filmmakers to tell stories for their clients, which Brown has come to see as “ the key activity, not a key activity” for influencing change in societal systems. “If you had asked me 10 to 15 years ago,” he says, “I would never have guessed that we would have as many folks who come from a storytelling background within a design firm as we do today.” 

Indeed, design thinking’s greatest positive impact may always have been in the stories it’s helped tell: spreading the word about the value of collaboration in business, elevating the public profile of design as a discipline, and coaxing funding from private and public channels for expensive long-term projects. But its legacy must also account for years of letting down many of the people and places the methodology claimed it would benefit. And as long as it remains in the halls of consultancies and ivory-tower institutions, its practitioners may continue to struggle to decenter the already powerful and privileged.

As Taylor sees it, design thinking’s core problems can be traced back to its origins in the corporate world, which inextricably intertwined the methodology with capitalistic values. He believes that a justice lens can help foster collaboration and creativity in a much broader way that goes beyond our current power structures. “Let’s try to imagine and acknowledge that capitalism is not inevitable, not necessarily a foundational principle of nature,” he urges. 

That kind of radical innovation goes far beyond the original methodology of design thinking. But it may contain the seeds for the lasting change that the design industry—and the world—need now.

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What is a design review, and when should you do one?

Last updated

18 July 2023

Reviewed by

Miroslav Damyanov

Development and design must move ultra-fast if a business wants to stay competitive. But when things are moving that quickly, ensuring the quality and effectiveness of a design becomes difficult. Design reviews can help with this process. 

Here's what you need to know about design reviews and how to incorporate them into your own design process .

• What is a design review?

Design reviews are a systematic assessment of design work. Design reviews can happen in almost any industry, from construction to software development. They ensure that the design aligns with the project goals and objectives and evaluate its quality, functionality, and adherence to the requirements.

A design review usually involves a presentation to stakeholders followed by a discussion where stakeholders can provide feedback, raise concerns, or propose design improvements. 

What's the difference between a design review and a design critique?

While both the design review and design critique can provide valuable feedback within the design process, the two have distinct differences.

A design review is a formal evaluation process evaluating the design's viability and alignment with project goals. A design critique, on the other hand, is more informal and involves more subjective feedback. For example, the feedback may focus on the aesthetics or creativity of the design. 

What is the scope of a design review?

It can include various aspects, such as: 

Functionality

User experience

Technical feasibility

Potential risks

Scalability

Ethical or legal concerns

Always establish the scope of the design review before the meeting. This allows the designers to prepare their presentations appropriately and for stakeholders to focus their feedback on those areas. 

Who attends a design review?

There may be a range of stakeholders at a design review. The more complex a project is, the more stakeholders there will likely be in attendance. Stakeholders could include: 

Project managers

Subject matter experts

Having a diverse panel of stakeholders at the design review can help thoroughly evaluate a project and gather actionable feedback on the design. 

• Why you should do a design review

A design review is an important opportunity for stakeholders to give project feedback. By involving multiple stakeholders and diverse voices, you can generate innovative ideas for improvement while ensuring the design aligns with the project’s intent and goals. 

The reviews can help catch design flaws and discrepancies early in the project, helping avoid potential disaster after a product launch . This can help save time, money, and the company's reputation. 

These meetings are also an opportunity for collaboration. Bringing all the stakeholders together can help create a unified vision for the project, resulting in a more effective design. 

Design reviews also help build a culture of continuous improvement within the team. Incorporating them throughout the development process creates a culture where feedback is implemented to deliver a better result. 

• What are the different types of design reviews?

There are various types of design reviews, depending on the goals and needs of the project. Three of the most common types of design reviews include: 

Stakeholder design review

This type of design review involves all of the project stakeholders , which could include clients, sponsors, and a management team. These reviews will assess the design's alignment with objectives, budgets, and timelines. They may also consider whether the design fits the market or is technically feasible. Stakeholders can influence the design to help align it with the larger company vision. 

Peer design review

In a peer design review, the reviewers will be the designer's peers or colleagues, not the project stakeholders. These reviews can be a great way to collaborate within a team or get a fresh set of eyes on a project. 

They can also be an excellent tool for professional growth and a way to network with other experts in the field. Peers can evaluate the design for technical feasibility and offer suggestions for improvement. A peer review can be a great way to prepare for a stakeholder review . 

Customer design review

Customer design reviews aim to gather feedback directly from the project’s end users. Potential users can provide information on whether they find the design appealing and user-friendly or whether it solves a problem they’re experiencing. 

Involving customers in a design review can enhance the user experience and ensure the project meets their paint points. A customer design review is one of the best ways to ensure a project meets real-world expectations. 

• Five steps to set up your design review process

Want to implement a design review into your project development timeline? Here are five steps to set up a design review with your team:

1. Define the objectives and criteria for the design review 

Decide what aspects of your design you want to evaluate, such as functionality or compliance. Establish the evaluation criteria and guidelines for these aspects to create a consistent framework for the assessment instead of relying solely on subjective opinions. 

2. Decide who should attend the design review

Invite a diverse panel of stakeholders to the review to get the most comprehensive feedback. But remember the well-known saying, ‘a camel is a horse designed by a committee.’ Only invite those with an actual stake in the project who can provide insightful, actionable feedback. 

3. Schedule the reviews

This means more than just finding a time on everyone's calendar. You should consider the overall timeline for the project, including its milestones, and schedule reviews accordingly. Plan for regular reviews to help you catch issues early on, and make sure you look at different aspects of the design throughout the review process. 

4. Keep the reviews structured

A structured approach to each design review will help keep the reviewers focused and make the meetings more productive. Encourage discussion, ask specific questions, and gather actionable feedback. Document the review and note both the positive feedback and the areas that require improvement. 

5. Put the feedback to work

After each review, you should analyze the feedback with your team and decide what actions to take. Incorporate the feedback into your next design, using each review as a learning opportunity to help you continuously evolve and enhance your design. 

These five steps can help you establish a continuous growth mindset within the design review process. You can mitigate risk and ensure the quality and effectiveness of your designs, leading to a more successful outcome.

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How to Write an Article Review: Tips and Examples

Did you know that article reviews are not just academic exercises but also a valuable skill in today's information age? In a world inundated with content, being able to dissect and evaluate articles critically can help you separate the wheat from the chaff. Whether you're a student aiming to excel in your coursework or a professional looking to stay well-informed, mastering the art of writing article reviews is an invaluable skill.

Short Description

In this article, our research paper writing service experts will start by unraveling the concept of article reviews and discussing the various types. You'll also gain insights into the art of formatting your review effectively. To ensure you're well-prepared, we'll take you through the pre-writing process, offering tips on setting the stage for your review. But it doesn't stop there. You'll find a practical example of an article review to help you grasp the concepts in action. To complete your journey, we'll guide you through the post-writing process, equipping you with essential proofreading techniques to ensure your work shines with clarity and precision!

What Is an Article Review: Grasping the Concept 

A review article is a type of professional paper writing that demands a high level of in-depth analysis and a well-structured presentation of arguments. It is a critical, constructive evaluation of literature in a particular field through summary, classification, analysis, and comparison.

If you write a scientific review, you have to use database searches to portray the research. Your primary goal is to summarize everything and present a clear understanding of the topic you've been working on.

Writing Involves:

• Summarization, classification, analysis, critiques, and comparison.
• The analysis, evaluation, and comparison require the use of theories, ideas, and research relevant to the subject area of the article.
• It is also worth nothing if a review does not introduce new information, but instead presents a response to another writer's work.
• Check out other samples to gain a better understanding of how to review the article.

Types of Review

When it comes to article reviews, there's more than one way to approach the task. Understanding the various types of reviews is like having a versatile toolkit at your disposal. In this section, we'll walk you through the different dimensions of review types, each offering a unique perspective and purpose. Whether you're dissecting a scholarly article, critiquing a piece of literature, or evaluating a product, you'll discover the diverse landscape of article reviews and how to navigate it effectively.

Journal Article Review

Just like other types of reviews, a journal article review assesses the merits and shortcomings of a published work. To illustrate, consider a review of an academic paper on climate change, where the writer meticulously analyzes and interprets the article's significance within the context of environmental science.

Research Article Review

Distinguished by its focus on research methodologies, a research article review scrutinizes the techniques used in a study and evaluates them in light of the subsequent analysis and critique. For instance, when reviewing a research article on the effects of a new drug, the reviewer would delve into the methods employed to gather data and assess their reliability.

Science Article Review

In the realm of scientific literature, a science article review encompasses a wide array of subjects. Scientific publications often provide extensive background information, which can be instrumental in conducting a comprehensive analysis. For example, when reviewing an article about the latest breakthroughs in genetics, the reviewer may draw upon the background knowledge provided to facilitate a more in-depth evaluation of the publication.

Need a Hand From Professionals?

Address to Our Writers and Get Assistance in Any Questions!

Formatting an Article Review

The format of the article should always adhere to the citation style required by your professor. If you're not sure, seek clarification on the preferred format and ask him to clarify several other pointers to complete the formatting of an article review adequately.

How Many Publications Should You Review?

• In what format should you cite your articles (MLA, APA, ASA, Chicago, etc.)?
• What length should your review be?
• Should you include a summary, critique, or personal opinion in your assignment?
• Do you need to call attention to a theme or central idea within the articles?
• Does your instructor require background information?

When you know the answers to these questions, you may start writing your assignment. Below are examples of MLA and APA formats, as those are the two most common citation styles.

Using the APA Format

Articles appear most commonly in academic journals, newspapers, and websites. If you write an article review in the APA format, you will need to write bibliographical entries for the sources you use:

• Web : Author [last name], A.A [first and middle initial]. (Year, Month, Date of Publication). Title. Retrieved from {link}
• Journal : Author [last name], A.A [first and middle initial]. (Publication Year). Publication Title. Periodical Title, Volume(Issue), pp.-pp.
• Newspaper : Author [last name], A.A [first and middle initial]. (Year, Month, Date of Publication). Publication Title. Magazine Title, pp. xx-xx.

Using MLA Format

• Web : Last, First Middle Initial. “Publication Title.” Website Title. Website Publisher, Date Month Year Published. Web. Date Month Year Accessed.
• Newspaper : Last, First M. “Publication Title.” Newspaper Title [City] Date, Month, Year Published: Page(s). Print.
• Journal : Last, First M. “Publication Title.” Journal Title Series Volume. Issue (Year Published): Page(s). Database Name. Web. Date Month Year Accessed.

Enhance your writing effortlessly with EssayPro.com , where you can order an article review or any other writing task. Our team of expert writers specializes in various fields, ensuring your work is not just summarized, but deeply analyzed and professionally presented. Ideal for students and professionals alike, EssayPro offers top-notch writing assistance tailored to your needs. Elevate your writing today with our skilled team at your article review writing service !

The Pre-Writing Process

Facing this task for the first time can really get confusing and can leave you unsure of where to begin. To create a top-notch article review, start with a few preparatory steps. Here are the two main stages from our dissertation services to get you started:

Step 1: Define the right organization for your review. Knowing the future setup of your paper will help you define how you should read the article. Here are the steps to follow:

• Summarize the article — seek out the main points, ideas, claims, and general information presented in the article.
• Define the positive points — identify the strong aspects, ideas, and insightful observations the author has made.
• Find the gaps —- determine whether or not the author has any contradictions, gaps, or inconsistencies in the article and evaluate whether or not he or she used a sufficient amount of arguments and information to support his or her ideas.
• Identify unanswered questions — finally, identify if there are any questions left unanswered after reading the piece.

Step 2: Move on and review the article. Here is a small and simple guide to help you do it right:

• Start off by looking at and assessing the title of the piece, its abstract, introductory part, headings and subheadings, opening sentences in its paragraphs, and its conclusion.
• First, read only the beginning and the ending of the piece (introduction and conclusion). These are the parts where authors include all of their key arguments and points. Therefore, if you start with reading these parts, it will give you a good sense of the author's main points.
• Finally, read the article fully.

These three steps make up most of the prewriting process. After you are done with them, you can move on to writing your own review—and we are going to guide you through the writing process as well.

Outline and Template

As you progress with reading your article, organize your thoughts into coherent sections in an outline. As you read, jot down important facts, contributions, or contradictions. Identify the shortcomings and strengths of your publication. Begin to map your outline accordingly.

If your professor does not want a summary section or a personal critique section, then you must alleviate those parts from your writing. Much like other assignments, an article review must contain an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. Thus, you might consider dividing your outline according to these sections as well as subheadings within the body. If you find yourself troubled with the pre-writing and the brainstorming process for this assignment, seek out a sample outline.

Your custom essay must contain these constituent parts:

• Pre-Title Page - Before diving into your review, start with essential details: article type, publication title, and author names with affiliations (position, department, institution, location, and email). Include corresponding author info if needed.
• Running Head - In APA format, use a concise title (under 40 characters) to ensure consistent formatting.
• Summary Page - Optional but useful. Summarize the article in 800 words, covering background, purpose, results, and methodology, avoiding verbatim text or references.
• Title Page - Include the full title, a 250-word abstract, and 4-6 keywords for discoverability.
• Introduction - Set the stage with an engaging overview of the article.
• Body - Organize your analysis with headings and subheadings.
• Works Cited/References - Properly cite all sources used in your review.
• Optional Suggested Reading Page - If permitted, suggest further readings for in-depth exploration.
• Tables and Figure Legends (if instructed by the professor) - Include visuals when requested by your professor for clarity.

Example of an Article Review

You might wonder why we've dedicated a section of this article to discuss an article review sample. Not everyone may realize it, but examining multiple well-constructed examples of review articles is a crucial step in the writing process. In the following section, our essay writing service experts will explain why.

Looking through relevant article review examples can be beneficial for you in the following ways:

• To get you introduced to the key works of experts in your field.
• To help you identify the key people engaged in a particular field of science.
• To help you define what significant discoveries and advances were made in your field.
• To help you unveil the major gaps within the existing knowledge of your field—which contributes to finding fresh solutions.
• To help you find solid references and arguments for your own review.
• To help you generate some ideas about any further field of research.
• To help you gain a better understanding of the area and become an expert in this specific field.
• To get a clear idea of how to write a good review.

View Our Writer’s Sample Before Crafting Your Own!

Why Have There Been No Great Female Artists?

Steps for Writing an Article Review

Here is a guide with critique paper format on how to write a review paper:

Step 1: Write the Title

First of all, you need to write a title that reflects the main focus of your work. Respectively, the title can be either interrogative, descriptive, or declarative.

Step 2: Cite the Article

Next, create a proper citation for the reviewed article and input it following the title. At this step, the most important thing to keep in mind is the style of citation specified by your instructor in the requirements for the paper. For example, an article citation in the MLA style should look as follows:

Author's last and first name. "The title of the article." Journal's title and issue(publication date): page(s). Print

Abraham John. "The World of Dreams." Virginia Quarterly 60.2(1991): 125-67. Print.

Step 3: Article Identification

After your citation, you need to include the identification of your reviewed article:

• Title of the article
• Title of the journal
• Year of publication

All of this information should be included in the first paragraph of your paper.

The report "Poverty increases school drop-outs" was written by Brian Faith – a Health officer – in 2000.

Step 4: Introduction

Your organization in an assignment like this is of the utmost importance. Before embarking on your writing process, you should outline your assignment or use an article review template to organize your thoughts coherently.

• If you are wondering how to start an article review, begin with an introduction that mentions the article and your thesis for the review.
• Follow up with a summary of the main points of the article.
• Highlight the positive aspects and facts presented in the publication.
• Critique the publication by identifying gaps, contradictions, disparities in the text, and unanswered questions.

Step 5: Summarize the Article

Make a summary of the article by revisiting what the author has written about. Note any relevant facts and findings from the article. Include the author's conclusions in this section.

Step 6: Critique It

Present the strengths and weaknesses you have found in the publication. Highlight the knowledge that the author has contributed to the field. Also, write about any gaps and/or contradictions you have found in the article. Take a standpoint of either supporting or not supporting the author's assertions, but back up your arguments with facts and relevant theories that are pertinent to that area of knowledge. Rubrics and templates can also be used to evaluate and grade the person who wrote the article.

Step 7: Craft a Conclusion

In this section, revisit the critical points of your piece, your findings in the article, and your critique. Also, write about the accuracy, validity, and relevance of the results of the article review. Present a way forward for future research in the field of study. Before submitting your article, keep these pointers in mind:

• As you read the article, highlight the key points. This will help you pinpoint the article's main argument and the evidence that they used to support that argument.
• While you write your review, use evidence from your sources to make a point. This is best done using direct quotations.
• Select quotes and supporting evidence adequately and use direct quotations sparingly. Take time to analyze the article adequately.
• Every time you reference a publication or use a direct quotation, use a parenthetical citation to avoid accidentally plagiarizing your article.
• Re-read your piece a day after you finish writing it. This will help you to spot grammar mistakes and to notice any flaws in your organization.
• Use a spell-checker and get a second opinion on your paper.

The Post-Writing Process: Proofread Your Work

Finally, when all of the parts of your article review are set and ready, you have one last thing to take care of — proofreading. Although students often neglect this step, proofreading is a vital part of the writing process and will help you polish your paper to ensure that there are no mistakes or inconsistencies.

To proofread your paper properly, start by reading it fully and checking the following points:

• Punctuation
• Other mistakes

Afterward, take a moment to check for any unnecessary information in your paper and, if found, consider removing it to streamline your content. Finally, double-check that you've covered at least 3-4 key points in your discussion.

And remember, if you ever need help with proofreading, rewriting your essay, or even want to buy essay , our friendly team is always here to assist you.

Need an Article REVIEW WRITTEN?

Just send us the requirements to your paper and watch one of our writers crafting an original paper for you.

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Critic’s Pick

The Impressionists’ First Flowering Is Still Fresh After 150 Years

Their paintings emerged from a specific historical and artistic moment, yet they still resonate today, as a blockbuster Paris exhibition shows.

By Emily LaBarge

The critic Emily LaBarge saw the exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay.

It was springtime in Paris, 150 years ago, and something new was afoot: something fresh, something radical. An ad hoc band of 31 artists had issued a riposte to the city’s annual state-sponsored Salon, with its elitist jury system and decorous traditional canvases, by holding an independent exhibition of thoroughly modern art. Or so the story goes.

Now, the Musée d’Orsay is remembering the moment with “ Paris 1874: Inventing Impressionism .” Organized with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, where it travels in the fall , the show is a blockbuster featuring many of the most-beloved paintings associated with the Impressionist movement.

Edgar Degas is here, with his scenes of ballet dancers onstage and in rehearsal, their confection-like tutus and black-ribboned necks. Pierre-Auguste Renoir is here, too, with his bourgeois couple in sumptuous evening finery taking in an evening of theater from their box high above the stage. And of course, there is Claude Monet, called the “Father of Impressionism” by some, with his light-filled “plein air” paintings, their short, energetic brushstrokes and pale blue-hued palette.

But the show is first and foremost a careful excavation of a historical moment of greater complexity and artistic variety than commonly understood. The Orsay exhibition co-curators, Anne Robbins and Sylvie Patry, emphasize context to illustrate how artists and their works do not exist in isolation, but are a product of their time. What was going on outside the walls of what has come to be known as the “ First Impressionist Exhibition ” was just as important as what was happening inside.

In early April 1874, articles describing an exciting, avowedly untraditional exhibition began to appear in Paris newspapers. From April 15 to May 15, they pronounced, for the price of one franc, visitors could attend day and night. “Artfully positioned gas lighting will enable art lovers whose business occupies them all through the day to come and examine (all through the evening) the artworks of the modern generation,” one article announced. The twilight exhibition times were a truly urbane novelty.

The co-op that organized the show — the Société Anonyme des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs — had formed the year before, primarily for financial reasons: Artists wanted to determine how and when their work was exhibited, as well as sold, to a burgeoning market of new collectors. (Rather than the more enigmatic-sounding literal translation, “Anonymous Society,” the moniker is in fact the bureaucratic French title for a “joint-stock company.”) Initiated by Renoir, Monet, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley and Édouard Béliard, the ranks of the Société quickly grew. Associates paid 60 francs a year into the company’s coffer, with the aim of funding regular exhibitions.

The first of these took place at 35 Boulevard des Capucines, just down the bustling street from the newly constructed Opéra, with its columned facade and crowning allegorical statues. Number 35 had, until recently, belonged to the great photographer Nadar, whose studio occupied its 3rd and 4th floors. Windows that stretched floor-to-ceiling provided ideal natural light for photography and subsequently for exhibiting art. The opening room of the Orsay show is devoted to Nadar’s premises, showing black-and-white photographs of its eccentric interiors, which included a waterfall grotto with rocks and plants.

This introductory space also outlines the turmoil of the years leading up to what was simply called the “Première Exposition” (the “Impressionist” handle came later).

The flashy environs of the Grands Boulevards with their monumental new edifices had only been enabled by the “année terrible” of 1870-71, when swaths of Paris were destroyed in the Franco-Prussian War and then at the hands of the revolutionary Communards, who barricaded streets, set fire to buildings and toppled the Vendôme Column.

Against this background of transition and rebellion, the Société established itself as an alternative to the Salon, which dated back to 1667. The new show was not a place for art or artists who had been rejected or refused by the Salon (some artists exhibited in both), but for those who wished to be part of something forward-looking. Aside from this, the enterprise was eclectic and not unified by a manifesto or an aesthetic.

Now, many of the works from that groundbreaking exhibition are being shown together for the first time since 1874, revealing a startling breadth. Monet’s “Boulevard des Capucines” (1873-74), which captures the view of the tree-lined street from Nadar’s studio, and Paul Cezanne’s ribald, loosely painted tribute to Manet, “A Modern Olympia, Sketch” (1873-74), are strange artistic bedfellows with Bernard-Alfred Meyer’s enamel “Portrait of a Man (After Antonello da Messina)” (1867), a homage to the Renaissance painter, and two characterful etchings of dogs, “Jupiter” and “César” (both 1861), by Ludovic-Napoléon Lepic. Those who would become known as “Impressionists,” and dominate historical memory of the event, were in fact in the minority: just seven of the 31 artists, and 51 of the 215 works on display.

A selection of works from the Salon of the same year — hung in stacked formations on crimson walls, as they would have been at the immense Palais de l’Industrie et des Beaux-Arts — show how the art establishment of the time was still wedded to history painting, mythological tableaux and sentimental genre scenes. Enormous canvases depict David conquering Goliath, Cupid in the clouds with his gilded bow, a peasant woman looking out to sea and a mother teaching her child to read.

The Impressionist counterpoints were “Modern Life” and “Plein Air,” the titles of two rooms at the Musée d’Orsay. These galleries mix paintings displayed at the Première as well as the Salon, or sometimes shown independently of both. Meticulous notation indicates, below each wall label, where works were exhibited. This can be dizzying to follow, but it highlights how different artists felt about exhibition practices of the time.

Manet, for example, chose the Salon for his fabulously modern “The Railway” (1873), showing a woman and child at the Gare Saint-Lazare, steam billowing behind them. It was badly received, but would likely have been adored at the Première, whose conveners had begged him to participate. By way of support, the artist instead loaned Berthe Morisot’s “Hide and Seek” (1873), in which mother and child play the game around a flowering tree rendered in rapid brushstrokes. Morisot, one of just two women artists in the Première, had several works on display, all of them airy and bright, with a focus on lone women lost in contemplation.

Responses to the upstart show were mixed: Critics referred to the group as a “gang of nihilists,” “intransigents,” “Communards” and even “insane.” Others appreciated the emergence of a new style among the core of the exhibitors, and the designation “Impressionist” was born when one critic described how these works, with their loose brushstrokes and emphasis on immediacy, create the sense of an experience, as opposed to its direct representation. Many reviewers fixated on Monet’s “Impression, Sunrise” (1872), a view of a misty sunrise over the port of Le Havre, in which a bright orange sun beckons through a hazy mauve sky. Although the artist had hastily named his piece, the characterization stuck.

The show was not a financial success and the Société was dissolved shortly afterward. Seven more Impressionist exhibitions took place , each varied in form and content, assembled by different groups of artists practicing under the loose umbrella of the term. (Only Pissarro showed in all eight.)

The Musée d’Orsay, home to the world’s largest collection of Impressionist art, has mounted an exhibition that challenges the mythology of the movement’s origins and the ossification of its aesthetic concerns. In the accompanying catalog, Patry, the curator, quotes the Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko, whose stunning retrospective is still on view across town : “To classify is to embalm. Real identity is incompatible with schools and categories, except by mutilation.” We understand more, and better, by opening things up and up and up.

There was one more part to the show — another exhibition (of sorts) within this exhibition about an exhibition. Down a concourse awaited “Tonight With the Impressionists,” a virtual reality experience that takes visitors through the Première, to Bougival where artists paint “en plein air” by the Seine, to Monet’s hotel balcony in Le Havre as the sun goes down, and beyond.

What to say? After 45 minutes, I emerged dazzled and confused. The artists were all very short. Cezanne seemed to have an Irish accent. I walked across water. A horse ran through my body. Ghostly bald figures (my fellow V.R.-experiencers) materialized spontaneously and disappeared. My guide, an aspiring artist named Marie, took me to the rooftops of Paris where I watched fireworks go off overhead.

It was fun. But the interest in narrative and literal recreation seemed at sad odds with an exhibition devoted to nuance and the feeling, the impression , as opposed to the reality, of the world. This is, after all, different for every beholder. The best-known canvases still inspire imagination and offer something new with each visit, even 150 years after the fact.

Paris 1874: Inventing Impressionism Through July 14, at the Musée d’Orsay, in Paris; musee-orsay.fr .

Rebuilding Baltimore’s Key Bridge will likely take years, experts say

The original construction took five years and cost $316 million in today’s dollars.

Rebuilding the Francis Scott Key Bridge over the Patapsco River will probably take years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars, experts said Wednesday. But the shipping channel from the Port of Baltimore, a major economic engine for the city, could be cleared in months.

Federal officials also reiterated their pledges to support the effort.

“We still don’t fully know the condition of the portions of the bridge that are still standing or of infrastructure that is below the surface of the water,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said at the White House. “So rebuilding will not be quick or easy or cheap, but we will get it done.”

Buttigieg declined to provide a timeline either for clearing the shipping channel or rebuilding the bridge. He also noted that there is a difference of opinion on whether a bridge can be built to take a blow from a 100,000-ton freighter like the one that felled the Key Bridge.

The comments came as agencies worked to recover the bodies of six construction workers who died after the bridge collapsed and investigators for the first time boarded the ship that struck the well-traveled span.

The container ship Dali, apparently suffering a power failure, directly struck one of the piers of the 47-year-old bridge at 1:28 a.m. Tuesday. Quick action by officers with the Maryland Transportation Authority police in the minute immediately before the collision stopped traffic from entering the bridge and saved numerous lives, officials said. But there was no time to warn a construction crew working on the middle of the 1.6-mile span.

Two workers were rescued, but six were presumed dead. On Wednesday, officials said two bodies were recovered from the water.

Hours after Tuesday’s incident, President Biden pledged that the federal government would foot the bill to reopen the port and rebuild the bridge, which state officials said carried more than 30,000 vehicles a day. On Wednesday, Rep. David Trone (D-Md.), a member of the House Appropriations Committee, said lawmakers were exploring the use of “quick release” emergency relief funds to aid in the effort.

Coast Guard Vice Admiral Peter Gautier, who spoke at the White House alongside Buttigieg, said the Coast Guard’s “highest priority now is restoring the waterway for shipping.” Part of that work, he said, includes stabilizing the Dali and removing it from the Patapsco. He said the Army Corps of Engineers was moving aggressively to conduct underwater surveys and mitigate any pollution threat, noting the ship contained more than 1.5 million gallons of oil and 4,700 cargo containers, 56 of which contained hazardous materials.

Another possible complication, Gautier said, is that the bow of the Dali “is sitting on the bottom [of the river] because of the weight of the bridge debris on there.” Gautier said there was no sign of flooding or damage to the ship below the waterline.

Benjamin W. Schafer, professor of civil and systems engineering at Johns Hopkins University, said it could take months to remove debris and reopen the channel. “There is, certainly that technology for moving the steel out as quickly as possible.”

Andy Winkler, director of the housing and infrastructure project at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said state and federal emergency declarations could help speed the rebuilding process by allowing officials to waive rules and regulations around competitive bidding and competition rules that can sometimes slow large infrastructure projects.

An effort to rebuild a collapsed section of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia in 2023 was originally expected to take months. Instead, it took 12 days in part because officials were able to speed up the bureaucracy, including fast-tracking the permitting process after Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) signed a disaster declaration within 24 hours after the collapse.

Winkler said Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) has taken a similar action, which could help speed the process of building a replacement bridge.

Even so, efforts to replace the Key Bridge will probably prove more challenging given that it is a structure that also spans a major shipping lane said Winkler, who estimated the cost will be well into the hundreds of millions if not more. As for how long it would take to build a replacement, Winkler said it was too early to predict given that there is likely to be debate around what a new structure should look like.

“Does the bridge need to be higher? Do there need to be additional kinds of fortifications to prevent something like this from happening in the future?” Winkler said. “Any dramatic change to the structure of the bridge or design would open it up to more stringent environmental review.”

Some experts said it’s unlikely a new bridge could withstand the impact of a direct hit from a freighter, while others said it was possible. Some engineers called for an improved warning system in the channel that could more effectively evacuate people and stop traffic in the event of a runaway ship. And they warned residents to brace for a protracted process.

The original Key Bridge took five years to build in the 1970s . Schafer noted that it took seven years to rebuild the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay, which collapsed after being struck by a freighter in 1980 .

“I’ve lived through quite a few civil infrastructure projects,” Schafer said, “and they’re rarely less than 10 years. So I think that’s what we’re looking at.” He added: “The price tags never seem to be out of the hundreds of millions these days. So I’d be shocked if we’re not at least in that hundreds of millions of dollars.” When the bridge opened in 1977, it cost $60.3 million, which is equivalent to $316 million today.

Atorod Azizinamini, a civil engineering professor at the Florida International University who specializes in structural and bridge engineering, said it is possible for Baltimore to see a new Key Bridge within 2½ years. He described that as a breakneck speed compared with the standard timetable for building similar bridges, which could take as long as a decade from conception to execution.

“Things could go very fast here because everyone knows the world is watching,” Azizinamini said.

The professor, who also directs a center of bridge engineering professionals, said there is typically an order of operations to bridge construction involving environmental impact analyses, permits, design, contracting, fabrication and construction. That process could take several years, and the funding for it is most crucial — and often most time-consuming. In the case of the Key Bridge, Biden’s pledge of federal dollars could shave years off the project, Azizinamini said.

As the new bridge is designed, experts said planners should examine ways to prevent future collisions. Azizinamini said he noticed structural vulnerabilities in the Key Bridge when watching videos of its collapse. He said the piers were not as protected as they should have been.

“This was an accident waiting to happen if you don’t protect the columns of support from a ship,” he said. “And in this case, it happened.”

Azizinamini said he expects to see new guidance from the National Transportation Safety Board recommending that engineers reexamine older bridges and build new protecting structures if needed.

Some states are building protection systems around vital bridges. Last year, officials from a joint New Jersey and Delaware bridge authority announced work on eight 80-foot-wide stone-filled cylinders designed to protect the Delaware Memorial Bridge. The existing protection for the bridge tower piers dates to 1951.

“Today’s tankers and ships are bigger and faster than those of the 1950s and 1960s,” the officials said in a statement announcing the nearly $93 million project.

After the Sunshine Skyway Bridge collapse, which killed 35 people, stronger national standards including protection from errant ships were adopted for bridges in the years that followed, safety experts said.

Some believe engineering measures can be performed to protect such a bridge. Sherif El-Tawil, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Michigan with expertise in bridges, said that if the Key Bridge had been built after those updated standards from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials were put in place, the span could still be standing.

When the Key Bridge was constructed in the 1970s, transportation planners considered building a tunnel on the route where the bridge was built. But hazardous materials aren’t allowed in tunnels, and the Key Bridge was the main route for carrying them around and through Baltimore, said Rachel Sangree, a professor in civil and systems engineering at Johns Hopkins.

“So my expectation is we will rebuild a bridge,” Sangree said. “But will it be in the exact same place and form, and everything? It’ll be an open question of what we’re trying to do. And will a bridge be big enough to accommodate these ships? Yes, certainly. But there is a real challenge here with the scale of these cargo ships; they are still going to be similar in scale to the bridge. And we will need to put in a more robust system so that a strike like that doesn’t happen again.”

Michael Laris contributed to this report.

A previous version of this article misstated the weight of the Dali freighter. It had a loaded weight of about 100,000 tons. This article has been corrected.

Baltimore bridge collapse

How it happened: Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed after being hit by a cargo ship . The container ship lost power shortly before hitting the bridge, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) said. Video shows the bridge collapse in under 40 seconds.

Victims: Divers have recovered the bodies of two construction workers , officials said. They were fathers, husbands and hard workers . A mayday call from the ship prompted first responders to shut down traffic on the four-lane bridge, saving lives.

Economic impact: The collapse of the bridge severed ocean links to the Port of Baltimore, which provides about 20,000 jobs to the area . See how the collapse will disrupt the supply of cars, coal and other goods .

Rebuilding: The bridge, built in the 1970s , will probably take years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild , experts said.

• Smartwatch capability
• Compatibility
• Health & fitness tracking
• Battery life

Should you buy it?

Google pixel watch 2 review: accurate gps and a fast processor make it a great smartwatch for android users.

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Google's second-generation Pixel Watch 2 has everything you want in an Android wearable. It functions as an effective smartwatch, has fast, reliable GPS, and has a battery that lasts longer than one day.

But before I tested the watch, I doubted it could compete with others in the space like the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 Classic or the Fitbit Sense 2 , two of the best Android smartwatches you can buy. This is because the original Pixel Watch was a disappointment. It was a great smartwatch but a terrible fitness tracker due to glaring issues with its GPS. 

Thankfully, Google fixed the GPS and the Pixel Watch 2 is a fully functional smartwatch I can actually recommend. It retains what worked with the original but now has a new, faster processor, an updated operating system (which is also compatible with the Pixel 1), and a longer battery.

The Pixel Watch 2 features an always-on display and three sensors for heart-rate tracking, skin temperature measurement, and stress management. It often falls to this price, so we don't recommend paying more for it.

• Check mark icon A check mark. It indicates a confirmation of your intended interaction. Accurate and reliable activity tracking and GPS
• Check mark icon A check mark. It indicates a confirmation of your intended interaction. New chipset delivers faster load times and minimal lag
• con icon Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. Only available in one sizing option
• con icon Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. Some advanced features require a monthly Fitbit Premium subscription

The Pixel Watch 2 has a minimal, lightweight, and comfortable design

Google made no change to the Pixel Watch 2's design compared to the original model, but that's OK. I like the look of its round watch face and soft rolling edges which achieves a sleek on-wrist aesthetic that feels more classy than sporty. My review model came with a rubber sports band but the watch is compatible with a variety of the best Google Pixel Watch 2 bands that do well to change its overall look.

While I appreciate the overall design, I would've liked to see Google offer multiple sizing options. Its 41mm case size works well enough for various wrist sizes but I know some people prefer smaller or bigger smartwatches. The lack of variety fails to cater to that crowd. I'm used to wearing larger wearables like the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 Classic, so the Pixel Watch 2 felt dainty when I first put it on.

This is the best smartwatch for Android users

Smartwatch capability was the original Pixel Watch's strong suit, and the Pixel Watch 2 is even better. This is due in large part to a fast new processor, the debut of Wear OS 4, and a few new native features.

The most noticeable of these changes is the processor. The quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon W5 processor makes the Pixel Watch 2 noticeably faster than its predecessor. I never experienced any lag while scrolling through menus or opening applications and its notifications would always pop up as soon as they buzzed on my phone.

It's that kind of seamlessness that stood out to me. The watch wasn't just an extension of my smartphone but something I could reliably use as my smartphone. Sending text messages, answering phone calls, and interacting with app notifications is intuitive and incredibly easy to do.

This kind of use case is where the Wear OS 4 operating system also shined, particularly with new features like the native Gmail and Google Calendar access. It was so easy for me to quickly read and respond to emails, and I appreciated being able to look at my calendar without fishing my phone out of my pocket.

Wear OS 4's new phone-switching feature is also a major perk as it allowed me to easily switch between phones without repeating the entire set-up and factory reset process. Since I tested the Pixel Watch 2 on both a Google Pixel 7 and a Samsung Galaxy S23, this feature was used a lot — and it made my life so much easier.

Google also debuted a Pixel Watch 2-specific feature called Safety Check which can alert preset emergency contacts via a text message if you haven't communicated with them within a certain time. I tested it by checking in with my partner while on a particularly long bike ride, but it can also be used by people on first dates or traveling home late at night.

Overall, the Pixel Watch 2 excelled as an extension of my Android smartphone and it's one of the best smartwatches you can buy. Notifications were easy to interact with, responding to texts and emails was a breeze, and I could even take phone calls right on my wrist.

It delivers the same experience across any Android smartphone

Although the Pixel Watch 2 is a Google-branded Android smartwatch, it functions the same on a Google smartphone as it does on something like a Samsung smartphone. I tested the watch using the Google Pixel 7 and the Samsung Galaxy S23 and experienced no difference in performance or usability.

This is a big deal. For example, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 6 Classic offers a far more seamless and complete experience when it's paired with a Samsung smartphone. When that same watch is paired with a Google phone, the performance suffers.

This isn't the case with the Pixel Watch 2. The experience remained the same regardless of which smartphone I had it paired with. There are no exclusives, no missing features, and nothing that would make one phone better to use than the other.

The main reason for this is that you only need to download both the Fitbit app and the Google Pixel Watch app. Since both are downloadable via the Google Play Store, a platform all Android phones have access to, there's no such thing as a preferred use case.

Delivers accurate and reliable health and fitness tracking

The original Pixel Watch's fitness tracking was a letdown. Poor GPS syncing and reliability produced inconsistent results, making it difficult to recommend to active users.

This was the single biggest problem Google needed to fix with the Pixel Watch 2. Thankfully, it did. GPS syncs quicker and is far more accurate, making the data it tracks also a lot more accurate.

I tested it alongside the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Pro , our pick as the best Android smartwatch overall, and my favorite active wearable, the Apple Watch Ultra 2. On everything from bike rides and multiple-mile runs, the Pixel Watch 2 produced similar pacing and distance results. I even enjoyed wearing it while working out which I could not say about the original model.

I also appreciated just how much it's able to track. There are the basics like running and cycling but also a variety of advanced workout types like strength training, hiking, and trail running. Its small design and light weight make it particularly valuable on longer outings, too. I wore it for a 10-mile run and a 30-mile bike ride and hardly noticed I was wearing it at all. You can't say that about the Watch 5 Pro or Ultra 2.

The watch is an excellent health tracker, too. It has in-depth sleep tracking, all-day heart rate monitoring, and ECG readings, as well as a new skin temperature sensor and heart rate sensor. These last two were particularly useful as they provided unique insights into my sleep quality. I could see my skin temperature and heart rate variability throughout the night but it also informed me that I have low heart rate levels while I sleep — which is something I now monitor more frequently.

I was also fond of the watch's stress monitor. As someone who goes for several long walks each day, I used this feature often as a way of knowing exactly when to put a pause on my work day. The watch would ping me whenever my stress levels spiked and that was my cue to take a break. This wasn't a perfect system as it would sometimes notify me mid-meeting, but it did make me more aware of managing my stress throughout the day.

It's worth noting that there are several features locked behind the $10 per month Fitbit Premium. These include things like advanced sleep data, additional stress management tools, and Fitbit's unique Daily Readiness Score. While you don't need a membership to use the Pixel Watch 2, I do feel as though it's worth it to those who want the added insight. The watch does come with six free months of the service, allowing you to test drive it before officially signing up.

Solid battery life and fast recharge times

Battery life is yet another area where the Pixel Watch 2 shows marked improvement over its predecessor. While I needed to charge the first-gen model nightly, I could consistently go at least a full day and night before the Pixel Watch 2 needed to be plugged in.

This is an important upgrade because it allowed me to get full usage out of the watch; I could track my activity and workouts during the day and still have enough battery to track my sleep.

Certain features, like the Always-On Display, drain the battery a little quicker, but I could still get a full day of use out of the watch with it turned on. My routine consisted of charging it in the morning after going for a walk, then wearing it the rest of the day and night once it was fully charged. I was only ever not wearing the watch for roughly two to three hours daily.

The watch also charges quickly and often went from 0% battery to 100% charge in around two hours. I could get enough battery for a full day of use with less than an hour on the charger, too.

If you're an Android user looking for a well-rounded wearable that's both a premium smartwatch and a reliable fitness tracker, then yes. The Google Pixel Watch 2 is a quality generational upgrade that's able to compete with the likes of Samsung's Watch 5 Pro and Watch 6 Classic, two of the best Android smartwatches on the market. It's also the best wearable Google makes, as it's far superior to the Fitbit Sense 2 or Versa 4. 

Its most notable upgrade is its capability as a fitness tracker. Poor GPS syncing plagued the first-gen model but the Pixel Watch 2 avoids the same fate. With fast, quick, and consistent GPS, activity-tracking is now one of the wearable's fortes.

The same can be said of the Pixel Watch 2's smartwatch experience. It has an easy-to-navigate interface and a fast, new processor, and its integration with Google's suite of apps, like Gmail, Google Assistant, and Google Calendar, is handy. The fact it can be used on any phone running Android 9.0 or later, without sacrificing any features, is a major plus, as well. 

You can purchase logo and accolade licensing to this story here . Disclosure: Written and researched by the Insider Reviews team. We highlight products and services you might find interesting. If you buy them, we may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our partners. We may receive products free of charge from manufacturers to test. This does not drive our decision as to whether or not a product is featured or recommended. We operate independently from our advertising team. We welcome your feedback. Email us at [email protected] .

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Study designs: Part 7 – Systematic reviews

Priya ranganathan.

Department of Anaesthesiology, Tata Memorial Centre, Homi Bhabha National Institute, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Rakesh Aggarwal

1 Director, Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research, Puducherry, India

In this series on research study designs, we have so far looked at different types of primary research designs which attempt to answer a specific question. In this segment, we discuss systematic review, which is a study design used to summarize the results of several primary research studies. Systematic reviews often also use meta-analysis, which is a statistical tool to mathematically collate the results of various research studies to obtain a pooled estimate of treatment effect; this will be discussed in the next article.

In the previous six articles in this series on study designs, we have looked at different types of primary research study designs which are used to answer research questions. In this article, we describe the systematic review, a type of secondary research design that is used to summarize the results of prior primary research studies. Systematic reviews are considered the highest level of evidence for a particular research question.[ 1 ]

SYSTEMATIC REVIEWS

As defined in the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions , “Systematic reviews seek to collate evidence that fits pre-specified eligibility criteria in order to answer a specific research question. They aim to minimize bias by using explicit, systematic methods documented in advance with a protocol.”[ 2 ]

NARRATIVE VERSUS SYSTEMATIC REVIEWS

Review of available data has been done since times immemorial. However, the traditional narrative reviews (“expert reviews”) do not involve a systematic search of the literature. Instead, the author of the review, usually an expert on the subject, used informal methods to identify (what he or she thinks are) the key studies on the topic. The final review thus is a summary of these “selected” studies. Since studies are chosen at will (haphazardly!) and without clearly defined criteria, such reviews preferentially include those studies that favor the author's views, leading to a potential for subjectivity or selection bias.

In contrast, systematic reviews involve a formal prespecified protocol with explicit, transparent criteria for the inclusion and exclusion of studies, thereby ensuring completeness of coverage of the available evidence, and providing a more objective, replicable, and comprehensive overview it.

META-ANALYSIS

Many systematic reviews use an additional tool, known as meta-analysis, which is a statistical technique for combining the results of multiple studies in a systematic review in a mathematically appropriate way, to create a single (pooled) and more precise estimate of treatment effect. The feasibility of performing a meta-analysis in a systematic review depends on the number of studies included in the final review and the degree of heterogeneity in the inclusion criteria as well as the results between the included studies. Meta-analysis will be discussed in detail in the next article in this series.

THE PROCESS OF A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

The conduct of a systematic review involves several sequential key steps.[ 3 , 4 ] As in other research study designs, a clearly stated research question and a well-written research protocol are essential before commencing a systematic review.

Step 1: Stating the review question

Systematic reviews can be carried out in any field of medical research, e.g. efficacy or safety of interventions, diagnostics, screening or health economics. In this article, we focus on systematic reviews of studies looking at the efficacy of interventions. As for the other study designs, for a systematic review too, the question is best framed using the Population, Intervention, Comparator, and Outcome (PICO) format.

For example, Safi et al . carried out a systematic review on the effect of beta-blockers on the outcomes of patients with myocardial infarction.[ 5 ] In this review, the Population was patients with suspected or confirmed myocardial infarction, the Intervention was beta-blocker therapy, the Comparator was either placebo or no intervention, and the Outcomes were all-cause mortality and major adverse cardiovascular events. The review question was “ In patients with suspected or confirmed myocardial infarction, does the use of beta-blockers affect mortality or major adverse cardiovascular outcomes? ”

Step 2: Listing the eligibility criteria for studies to be included

It is essential to explicitly define a priori the criteria for selection of studies which will be included in the review. Besides the PICO components, some additional criteria used frequently for this purpose include language of publication (English versus non-English), publication status (published as full paper versus unpublished), study design (randomized versus quasi-experimental), age group (adults versus children), and publication year (e.g. in the last 5 years, or since a particular date). The PICO criteria used may not be very specific, e.g. it is possible to include studies that use one or the other drug belonging to the same group. For instance, the systematic review by Safi et al . included all randomized clinical trials, irrespective of setting, blinding, publication status, publication year, or language, and reported outcomes, that had used any beta-blocker and in a broad range of doses.[ 5 ]

Step 3: Comprehensive search for studies that meet the eligibility criteria

A thorough literature search is essential to identify all articles related to the research question and to ensure that no relevant article is left out. The search may include one or more electronic databases and trial registries; in addition, it is common to hand-search the cross-references in the articles identified through such searches. One could also plan to reach out to experts in the field to identify unpublished data, and to search the grey literature non-peer-reviewednon-peer-reviewed. This last option is particularly helpful non-pharmacologic (theses, conference abstracts, and non-peer-reviewed journals). These sources are particularly helpful when the intervention is relatively new, since data on these may not yet have been published as full papers and hence are unlikely to be found in literature databases. In the review by Safi et al ., the search strategy included not only several electronic databases (Cochrane, MEDLINE, EMBASE, LILACS, etc.) but also other resources (e.g. Google Scholar, WHO International Clinical Trial Registry Platform, and reference lists of identified studies).[ 5 ] It is not essential to include all the above databases in one's search. However, it is mandatory to define in advance which of these will be searched.

Step 4: Identifying and selecting relevant studies

Once the search strategy defined in the previous step has been run to identify potentially relevant studies, a two-step process is followed. First, the titles and abstracts of the identified studies are processed to exclude any duplicates and to discard obviously irrelevant studies. In the next step, full-text papers of the remaining articles are retrieved and closely reviewed to identify studies that meet the eligibility criteria. To minimize bias, these selection steps are usually performed independently by at least two reviewers, who also assign a reason for non-selection to each discarded study. Any discrepancies are then resolved either by an independent reviewer or by mutual consensus of the original reviewers. In the Cochrane review on beta-blockers referred to above, two review authors independently screened the titles for inclusion, and then, four review authors independently reviewed the screen-positive studies to identify the trials to be included in the final review.[ 5 ] Disagreements were resolved by discussion or by taking the opinion of a separate reviewer. A summary of this selection process, showing the degree of agreement between reviewers, and a flow diagram that depicts the numbers of screened, included and excluded (with reason for exclusion) studies are often included in the final review.

Step 5: Data extraction

In this step, from each selected study, relevant data are extracted. This should be done by at least two reviewers independently, and the data then compared to identify any errors in extraction. Standard data extraction forms help in objective data extraction. The data extracted usually contain the name of the author, the year of publication, details of intervention and control treatments, and the number of participants and outcome data in each group. In the review by Safi et al ., four review authors independently extracted data and resolved any differences by discussion.[ 5 ]

Handling missing data

Some of the studies included in the review may not report outcomes in accordance with the review methodology. Such missing data can be handled in two ways – by contacting authors of the original study to obtain the necessary data and by using data imputation techniques. Safi et al . used both these approaches – they tried to get data from the trial authors; however, where that failed, they analyzed the primary outcome (mortality) using the best case (i.e. presuming that all the participants in the experimental arm with missing data had survived and those in the control arm with missing mortality data had died – representing the maximum beneficial effect of the intervention) and the worst case (all the participants with missing data in the experimental arm assumed to have died and those in the control arm to have survived – representing the least beneficial effect of the intervention) scenarios.

Evaluating the quality (or risk of bias) in the included studies

The overall quality of a systematic review depends on the quality of each of the included studies. Quality of a study is inversely proportional to the potential for bias in its design. In our previous articles on interventional study design in this series, we discussed various methods to reduce bias – such as randomization, allocation concealment, participant and assessor blinding, using objective endpoints, minimizing missing data, the use of intention-to-treat analysis, and complete reporting of all outcomes.[ 6 , 7 ] These features form the basis of the Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool (RoB 2), which is a commonly used instrument to assess the risk of bias in the studies included in a systematic review.[ 8 ] Based on this tool, one can classify each study in a review as having low risk of bias, having some concerns regarding bias, or at high risk of bias. Safi et al . used this tool to classify the included studies as having low or high risk of bias and presented these data in both tabular and graphical formats.[ 5 ]

In some reviews, the authors decide to summarize only studies with a low risk of bias and to exclude those with a high risk of bias. Alternatively, some authors undertake a separate analysis of studies with low risk of bias, besides an analysis of all the studies taken together. The conclusions from such analyses of only high-quality studies may be more robust.

Step 6: Synthesis of results

The data extracted from various studies are pooled quantitatively (known as a meta-analysis) or qualitatively (if pooling of results is not considered feasible). For qualitative reviews, data are usually presented in the tabular format, showing the characteristics of each included study, to allow for easier interpretation.

Sensitivity analyses

Sensitivity analyses are used to test the robustness of the results of a systematic review by examining the impact of excluding or including studies with certain characteristics. As referred to above, this can be based on the risk of bias (methodological quality), studies with a specific study design, studies with a certain dosage or schedule, or sample size. If results of these different analyses are more-or-less the same, one can be more certain of the validity of the findings of the review. Furthermore, such analyses can help identify whether the effect of the intervention could vary across different levels of another factor. In the beta-blocker review, sensitivity analysis was performed depending on the risk of bias of included studies.[ 5 ]

IMPORTANT RESOURCES FOR CARRYING OUT SYSTEMATIC REVIEWS AND META-ANALYSES

Cochrane is an organization that works to produce good-quality, updated systematic reviews related to human healthcare and policy, which are accessible to people across the world.[ 9 ] There are more than 7000 Cochrane reviews on various topics. One of its main resources is the Cochrane Library (available at https://www.cochranelibrary.com/ ), which incorporates several databases with different types of high-quality evidence to inform healthcare decisions, including the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), and Cochrane Clinical Answers.

The Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions

The Cochrane handbook is an official guide, prepared by the Cochrane Collaboration, to the process of preparing and maintaining Cochrane systematic reviews.[ 10 ]

Review Manager software

Review Manager (RevMan) is a software developed by Cochrane to support the preparation and maintenance of systematic reviews, including tools for performing meta-analysis.[ 11 ] It is freely available in both online (RevMan Web) and offline (RevMan 5.3) versions.

Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses statement

The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement is an evidence-based minimum set of items for reporting of systematic reviews and meta-analyses of randomized trials.[ 12 ] It can be used both by authors of such studies to improve the completeness of reporting and by reviewers and readers to critically appraise a systematic review. There are several extensions to the PRISMA statement for specific types of reviews. An update is currently underway.

Meta-analysis of Observational Studies in Epidemiology statement

The Meta-analysis of Observational Studies in Epidemiology statement summarizes the recommendations for reporting of meta-analyses in epidemiology.[ 13 ]

PROSPERO is an international database for prospective registration of protocols for systematic reviews in healthcare.[ 14 ] It aims to avoid duplication of and to improve transparency in reporting of results of such reviews.

Financial support and sponsorship

Conflicts of interest.

There are no conflicts of interest.

Sand Land Episodes 1-7 Review

Akira toriyama's post-apocalyptic sci-fi comedy gets a worthy adaptation..

Though nowhere near as influential or popular as Dragon Ball or Dr. Slump, Sand Land is essential to the late Akira Toriyama's body of work – after all, it was the final serialized manga of his storied career. The Sand Land anime that recently premiered on Disney+ and Hulu marks some of his last creative output, period: Its first six episodes may just be a re-edited version of the feature-length adaptation released in 2023, but the seventh episode is an original story written by Toriyama himself, and that alone makes the series a must-watch. It helps that this is a stellar adaptation, with truly astonishing 3D, vast worldbuilding, and complex themes that support a fun, post-apocalyptic road trip that’s pure Toriyama.

Consider it a cross between early Dragon Ball, Fallout , and Mad Max . In a world ravaged by war and natural disasters where humans and demons live side by side, water is a precious commodity. One of those humans, Rao, is a grizzled sheriff struggling to maintain security in his small village. The water-rationing and price-gouging of a cruel king is only contributing to that chaos, so a fed-up Rao sets off to find a rumored spring – and potentially quell a brewing human-demon conflict.

Sand Land Gallery

The marketing (or a simple familiarity with Toriyama) may have you believe the protagonist of this tale is the spiky-haired purple demon Prince Beelzebub. He’s not: Beelzebub is a scene-stealer, and part of Sand Land’s core trio – but this is Rao’s story. Alongside the prince and his advisor, the elderly demon Thief, Rao comes to terms with his past and decides he's done fighting on others' orders and fights for the sake of all.

This is the balancing act at the core of Sand Land. On the surface, it seems like an all-ages comedy adventure – not unlike Goku and Bulma’s initial search for the seven Dragon Balls – with a clear quest, wacky villains, and cool vehicles. But while the tone is consistently light and fun, and Beelzebub is a hilarious little rascal obsessed with video games and making sure people know he’s the most evil person around (despite being a good-hearted kid), Sand Land goes deeper than that. Beneath the hijinks, there’s a complexity that could satisfy fans of both Avatar: The Last Airbender and the recent Pluto anime .

What’s your favorite Akira Toriyama project?

You see, before being a sheriff, Rao was a commander in the king's Royal Army, and he was involved in some major atrocities, the weight of which still haunts him. Throughout the first six episodes, Toriyama and scriptwriter Hayashi Mori explore the trauma of war and genocide, and how they impact individuals as well as entire populations. Corporate greed and even environmentalism are all expertly woven into the story in a way that never undermines or overcomplicates its message.

Nevertheless, this is first and foremost a short, tightly constructed adventure, one told beautifully through 3D animation. While 3D has a bad reputation, particularly in anime, Sand Land is a great case for the use of the format as a tool for storytelling, helping deliver stunningly choreographed fights that display Toriyama’s endless imagination. It also enhances the portrayal of the fourth main character in the story — the stolen tank that carries Rao, Beelzebub, and Thief around.

Toriyama's greatest contribution to anime and manga design are the pointy locks of Beelzebub, Goku, and their ilk, though his renderings of mechines are equally transcendent and important – and Sand Land pays great tribute to it. There are plenty of tank-centric action scenes, and close-ups of the intricate engine and inner workings of the tank and other vehicles, which are all animated with an eye for the smallest details reminiscent of '90s animation like Magnetic Rose and Ghost in the Shell .

It’s hard to recommend this anime to anyone who’s already seen the Sand Land movie – there’s only a handful of additional scenes fleshing out the first two episodes. Just don’t jump ship before Episode 7, which kicks off a brand new story written and designed by Toriyama. Featuring even more wild character and creature designs, as well as new vehicles and a tremendous expansion ofSand Land’s world, the arc will continue in the next batch of episodes (premiere date TBD). Judging by the first episode, this is the beginning of what could be Toriyama's last masterpiece.

Sand Land is an expertly written and animated post-apocalyptic epic with exquisite mechanical designs and a poignant, complex story of redemption, featuring a bold new story by icon Akira Toriyama. Though be warned that the first six episodes are basically just a TV edit of the 2023 movie of the same name.

In This Article

More Reviews by Rafael Motamayor

Ign recommends.