The Nanoha fans struck back yesterday, pushing Fate over virtually no competition with a whopping 1100 votes. This goes beyond showing support - it's definitely a response to Suigintou's impressive showing yesterday, and bodes very well indeed for the second-round rumble to come. Clearly a lot of fans are spoiling for some revenge on Rozen. (Of course, since we're talking about some highly moe characters here, doubtless some of Fate's thousand-plus and Suigintou's nine hundred plus are the same people. Decision time, guys!) Mai from Kanon pushed past a strong challenge from Seto's Mawari, while the Mai from Otome fell to Akazukin's Ibara-hime in a fairly close match.

Last day of first-round voting. Whew!

H-4 is a bit of a tough call. Misaki from NHK isn't quite normally moe - to put it bluntly, there's enough wrong with her head that it's a bit of a turn-off, but not enough to make her a scary/sexy yandere. But she did qualify out of the first prelim, while Lutecia only did from the second... even though Lutecia's vote total was higher, due to differing round voting totals. I get the feeling that this would be a lock two weeks from now - Lutecia's complete "befriending" has occurred, but we haven't had the almost-obligatory final episode moe scene to really hammer it home yet. Gotta give it to Strikers anyway, though (and it's not like being loli-Rider is going to turn voters off, huh?)

H-8's a bloodbath. Two girls from a relatively unpopular show versus one of the biggest tsunderes of the season. Sure, Louise is bitchy far beyond any kind of normal bitchiness, and I'm pretty sure she'd lose in a direct battle with Nagi from Hayate (who has virtually all of her good qualities and few of her bad ones.) But even all the Sky Girls voters put together wouldn't be enough to topple her here, much less split between two girls.

H-12, now, is a great match to close the round with. Eri did very well last year, being one of the most popular characters in School Rumble - but School Rumble's popularity has flat-lined this year, with not even Yakumo managing to make it into the next round. Little chance of a Lucky Star split - I don't even know which of Tsukasa's and Kagami's sisters Inori is, while Kuroi is basically adult Konata as a teacher. Not much more than cute, not a major character, but a combination of fang and MMO playing may be enough to turn out the Lucky Star crowd. If she does about as well as Yui, the other adult from Lucky Star, and Eri does about as well as Yakumo, the other School Rumble moe-idol, then it'll be an extremely close round indeed.
Yesterday's results:

1位　1112 votes Fate T. Harlaown@Mahou Syoujo Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS
2位　237 votes Milly Ashford@Code Geass Lelouche of the Rebellion
3位　166 votes Onimaru Miki@Muteki Kanban Musume

1位　766 votes Kawasumi Mai@Kanon
2位　625 votes Zenigata Mawari@Seto no Hanayome
3位　142 votes Hijiri Misaki(Red Loli)@Saint October

1位　514 votes Ibara-hime@Otogi Jushi Akazukin
2位　460 votes Tokiha Mai@Mai-Otome Zwei
3位　299 votes Ogasawara Sachiko@Maria-sama ga Miteru OVA

Today's matches:

H-4(09/15):
ルーテシア＠魔法少女リリカルなのはStrikerS(Lutecia@Mahou Syoujo Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS)
中原岬＠N・H・Kにようこそ！(Nakahara Misaki@NHK ni Youkoso!)
奥若蕾＠ストロベリー・パニック(Okuwaka Tsubomi@Strawberry Panic)

H-8(09/15):
園宮可憐＠スカイガールズ(Sonomiya Karen@Sky Girls)
桜野音羽＠スカイガールズ(Sakurano Otoha@Sky Girls)
ルイズ・フランソワーズ・ル・ブラン・ド・ラ・ヴァリエール＠ゼロの使い魔(Louise Francoise Le Blanc de La Valliere@Zero no Tsukaima)

H-12(09/15):
黒井ななこ＠らき☆すた(Kuroi Nanako@Lucky Star)
柊いのり＠らき☆すた(Hiiragi Inori@Lucky Star)
沢近愛理＠スクールランブル 二学期(Sawachika Eri@School Rumble Second Term)

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 05:48 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 566 words, total size 6 kb.

1 The revenge is on Desu not gin.

Posted by: Xellos-_^ at September 14, 2007 09:12 PM (soxPR)

2 Desu comes later. ;p (If indeed they wait that long. Prime candidate for a bit of strategic voting.)

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at September 14, 2007 10:52 PM (LMDdY)

3 OK, it's obvious there's a reference here I'm not getting. What do you guys mean by "Desu"? Obviously not the copula, unless you're talking about the girlie affection of overusing "desu" at the end of sentences. (Bel Bel the fairy, in Petite Princess Yucie, does that. Since her voice is Kaneda Tomoko, the result is cute beyond imagining, approaching 0.8 of a Matsuri.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at September 14, 2007 11:17 PM (+rSRq)

4 Glad to see Mai moving on; she's my favorite character in the entire tournament. Think she'll be able to handle Louise?

You remarked in your last post that Mai would have the best chance of beating the Gin/Fate winner. While that seems rather unlikely at first (she doesn't really compare to either in popularity), the Rozen Maiden and Nanoha fandoms are large and vindictive, and there's a decent chance we'll see a revenge vote from the defeated faction.

To answer Steven's question, "Desu" refers to Suiseiseki from Rozen Maiden, nicknamed for her use of the same speech pattern you mention. She won the tournament last year, and seems to be a rather polarizing character. If Saimoe was the NCAA tournament, I think Suiseiseki would be Duke: she has lots of fans, but at least as many detractors. Of course, basketball games aren't decided by the teams' popularity, so the analogy kind of falls apart there.

Posted by: Andrew F. at September 15, 2007 12:39 AM (a6ydJ)

5 To steal from Fark: "Duke Sucks."

Posted by: Wonderduck at September 15, 2007 12:54 AM (ywZa8)

6 A lot of people don't like Suiseiseki just because she's a terrible person. Conniving, selfish, self-absorbed tsundere with practically no "dere" to her.

And a lot of people don't like her in the context of Saimoe because her rounds tended to suffer from incredible bouts of fake voting. Not just a couple hundred, but literally thousands of fake votes were generated. This was not typical for the late tourney, but it was typical for any round Suiseiseki happened to be in. While I have to say that in a twisted sense, that kind of tactic matches her perfectly, it still left a nasty taste in a lot of fan's mouths.

Honestly, because of that, this year she doesn't really have a chance at all. (Doesn't help that the new Rozen Maiden didn't have much of her in it, and also that former winners don't tend to repeat; it's hard to get to the top of the bracket without making some enemies.)

"Desu" because of the Suiseiseki-centric memes that were spawned last year. If you missed them, be thankful. But she's hardly the first character with the "lots of desu" speech tic - first one I worked on was Kurumi.

I like the concept of measuring moe in Matsuri-units. ;p

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at September 15, 2007 10:51 AM (LMDdY)

7

Someone told me one time that the unit of angst was a "Rei". Of course, when I posted that, someone else pointed out it really should be a "Shinji".

Of course, if you set your unit that high, then you have to start using prefixes like milli- and micro- when talking about anyone else.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at September 15, 2007 02:18 PM (+rSRq)

8 Death to Desu is one of the most popular campaign themes this year

And speaking of Eva, Rei, Asuka and Misato will be up for Next Year's Saimoe. It will be interesting to see how the Eva girls will do. Asuka is the modern day Tsundere and Rei spawn the silent girl type.

Posted by: Xellos-_^ at September 15, 2007 02:40 PM (12gxe)

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