Suddenly, I feel a lot better about having watched all that Familiar of Zero yesterday!

In a totally unexpected, flabbergastingly bizarre turn of events, Louise edged out Suigintou to take the H Block title and round out our quarterfinal. I just didn't expect that. Sure, I mentioned that it could happen as some kind of theoretical event, but it actually happened! Oy vey, I'd have made a mint betting on it...

They've determined the quarterfinals matches, and either they declined to shuffle the brackets this year or the shuffle was just improbably corresponding to an A-B, C-D, E-F, G-H result. I'll save the analysis for later, as there's a two-day break before we get going again.

Wow. Just... wow.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 06:49 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Rika took out Sayuri to secure the G block final, with a margin of victory that was considerably smaller than I'd expected; the Higurashi faction isn't huge in and of itself, here. Sure, Rena can pull in some votes, but it remains to be seen how they do against serious opposition without lots of tactical voting behind them.

Last match before the semi-finals, and Louise is the underdog here today. Suigintou has a better-than-even chance of walking away with the whole tourney, now that Suiseiseki's out; I might be watching a lot more of Louise's show, but well, they're paying me to. ;p (Seriously, I don't think that Suigintou is actually vulnerable to assassination here. If Suiseiseki had won her round, and there were already two Rozens in the quarterfinal to come, then maybe there would have been just enough perverse support to push Louise over the top. But instead, we'll have a galvanized Rozen fanbase hell-bent on making sure that their favorite makes it into the final. Sorry, Louise, but angry tsundere loli loses to angry tsundere loli goth doll!
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 05:41 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Ding, dong, the doll is dead... Tsukasa comes ahead with a decent 180-vote lead, with high voting numbers, and knocks off last year's champion. Cue hosannas, dancing midgets, and lots of "Tsukasa is mai waifu" commentary from the peanut gallery. Can't say that I'm disappointed!

Tough call today. Sayuri is one of the weaker Kanon characters, and so it's only a twist of fate that's allowed her to reach this point; Rika is a truly unusual bit of moe who can simultaneously be a total loli and quite hilarious when drunk. (Underage? Depends on how you count, I guess...) Rika has the obvious advantage here, as Kanon just doesn't have the reserves to call on in this tourney. Nor is the thought of a two-Higurashi quarterfinal nearly as horrifying as the specter of a triple-Rozen one, so I don't think we'll see a calvary ride to Sayuri's rescue.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 11:47 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Interesting vote total from yesterday's match. Shinku wins, no big surprise there, and she's high enough to indicate that the Rozen fans are definitely still out there, but not so high as to say that they can just steamroll their way through. Sorry, Hamster, it was a good run, but you're just not that moe.

Today's match will have some serious grudge going on. Suiseiseki, damnable doll that she is, has to be considered the favorite - she did win outright last year, after all. But the Lucky Star voters are down to their last shot, and maximum effort there would be really difficult to stop. I expect most of the undecideds to rally to Tsukasa, though, because the prospect of a three-doll quarterfinal is just not something we want to see...

Sorry I posted late today, but I did the big child abuse ep last night, and it always gets me down some.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 10:00 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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More or less as expected, Rena clears Yuno to get into the quarterfinal, though the match was a little closer than I would have expected - either Rena attracted some anti-voting, or Yuno was significantly stronger than I had expected. Yuno took an early lead in the voting, but a steady stream of Rena votes later in the day put the yandere over the top.

I honestly don't know who to root for today. Shinku is one of the few Rozen dolls that I can stand - or rather, I like her attitude. Not quite tsundere, not quite the stereotypical ojou-sama type, just a touch of violence but not so much that we start feeling sorry for Jun. But Ayumu! I had her pegged for an early exit; I still have no idea how the hell she's made it this far (well, okay, actually fairly weak opposition and a strong Hayate block accounts for it, but still.) She's a joke character, in the end, with just enough fleshing out to stay interesting, and just enough appearances so that we don't forget her. In any kind of ordinary circumstances, this would be a slaughter that would make Higurashi look like Barney, but Shinku wasn't ever the strongest draw of the Rozen team, and she lost a lot of support after the OAV (it's true, it's very hard to get votes in Saimoe as an antagonist).

I'd like to see Ayumu win for the pure "lol" factor - and if we have to have two characters from one show in the semi-finals, I'd much rather it be Nagi and Ayumu than Suigintou and Shinku. (Or, worse, those two AND Suiseiseki...) Fortunately, the prospect of a three-Rozen final will probably drive enough anti-votes onto Ayumu's side to put her over the top...
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 05:52 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Nanoha takes the win over Vita, with really low voting totals - people stayed home in droves, though Nanoha commanded a pretty good lead over Vita all day long. Either no anti-voting happened at all, or ALL the Nanoha votes swung that way. The low total doesn't bode well for her performance later in the quarterfinals, but meh, we know there's a huge surge potential there.

Though perhaps not as much as in the next match... Rena came out of nowhere to power past Kagami, and today she's faced with Yuno from Hidamari. This is not a contest. Even if you assume that most of Rena's added support was intended to take down Kagami rather than to support Rena per se, she still has enough popularity to win against Yuno. Complicating factor in that, by besting Kagami, Rena suddenly became the biggest vote-winner in the tournament, and theoretically could get targeted for assassination on those grounds... but I dunno, just doesn't sound too likely.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 03:04 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Konata easily dispatched Konoka, taking an early lead and running away with the round, in relatively light voting. No shock there - Konoka's just out of her league at this point.

Today's match, well... I could go either way, personally. Nanoha isn't as moe as she once was (let me tell you, S1 Nanoha is pretty moe - off to time more episodes of that this evening when I'm done here.) Vita, well... she's not really as moe as she was either, but she looks more or less the same, just in a dorky, plain military uniform instead of her rather cool-looking gothy outfit. Nanoha loses on the lolita front (or rather, everyone does - damned few characters are permanently nine), but gained back plenty on the sexy front (where Vita has nothin', nothin' at all). The only real problem is that both characters are ass-kicking types, which is great, except that Nanoha kicks significantly more ass per swing of the boot - she was a pretty good match for Vita back in A's, but by Strikers Nanoha would stand a good chance against some of the lesser Dragon Ball fighters.

Even so, both characters had a good end of the season. As far as tournament implications, though, Vita has effectively no chance at the title - a weak quarterfinal draw might get her to the semis, but she's just not moe on the same level as the big names. But Nanoha's an ex-champ, and last year Fate vs. Nanoha went to Fate by a large margin - so it wouldn't be unprecedented for the Nanoha fans to swing Vita to give another character a shot. (Then again, Fate in A's was moe to levels previously unrecorded by humankind...)

Obviously, anyone who wants Nanoha out of the tournament is going to pile on Vita, which is essentially the only reason that this is a competitive round - if Vita gains some of Nanoha's support the way Fate got some of Nanoha's, that plus every tactical voter in the tourney might be enough to do it.

I've been meaning to include pics in these, but I honestly haven't had the time - between the job and the other job, my free time is pinched a little, and hunting down pictures of Nanoha is too much like the other job. ;p
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 05:42 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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And Nagi squeaks by Shana, scoring 18 more votes. Short stuff versus short stuff - neither character got a bad vote total, but both were pretty low by the standards of the last round. Can't say I feel bad about the result - Nagi is one of my favorite characters of the year, and I feel they really did a good job calibrating her otaku tendencies, her snappishness, and her rose-colored Hayate lenses. Then again, I've only seen the first two volumes of the Shana manga, and none of the anime. Shana loses, but she'll gain a sale - I'll be getting some from Robert's as soon as I have time to watch anime that I'm not getting paid for, heh.

Ironically, there were an equal amount of fake votes for both characters (about 30% of the total, to give you an idea.) Go fig.

Today's match probably won't be as close. Konoka's nice, in a kind of restful way that virtually every other Negima girl isn't, but Konata's going to absolutely maul her here. Be honest - if you're reading this blog, you identify with Konata more than a little. She's YOU if you got stuck in Azumanga or a similar 4-panel comic (well, as a teenage girl, heh.)
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 07:23 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Okay, welcome back to Saimoe's block finals. Our first one's a showdown between two tsunderes - Shana versus Nagi. Man, kind of tough to call this one in advance, as I haven't been keeping up with Shana (need to fire off an order, but I want to wait until I have... y'know... time to watch it.) But with the second season just airing in Japan, the timing couldn't be any better for the Flame Haze. Nagi is definitely doing it as having just the right amount of tsun (i.e. not so bloody much, Japan), but at the same time Hayate's starting to drag a little bit - it just doesn't have the zing that it had for the first few episodes. Even so, there's a lot of Hayate fans out there, so it should be a heavily-voted round one way or the other.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 04:53 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Just finished timing Familiar of Zero, volume 1. (Not totally finished, of course, there's all sorts of revision and DVD subtitle generation still to do. But the hard work is over.)

I've judged Louise pretty harshly, and she deserves a lot of that - she's not just violent, but a snotty noble who could stand to have been hit by her parents some more. But I'd definitely glossed over my memories of Saito, who provokes her whenever possible. It strikes me as a very Japanese response to the whole "I've just summoned you and you're now my personal slave" situation - whereas I'd expect an American to run off or fight, Saito (after failing to run off, heh) essentially rolls with it, and goes into a kind of passive-agressive mode to see how much he can piss her off. The fact that Louise has virtually no redeeming characteristics doesn't help - she's one big walking touchy topic.

Ah well. Nine episodes of timing in two weeks - there was a time when I would have counted that to be good work from my full-time job, and now (even without the amazing productivity-enhancing tools that, er, probably led to me getting laid off in the first place) I can knock it out in my spare time on the weekends. Some of that's experience, some of it's better tools - we've come a long way from the genlock-and-two-VCR routine. (For pure timing, the fan-made tools are actually superior - the real problem is that those tools aren't capable of dealing with the timecode of professional video production work, and the professional tools that DO are either much less user-friendly, or fantastically expensive.)

I still have more fun working on Nanoha, though...

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 06:25 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I want a copy of this. I'm informed that it's a manga-style political pamphlet supporting the Japanese obtaining nuclear weapons. Is it the ultimate, er, fusion of the mecha-musume and more traditional moe? Or a new attempt by ultra-nationalists to woo the modern Japanese youth? Or is it merely awesome? Or has my brain been fried by timing two episodes of Zero's Familiar today? Oyyy. But hey, miko on the cover, can't complain...

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 10:12 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Rika comes out on top, but not with a very strong vote total. Okay, okay, splitting the Higurashi vote there, but even both votes combined are more than 500 short of Rena's vote total from this round. And it wasn't just because the round had a low vote total - there were hundreds of additional votes in the other bracket. I think this actually means that Rika and Sayuri will be a competitive match...

Suigintou's vote total was also somewhat interesting. She's still keeping a decent number of votes, even in a round that's not terribly competitive - but again, something like five hundred short of her performance against Fate. Are these all just voters who only show up for the close rounds, or is that reflective of how large the various anti-factions and tactical voter blocks are? If so, that's one heck of a swing vote...

Tourney will take a two-day break, then start up the block finals.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 10:02 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Well, I guess now we know whether Eluluu was winning off her own moe... Sayuri edges her out by 70 votes, but with voting totals so low that plenty of contestants from this round had more than both combined. Things weren't too much hotter over in the other match, where Louise whipped Eri soundly. With the vote totals we're looking at, it would take a miracle plus massive tactical voting to get Louise into Suigintou's range.

Then again, it all depends on what Suigintou's range is. So far, we haven't seen the huge voting numbers unless a round was particularly well-contested; without Fate to challenge her, how will her numbers stack up against the (cute, but not especially moe) Alicia from Aria? I definitely expect a significant fall-off here, though Alicia has not even a little hope of victory. Sorry, but Suigintou really is moe, even if I like Fate better.

Mion versus Rika, however... this is a tough call. We're talking about two genuinely creepy characters here. I'd like to say that this ought to split the Higurashi crowd right down the middle, but I didn't partake of season 2, which means I'm fumbling in the dark here - I honestly don't know how it ends, though I don't really expect a good ending for either one of these two. There's no vote advantage worth mentioning, either. Frankly, this one is going to come down to who non-Higurashi fans favor - or rather, for who will be less of a threat in the quarterfinal. Personally, I'd put Mion up over Rika, just because you never know how the loli fandom is going to vote, and Mion loses against most of the remaining competitors. (Heck, even Sayuri might take her!)
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 04:55 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Hm, hm, hm. Interesting results from yesterday's matches. Ayumu took a fifty-vote victory over Tamao, which wasn't a terrible surprise, and Suiseiseki came in almost 300 votes in front of Aruruu. Low voting compared to the rest of the round - even the Strikers/Hidamari rounds drew more votes. Nobody's really expecting anything out of Aruruu, but is this all the voting strength that Suiseiseki can muster? Or did the Rozens just not turn out because Aruruu wasn't enough of a threat? (Or are they pinning their hopes this year on Suigintou? Heh.)

The last of the Kanon girls, Sayuri, is up against Eluluu today. Eluluu has a massive advantage in votes from the last round, but she was up on the same day as the astronomically-high vote totals of the Fate vs. Suigintou round - in other words, there's no way to tell (or reason to suspect, for that matter) that Eluluu can draw those numbers in on her own. Sayuri, though, is one of the weaker Kanon girls - if even Mai and Ayu went down hard, it's difficult to believe that she can continue to carry the torch. I'm going to predict Eluluu, but not strongly.

Louise is going to win the other round - it's just not in contention. This sucks somewhat, to be honest. For a match between two tsunderes, I definitely prefer Eri as a character - even though she's on the violent end of School Rumble's spectrum, she's still far short of the hysteric fits that Louise throws over little things like not being waited on hand and foot. And I'm working on that show tonight, too, so my craw will be crammed full enough of Miss Zero as it is. But it can't be denied that School Rumble's star has been completely eclipsed in this tournament, and Eri wouldn't be able to assemble the sort of votes to take out Louise's early round totals, much less what she's likely to draw today. Ah well, I guess if you like girls with crops and lolis in lingerie...
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 05:02 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Hm. No surprise in the Shinku match, though even Takako managed a thousand votes - that may well be our performance baseline for anyone who's made it to this round. Shinku's total was a good third larger, so it wasn't particularly close.

Tsukasa vs. San was close, though, with the balsamic vinegar triumphing over the sushi (wait, you're supposed to use malt vinegar for that!) Vote spread of around 70, both around the 1500 vote mark... I don't know that Tsukasa would have won this one if Kagami hadn't gone down already, but it was just enough. Too bad for Seto no Hanayome, which is now out of the tourney, though it did pretty good for a comedy show that wasn't moe-centric in the first place.

I really don't know what to say about E3-2. Nishizawa, the hungry hamster, has managed to overcome formidable odds... well. No, not really - E block was the closest to a weak group this year. But still, if you had told me at the beginning of the tourney that she had a shot at making the sweet sixteen, I'd have called you an idiot. But she keeps on trucking, and keeps on winning... I can't properly call the round, because I'm still unfamiliar with Strawberry Panic, except that it seems to be full of lesbians. (This is not a negative.) Ayumu has the vote advantage, though, so maybe Hayate can advance another character.

I hesitate to use words like "underdog" to describe the next round, mostly because it would be somewhat in bad taste. Aruruu's cute, it cannot be denied. She has a fun tiger-god thing. She's moe in the daddy's-little-girl sense. But oy, against Suiseiseki? I don't even expect a serious assassination attempt - that sort of thing is best left to Tsukasa next week. One of the few third-round matches that's over before it started...
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 05:12 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Very balanced matches yesterday - difference between the low finisher and the top was only 59 votes. Vita squeaked past Miyako with a 25-vote margin, while Yuno got just enough votes to top Hayate.

I'm somewhat surprised by the strength of the Hidamari vote (though it's tough to tell whether that's also some anti-Strikers vote from here.) That said, I don't think Yuno is enough of a match to seriously contest Rena in the block final; there would have to be some serious anti-Higurashi sentiment between then and now, and given that the only remaining Higurashi match in the round is between two Higurashi characters, I don't think it's likely to develop.

On the other hand, Nanoha vs. Vita could be quite interesting indeed. But I'll save the fanboy rant (er, deep analysis, I meant to say) for the day of that match.

On to today's matches. Shinku vs. Takako won't be very interesting. Okay, sure, there's enough anti-Rozen sentiment that you can't write anybody off, and it's not like Takako got here without winning a couple of rounds. But it's Shinku's round to lose, and if she does lose it, it's a pure assassination job. (Is her support as strong as it was last year? No, especially after the "heel turn" in Overture, even though that was a prequel story. But I don't think it's enough to prove decisive here.)

Our other match should be as hot as anything we've seen in the round. Lucky Star fans have to be smarting after Kagami went down, and we know that the Seto crowd can deliver one hell of a vote total in a heavily-contested match. Not sure how to call this one, honestly. With Kagami out of the picture, suddenly Lucky Star is a lot less menacing, so perhaps there's something less of a potential anti-voting block against Tsukasa and Konata now. On the other hand, nobody was really expecting a Seto character to run away with the tourney, so people aren't going to be piling on Tsukasa just to take out San. All depends on how much of that Lucky Star vote comes out - if Tsukasa delivers the same kind of vote total as her sister, I don't think San can match it. But if she comes in weaker, I think the anti-votes (and San's natural charm, of course) will be enough for a fishy result.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 05:14 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Jesus H. Christ in a burning birch bark canoe, what the hell was that? Apocalyptic vote totals in both matches. The low performer of the day, Luna, still hauled in 1700 votes, but it wasn't quiiiite enough to put away Nanoha, who came away with a 44-vote victory. Kagami did even better at 1768, and still lost... by over a hundred votes... to Rena, who topped the 1900 mark.

Lots of fake voting all around. Nanoha had almost 400 fake votes, compared to Luna's 200, while Kagami had 600 to only 100 for Rena. Goodness knows why anyone keeps track of the voting in progress - it's obvious that popular characters get salted with fake votes to depress their real voting turnout (why bother voting if she's already 500 votes in the lead?) and to spur on more voting for the underdog ("come on, man, she's gonna lose!") It's definitely getting uglier faster this year, though it's not like it's totally decisive. Looking at the charts, Nanoha and Luna ran neck and neck all day long, while Rena pulled ahead early and maintained the lead against a late challenge.

The interesting thing is, are these characters going to have the necessary staying power? Well, Nanoha, sure, she's won the damn thing before. Rena? Not so sure. Again, we'll need to see the G and H block rounds to compare how Suigintou (and Eluluu!) manage to hold on to those big vote totals. If the votes melt away, that suggests that a lot of these votes were people voting tactically rather than strictly on moe. But what the heck, they do it in a tourney format specifically to encourage this sort of monkey business...

That said, obviously Kagami was one of the biggest threats of the tournament, and she just lost a round that she should have won - heck, with a vote total that should have been a guaranteed win.

Another interesting nugget of data - Nanoha and Luna ran nearly even in foreign voting totals, while Kagami had a 2:1 advantage in votes coming from outside Japan. Didn't know Luna was so popular in these parts (or rather, what is wrong with people?)

Deep breath. Today's rounds are definitely going to be less frenetic - heck, practically sedate by comparison. Again, weirdness in the random draw has given us parallel matches - Hidamari Sketch versus Strikers, with Miyako paired off against Vita and Yuno going up against Hayate. You don't really expect swing votes or outside interference in a pair of matches like this - the winner of Miyako-Vita will be up against Nanoha, while Hayate-Yuno is going to have to face off against Rena. Assuming that yesterday's avalanche was more of an anti-Nanoha and anti-LS expression, rather than showing particularly high support for Seto no Hanayome or Higurashi per se, there's not really any point in knocking out either of the Strikers.

In fact, if you're anti-Nanoha, you NEED Vita to win this match - Vita vs. Nanoha splitting the Strikers vote would be the best possible chance to knock Nanoha out before the quarterfinals. Hayate's chances aren't quite as good - well, she's not a loli anymore (even if she didn't get a spinning naked transformation sequence, what were the writers thinking?) - so her match may actually be competitive. It's sad to say that the Hidamari characters would more or less be wasted votes, though... even a win today just puts them in front of a juggernaut that no amount of fake votes, third-party factions, or acts of God could possibly stop.

Then again, it's not like I'm neutral when it comes to Nanoha characters. ;p
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 05:52 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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And the otaku girls both take their round yesterday, Nagi by a mile, Konata by a bit more than a hundred votes. Voting may have been affected a little by a last-minute outage at the 2chan posting board, but Konata had taken the lead in the early hours of voting and maintained the gap all day long, so likely it didn't affect the outcome. (However, it may have reduced the voting numbers a little, so we'll have to keep that in mind when predicting the last few rounds...)

Turns out that Saimoe actually has a contingency plan in place for a major outage of the servers - if they're up more than 12 of the 24 hours, they call it legal and go with the results. Huh, never knew that.

Also ironically, the block A final now has Shana vs. Nagi, who have the same voice actress. Heh...

Should be a fantastic day for voting today. First match is Luna vs. Nanoha. We can expect a maximum effort on behalf of the Seto no Hanayome fans, and that's proven to be a formidable force so far. The real question is how much of the Nanoha fan base Nanoha herself can rally. If a significant percentage of the Fate fans transfer over to Nanoha for this round, Luna is toast. It's difficult to tell which way anyone else would want to intervene in this match, either - both Nanoha and Luna are pretty strong threats on their own, and both of them have a single teammate left in the tourney, so the risk of energizing the fan base is about even too. Anyone who's been reading this knows who I favor, of course (and if you didn't, I'm off to subtitle two more episodes of Nanoha today when I'm done here.)

Rena versus Kagami, though... Rena's cute, for a psycho, that's been established long since. But I seriously doubt that Higurashi has enough votes to marshal to take down Kagami, consistently the strongest-polling of the Lucky Stars. The only thing that could save her would be a concerted effort to knock Kagami out of the tournament, and honestly, there's an awful lot of Kagami fans out there... I'm not sure there's enough anti-Lucky Star feeling to pull it off, even if they tried. (And would they really want to then pitch Rena up against Hayate?)

Tough to predict how the interplay of the rounds will affect the outcome. None of the four are really running from the same playbook when it comes to their moe, so there's no obvious parallels like the Nagi/Konata otaku vote from yesterday. Luna and Kagami are both tsundere, okay, but Luna is the overly violent crotch-stomping type, while Kagami is the newer, gentler sarcastic type that I prefer. Nor do Rena or Nanoha have inferior violence to bring to the table - Rena's straight out of a horror movie and I fully expect Nanoha characters to show up in a Super Robot Wars game sometime. Nanoha brings the only adult charms to the day's voting (though, to put it bluntly, anyone who remembers the first season knows that she's not getting out-lolied short of Kodomo no Jikan.)

I'll predict Kagami over Rena. No prediction for the other round - it's too close to call.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 10:30 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Did the new series starting help Shana's vote total any? I think it's safe to come to that conclusion, as she busts out an 1100-vote round to dominate Izumi from Hayate. In the other round, the battle between Konoka and CC came down to a mere 18 votes, with Pizza the Butt finally going down before Konoka's slightly more subtle moe.

Today is all Hayate the Combat Butler, all the time. Tomoe would have found Nagi to be an impossible opponent under any circumstances. The match between Isumi and Konata would ordinarily go right down to the wire. With the two combined, both of them should prevail. But that's not the only way it could go - we could easily see an "otaku girl!" support vote that goes for both Nagi and Konata. Definitely worth tuning in to see who wins, anyway.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 11:25 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Okay, now that most of the weak sisters have been culled out of the competition, we can get down to the serious business of true moe.

Shana vs. Izumi from Hayate... Advantage here is all Shana. Izumi's still a very minor character, despite her one episode a few weeks ago, and Shana's new series just got rolling (apparently, with a recap, but at least it's fresh in the mind.) The Hayate voting block hasn't really been voting as a block in the last few, so I expect them to save it for Nagi.

Konoka vs. CC? Interesting if close (and likely futile). Konoka's moe is rather unusual - in a sea of paper-thin one-dimensional Negima characters, she's a fairly ordinary girl with an extra dose of nice. Okay, yes, magic and all, she's not the girl next door, but by contrast she ends up seeming that way. A little bit of traditional fan service doesn't hurt either, though it's pretty tame by Akamatsu standards. CC, on the other hand, is just plain mean; not so much "prickly" as "rapier". She's not there to BE moe, she's there to kick some ass, even if it's Lelouch's. Advantages are nice proportions, good comedy, and appetite for fine brand-named pizza. Swanning around in an open straitjacket makes for an interesting wardrobe choice, if you're in to that sort of thing. CC has a bit of a vote advantage, so given no obvious moe imbalance, I'll have to lean towards predicting the round for her, but it could still go the other way too.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 04:49 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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