Well, 24 episodes over and done with. Last ep was a little cheap, I thought... almost too much of a grab for the same kind of ending Azumanga had, but we didn't grow up with these characters the same way we did with the Azu crew.

Every last Lucky Star character was the same at the end of the last episode as they were from the moment they were introduced. That's not to say that they were one-dimensional, but they didn't change, didn't mature, didn't develop. Konata never learned anything. Miyuki never got it together. Tsukasa never got a working alarm clock. Kagami didn't ever actually smack the hell out of Konata. The one time it looked like we might actually get some character development, just after the concert scene, it turned out to be nothing at all, and then we were inundated with new characters who didn't change either.

I won't deny it was funny. But it's the kind of dry, bitter humor you get when you see a part of yourself in the characters; Konata is way too much like us, unreasonably so, even with her dad the way he is. There's lots of room to laugh at otaku, and I did laugh a lot at them. And the interplay of Konata and her "norm" friends was generally funny - both sides a little skeptical of the other's perspective and all.

Lucky Channel started off funny and refreshing, but quickly got too wrapped up in its own gimmick. Okay, a little studio backbiting is funny, but twenty shorts in, I just wanted Shiraishi to kill Akira and have done with it. And then he almost did, and I was quite happy. But not happy enough to ever want to bother with that part of the show again - if I buy it when it comes out over here (doubtless in a cheap box, I can't imagine buying this show disc by disc), I'll be skipping the Lucky Channel segments.

Still a success. But a classic for the ages, it's not; it's not even the best otaku comedy show this season, though Hayate was pretty stiff competition to run against.

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 10:52 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Okay, now that's a little more like it. Tomoe cruises to a win over barely-there Miki from Hayate and very-barely-there Yukari from Shana, and Konoka squeaks by Mikan with a mere eight-vote margin of victory. One motivated voter with a silver tongue could have turned the round upside down and made me a slightly less happy camper. (What can I say? Konoka's cute.)

A2-4 was over weeks ago. The only question is whether Nagi will poll a thousand or more than a thousand. She definitely feels like a tsundere character that's calibrated right - not just an evil witch with the occasional bit of remorse, but a genuinely likeable (though profoundly weird otaku-ish) girl with a sharp edge here and there. Competition's almost not worth mentioning - one of Konata's classmates that hardly showed up and made almost no impression when she did, and did anyone even watch Kashimashi? ;p

The competition is much fiercer in B2-4. CC's got the stronger voting record, a nice butt, and Pizza Hut sponsorship. Chikaru went a long, long way last year, though, and put up a respectable fight right up until she ran into Fate in the semifinal. Possibly she benefited from being on the right side of revenge voting against other characters, but it can't be denied that she has her adherents. Compared to the other two, Urutori can't really hold a candle here...
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 06:45 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Izumi rides the Hayate train to victory over Konomi and a barely-there Sia, while Konata triumphs over Nayuki. Surprisingly low vote total for the Konata/Nayuki match - both characters actually lost votes from round one. Nayuki also had a relatively large number of fake votes for an early round, while Konata had virtually none. Interesting, that... either the Lucky Star people didn't consider Nayuki a threat, or the emphasis on other characters and resulting reduction in Konata-time on screen is hurting her popularity. (Could be beneficial in the long run, though, if there's significant voting strength there but not voting; they can always pile in when Konata hits Isumi next round. On the other hand, if they're really not there...!)

Hayate's characters are really having an advantage of the voting schedule, with a character in each of the first five days of voting in round 2. Today, Miki from Hayate takes on Tomoe from Rozen, with Yukari from Shana in as a wild card. Three secondary characters from shows with strong voting blocks, but Tomoe was MIA in the last OAV, so it's been a long time since she's shown up. Then again, we haven't seen the school (or Miki) in quite some time in Hayate. Yukari, of course, has been gone since very early in Shana, but if you think of her as "also Shana", that could account for some of her popularity here... and the new season of Shana is just around the corner, which could light her fire just in time.

My instincts tell me to go with Konoka in B2-3. I don't trust them, though, because I haven't seen any Manabi Straight, and Hidamari Sketch does bad things to my eyes. (Abnormal character aspect ratio, owwie.) The promotional pics people are posting of Manabi just make me want to hit her, for some reason - I think I'm associating the safety helmet with old Mega Man gaming sessions. On the other hand, I've always liked Konoka as one of the few Negima characters worth the ink to put her on the page. So personal prejudices are definitely slanted that way; the fact that her round 1 performance also topped the other two, and none of them really have a meta-game reason to do well or poorly, doesn't argue against that.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 05:43 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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Shana fans proved the stronger, as she pulled out a 160-vote victory over Eva, with Kanaria and Kallen polling negligible amounts of votes. In the other match, Isumi destroyed all comers with a commanding thousand-vote finish, crushing Siesta and Yui. The Shana victory isn't a surprise in retrospect - I'm informed that the sequel starts in two weeks, so she's going to get an unusual late-round boost. Isumi's just plain cute and is featured heavily in last week's and this week's episodes.

Tough call in A2-2. Sia and Konomi are major characters of shows with a moderate fan base; Izumi is a minor character in a show with a huge fan base. I'm not terribly familiar with TH2 or Shuffle either, sad to say. Izumi's got a bit of an advantage in some appearances two weeks ago, but is it enough to put her in over main characters? Probably not...

B2-2 is another no-holds-barred match, pitting the Kanon and Lucky Star fandoms against each other right off the bat. Konata has the early advantage, with higher vote totals and a fan base that can deliver truly large amounts of votes if they all decide to get off their butt. Nayuki can't count on that kind of support, but she isn't the same kind of threat in the long run, so she may benefit from non-Lucky Star fans (or just plain Konata haters) taking the opportunity of a close match to sink Konata's chances. On the gripping hand, voting for your moe character on 2ch is absolutely Konata-ish, which may help things for her.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 06:00 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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Kicking off round 2 with a real train wreck of a match - Shana vs. Eva vs. Kallen vs. Kanaria. Only forty-nine votes separated the pack in the first round, and of course, we know that Shana and Eva's support was dead even. I'd like to see Shana walk away with this one, honestly. Kanaria's running off nothing but pure series mojo, Kallen never really grabbed me, and I really don't need to see lolis in lingerie. Still, way, way, way too close to possibly call.

B2-1 is a bit easier - Isumi not only has the voting advantage, but is coming off a long stretch of trying to find Rio via the Japanese subway into the most moe part of the storyline for her. Perfect timing. Yui, on the other hand, has been missing in action for weeks, and Siesta has been overshadowed by the new batch of girls from Zero's new season. Strong competition, but Isumi will take the win.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 10:37 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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Well, the first round takes forever, huh? Downside to having so many people in the tourney is that there's a lot of not-really-moe to plow through. But there were spots of excitement... which were all caused by two strong characters hitting each other in the first round, sending one of them home early. So here's a quick list of the deserving, who put up a good fight and would have won if the draw hadn't been mean to them.

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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 06:19 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Surprisingly, Misaki from NHK managed a 26-vote victory over Lutecia from Strikers. (Now watch this weekend's episode of the latter contain some incredibly moe scene with her!) Louise stomped the Sky Girls combo handily. Finally, Eri pulled out a victory over Kuroi from Lucky Star, showing that she had at least one more in her... or was it tsundere-lovers spilling over from Louise? Who knows.

That's it for the first round. I'll post wrap-up and post-round commentary later. Today's a break, so voting in the second round will commence tomorrow.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 11:00 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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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.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 05:48 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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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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Suigintou wins by a landslide, pulling in an impressive 900 votes even with relatively little competition to motivate people to show up. Alicia trounces her round, if not as impressively. (I'm tempted to comment, but all I can think of is "oh my, oh my" or "fufufu"...) Takano wins the third round, riding what has to be pure series moe, being loathsome and not even really attractive. (Or what, did she suddenly get a sex scene in the new season or something?)

H-3 is all Fate, all the time. Last year's semi-finalist has actually had a hard season, going from oh-my-god-take-her-home moe in A's to a kind of protective "mommy mode" with young wards of her own in Strikers. But last week was her climactic action scene, complete with a return of the fanservice-oriented costume (though it must be said that now there's something to fill it out!) Still, the season's had more than a little Fate cheesecake, lingerie shots, and coy flirting with the audience about her romantic inclinations, so yeah, this one's over before it started. Too bad, Milly, you could have made it to the second round ordinarily, but just not today.

Two months ago I'd have called H-7 for Mai from Kanon and went home. It's a bit tougher now - as both the "good cop" and the "childhood friend / normal love interest" in Seto no Hanayome, Mawari's got some decent backing of her own. Left to themselves, I think Mai has the edge (if for nothing more than bunny ears-version, and the ballroom scene.) But it's close enough that a group wanting one less Kanon character in the tournament could see her off handily... then again, if anyone in H block can see off the winner of the Fate/Gin matchup, it would be Mai. Should be close, anyway, and I can't say I'd be upset either way.

Compared to the other two, H-11's pretty sedate. Ibara-hime from Akazukin has a bit of an advantage in voting-total history, but it's nothing impressive. Mai from Otome's just not the same character, and while Sachiko is popular as Marimite girls go, well... that's as Marimite girls go.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 06:07 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Author spots me in the credits of RahX. I felt that this show was just about the high point of my work. It's not the most impressive or the most time-consuming (Excel and Eva are both in there, heh), but it was the one that came together perfectly. Sure, I was spoiled silly from helping work on the translation, but them's the breaks, and we polished it up about as well as it could be done.

I'd effuse about Shoko here, but I try not to embarrass her. I'll just say she's the best. She's enough better than "good" that I wouldn't actually have been able to appreciate the difference if I hadn't worked with her for years.

Ending was a bit disappointing, not because it wasn't good, but because by then we'd come up with a couple of pretty solid scenarios that would explain the whole mysticism of the show consistently. (Yeah, yeah, I should have learned better with Eva. But this was a show specifically made to succeed in things Eva failed to do!) We were interested in which one of them better fit what the original Japanese writers had in mind, because the translation mattered here and there - nothing major, mostly for tone and motivations of some of the characters, but we wanted to get it exactly right.

So, having an unusual opportunity, we fired an e-mail off to the Japanese production staff, who was unusually interested in the translation - even to the point of asking us to maintain the name order of the characters (which worked out anyway, 'cause the Malaysian pilot used Western order convention). Response came back mostly "duh? We weren't really thinking about it that hard," or polite phrases to that effect. Kind of a let-down, though it's better that it be something that we had to ask about rather than the train wreck at the end of Eva.

Oh, and the disc isn't authored to go back to English at the end of every episode - leastways, the original release wasn't, that much I can vouch for. There's a few players out there that will do wonky things with your language settings between titles, but that's a defect of the player, not the disc.

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 06:12 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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No surprises yesterday. Satoko's winning vote total was comfortable but not all that high for a Higurashi girl. Then again, she has neither the sexy plus evil jolt of the older girls, nor the unfortunate adorableness of Rika; the story's just brutal to her, not that we're talking about a show full of flowers and dancing. The bracketing is ALSO brutal to her - being third fiddle in the upcoming Suigintou vs. Fate battle will not be kind.

Shamal limped to a victory over Gretel. Scary to think that she actually got an action scene recently - her first since ep 2 of A's. If they'd just left her on the back burner for the rest of the show, she might not have pulled this one out. No comment on Ringo's victory, just don't know the shows.

H-2 is already over. Suigintou was always one of the serious contenders in Rozen Maiden, and the OAV that qualified all the characters this year was all Suigintou's story. Sorry, Manaka, Koyori, but you're two very moveable objects in the face of unstoppable moe.

H-6 isn't nearly as cut and dried (well, what is?) Alicia has a significant vote advantage on her own - decent performance in the first prelim, and hell, I like Aria. Reinforce was pretty moe on her own, for all that she was a bit tall and emo back in A's, but she's not a patch on her replacement and Rein Zwei already lost. I seriously doubt a strong effort to push her through - there's four Strikers characters in group H1 and she's probably bottom of the list. I also remember Steven mentioning that he was shocked that Margery even made the tourney, so we probably shouldn't expect too much out of her.

[Edit - it occurred to me that if you're a bit violent, a bit emo, and have black wings, you could do a lot worse than having your round on the same day as Suigintou. So who knows?]

H-10 is a race for last place - three characters from the bottom half of the second prelim qualifiers. I only know one of them, and frankly, I'd vote for a random character just to vote AGAINST Takano. (Maybe not for Jun. But pretty much anyone else!) Heard Nodame was pretty good, but not to the point that I've grabbed any to watch yet...
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 05:49 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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No close matches yesterday. Alice ran away with her round, and the Higurashi tag team of Mion and Rika absolutely destroyed their opposition.

Finally into the last voting block of the first round. After yesterday, I don't think anyone honestly expects Satoko not to take H-1 handily. Chitose from Hitohira did quite well in her prelim, but with a relatively small vote total - that's what you get for being in the first day's batch, I guess. Even if it holds up percentage-wise, it's not enough to be a serious challenge.

Shamal's definitely one of the weaker Strikers characters - not that she's not good-looking, but it's in an older and more voluptuous sense. (Then again, don't underestimate the attractiveness of women who don't age!) She'd be easy meat for a serious competitor, but matched up against characters from Black Lagoon and Kitarou, series mojo alone will be plenty.

Don't know how to call H-9. Ringo has the early vote advantage, but Ami's close enough to be within striking distance, and I haven't followed either Akazukin or Idolmaster (though the latter is reputed to be a lot better than you'd think from a show about idol singers and giant robots.)
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 06:05 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Vote totals didn't really recover yesterday, but the rounds were pretty interesting nonetheless. Eruru never had to worry about a vote-split with Touka, and came in first over Rimone from Simoun. Gretel from Akazukin eked out a victory over Karada (and both of them smashed Yukari, Miyuki's mom, from Lucky Star). Finally, in a white-knuckle finish (or is that a white-haired finish?), Matsuri from Strawberry Marshmallow barely squeaked by Ichiko from Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru.

Incidentally, what the heck is the short form of Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru? I can't just call it Otome, that confuses it with the Mai-Otome series.

Alice from Aria is pretty certain to dominate G-4. Yukiji, despite being the older sister of Hinagiku, is not particularly pretty and has an annoying personality; she's Yukari from Azumanga without the niceness or good looks (and I damn with faint damns here.) Solty did all right last year, but her weak performance in the prelims shows that it didn't stick with the fans.

The other two rounds are both Higurashi vs. Gurren Lagann. Both Mion and Rika have a significant advantage to start with - Higurashi had the highest average vote of any show (its characters didn't poll the highest, but they ALL polled high.) On the other hand, Nia was a fairly new and somewhat annoying character when the first prelims happened, and aging a few years didn't hurt her at all, whereas Darry went from obnoxious little brat to good-looking girl in the same time frame. (Can't comment on the character - stopped watching the show when it got licensed, but I see plenty of screen shots around.)

I think that having Darry and Nia together will help Darry's vote total somewhat, but I don't think it'll be enough to topple either Groundhog Girl or the pistol rig.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 06:25 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Very low vote totals yesterday - but some interesting results from that. Akari won her round, no surprise there, as did Nono from Hitohira. The surprise of the day was Chigusa from Shana coming up with the win, with perhaps the lowest vote total of any winner so far, just under 400 votes. Ah well, even if it means she's cannon fodder for Ayu in the next round, making it that far isn't trivial.

Lots of secondary characters in the rounds today. G-3 is likely to go Eruru, simply based on last year's performance - both she and Aruru went quite far in the 2006 tourney. G-7's much tougher to call, mostly because I haven't seen two of the shows involved. Yukari has some clumsy mom power, though not quite MILF-style, but there's no telling if the Lucky Star fans will bother turning out for her. The last round, I have to favor Matsuri, who is indeed moe beyond any kind of reasonable standard, even if she's not wearing the kitty hat.

Edit: Got my hands on the first-round voting data for these characters. Turns out that Gretel from Akazukin and Karada from Asatte no Houkou both had relatively high vote totals in the first round. Haven't really heard much of anything about either show, though...

Ichiko in G-11 qualified from the first prelim, but with fewer votes than Matsuri got in her ninth-place finish. I still give this one to the girl with oddly variable hair.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 09:46 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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After all, Ayu did manage to beat Reinforce, with a hundred-vote margin, amidst some pretty heavy numbers of faked votes. C'est la vie; it's not like Ayu isn't the world's cutest taiyaki thief, so I wish her well. Sayuri won along with Ayu, ironically with the exact same vote total, which is almost uncanny. Not EVERYONE who voted for Ayu also voted for Sayuri, right? Right? Ayane from Nagasarete won a much-closer match over Yakumo and Mana.

G-2 is a tough call, mostly because all three competitors are relatively weak. I'll give it to Kaguya from Geass - cute, but small role. Possible that a big Shana or Utawarerumono vote could come in for Chigusa or Sakuya respectively, but I doubt it.

The action should pick up in G-6; Akari took second in her first prelim round, and there's still some Aria voters kicking around, even if they haven't been advancing through the tourney much. Hime from Kaibutsu Oujo did decently in the first prelim, but that show's just not popular enough to keep Akari out of the next round.

Not sure how G-10 will come out. Ironically, Nono from Hitohira got fewer votes than Arf from Strikers in the first prelim, but the vagaries of their respective rounds meant Arf came in fourth while Nono was kicked to the second prelim (where she won, heh.) Not familiar with Hitohira myself. Arf, unlike the other returning Strikers characters, actually got younger; a friend of mine suggested that this was evidence of the Law of Conservation of Hotness between her and Fate. While we mourn the loss of what was one of the truly magnificent rear ends of the 2006 anime season... Arf took her sweet time showing up at all in Strikers, but now that she's shown up, it may help her votes.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 01:53 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Block G voting starts today with a bang; with the possible exception of Maria vs. Kagami, G-1 is the match of the round. Both Ayu from Kanon and Reinforce Zwei from Strikers won their respective first prelim, with only a single vote separating their totals. No clue which way it's going to go - it's starting off balanced on a knife edge, so even a few votes from some uninvolved faction could tip it. If anything, I have to give the edge to Ayu. Rein started off almost impossibly cute (the picture of her eating a cherry tomato the size of her head ought to be in the dictionary under "moe"), but she's played very little role in recent episodes, somewhat upstaged by her antagonist-counterpart, the Etna clone. Ayu, well... Kanon was old before the remake ever ran, so her fandom definitely hasn't dropped off just because she hasn't been on the screen this week. Further spoiling the issue is Kamu - even though Utawarerumono isn't exactly the biggest vote-getter, her third-place finish in the first prelim proves that she's in possession of quite a few fans. If she pulls more heavily out of one of the other girls' fan-bases, the other one will win...

G-5 has another Kanon character, Sayuri. Not my personal fave, but she's much more moe than her nearest competition, Revy, who's... busty, sure, but a bit too obnoxious to really be moe. Or maybe Revy's just in the wrong kind of show? Combine that with Ayu's coat-tails from G-1 and it's a landslide.

G-9 gives us Yakumo from School Rumble versus Ayane from Nagasarete and Mana from Sola. Interestingly, both Ayane and Mana qualified from the same first prelim round, with Ayane coming out on top. Yakumo finished a different round with considerably more votes... but it was the last round of the first prelim, while the other two were in an early round, so we have to take the vote totals with a grain of salt. I have to say that I like the character Yakumo, but at the same time, School Rumble hasn't had the drawing power that it did last year.

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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 05:45 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Blowout city yesterday. Asuna wins by 300 votes, Tsukasa wins by 450 votes, and Souseiseki wins by 500 votes (though Tsukasa actually got the higher vote total, as she's the only one who had competition.) Should make for interesting times in Block F, with the two -seiseki dolls, two Lucky Stars, and San all thrown into the mix.

No votes today. Tomorrow comes the storm, and all that...
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 06:16 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Author comes up with a list, some of which I have to endorse heartily.

I showed Dai-Guard to my co-worker, who really doesn't enjoy mecha shows. He absolutely loved it. He wonders why it never showed up in a Super Robot Wars game. "But isn't it the best mecha series they ever made?" Yes, yes, it is. But it's not really a series for younger fans... not because it has anything objectionable (at all), but because it's Dilbert with a big robot. You have to have held down a job to appreciate it in full, I think.

He enjoyed Nadesico well enough, though we bogged down in the filler in the back half of the series; don't marathon it.

I'm not sure I'd classify Sakura Wars as a mecha show. It has mecha, but they're not really the focus of the kind of "oh cool!" geekery that you get in a lot of other shows; they're ugly and dumpy and more than a little silly, and sometimes you get the idea that the characters would actually do better just getting out and fighting without 'em. But here, the TV series suffers from low budget, and the OAVs assume you've played all the games. I enjoyed the TV series...

Also, not sure how you can endorse Gurren Lagann in one paragraph (which, don't get me wrong, is fine by itself) and mention that you have to stop before you get to the absurd. The show's a celebration of the absurd - big robots with completely arbitrary abilities, and one of the finest examples of "fighting spirit trumps numbers". Then again, it's not over yet, and Gainax and endings... Stopped watching when it got licensed, but I'll haul this one in when the time comes.

For similar reasons, I enjoyed the Shin Getter Robo series, but mostly because I was working on it - the story's a weird hash that's practically impossible to follow. But if you want huge robots fighting weird tentacle-things, and pure outright cheese, it's hard to do better.

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 06:58 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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These'll get posted later in the day - new job, new hours. Sorry that it's a bit less fresh, but hey, I need income!

Yesterday's Seto round was a textbook example of two characters splitting the vote and a third running off with the win. Iinchou won slightly over Maki, and both of them together would have mopped the floor with Rain... but Rain's 510 was enough to pull out a win and knock at least one strong competitor out of the running. Miyuki won her round (okay, I didn't talk about Ayano because I haven't watched Kaze no Stigma, but that wasn't really a close match - Miyuki took almost 50% of the vote!) Finally, the voters demonstrate that they really like their crazy girls, picking Kaede over Manabi.

Today's F-4 shouldn't really be that close, though not the blowout I'm expecting in the next round. Sure, Suzuka (that is, her picture in a photo album!) took more votes in the first prelim than Asuna. But we've seen that the other picture-characters haven't translated their early votes into victories so far, and I don't think Suzuka's going to do any better than Arisa did a few days ago. ('sides, all the Strikers fans are resting up for Friday's showdown...) I like Mikoto as a character, but she's not in the running here.

Kuuya did pretty well in the first prelim, but up against Souseiseki, F-8 is a foregone conclusion. Even if the Rozen voting bloc isn't quite as huge as it's been in times past, Sou did take second in 2005. (Still strikes me as a bit sad. She's not moe! She's BOY. Maybe it's just reflected glory from her sister?)

F-12 is shaping up to be one of the closest matches of the first round, though. Both Tsukasa and Machi won their first prelim outright. Hate to say that Nagasarete is still in the "watch later" pile, so I can't really comment on the relative moe levels. Even so... Machi's win was as much due to low opposition as super fan response, and we've seen the formidable power of the Lucky Star vote again and again. But of the big three in the show, I'd say that Tsukasa is probably the least popular, and she's been a much smaller part of the show since the addition of the new characters. If the Nagasarete fans can get organized, this would be a golden opportunity to punch Tsukasa out of the tourney...

(One bit of side commentary - we talk about how ongoing series can benefit characters by keeping them fresh, but it's kind of sad when you see a character get eliminated shortly before they get a huge boost late in the season. Without spoilers, after having watched this week's Lucky Star, I'll say it's a damn shame Kanata's round already happened - she'd have gone far if she had a round in block G or H!)

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Again, another day of weak voting returns - one match took in exactly 1000 votes, and none of them hit 1300. Aruru won, as expected. Momoko managed to pull out a victory over Pachira by 60 votes - but the world's strongest bride is probably the tournament's weakest winner, as we've had plenty of rounds where the third place finisher pulled in more than 427 votes! Finally, Aika pulled in a strong victory over Montmorency, showing that embarrassing comments are indeed still prohibited.

F-3 is all Seto no Hanayome, pitting Maki the tiny assassin against the nameless, clumsy, bespectacled Iinchou (class rep). Maki has certain advantages - goodness knows being very short and murderously bipolar is no handicap in this competition - but the clumsy girl moe presented by Iinchou is a formidable challenge. The latter pulled in significantly more votes in the prelims, as well. With another competitor, it's entirely possible that a split vote would sink both of the Seto competitors, but Futago Hime just isn't the show to do it.

I would be shocked, amazed, and flabbergasted if Miyuki didn't take F-7. Sure, she's a one-dimensional character. Sure, people are starting to call her "Mi-wiki" due to her enormous store of useless information. But she's more or less designed to be inoffensively moe in one of the most popular shows this season, and the opposition is fairly weak. (Not that I have something against girls who jump through time! But c'mon, against a clumsy girl who's blind as a bat without her glasses and lives in mortal fear of the dentist's drill?)

F-11 puts a couple of strong competitors from some second-rank shows up against each other. Manabi Straight hasn't really had a whole lot of voting success this far, but Manabi herself has a shot. She's up against Kaede from Shuffle, one of the original yandere characters. (Not sure about the origin of the term. It's obviously meant to contrast with tsundere, but instead of being both sweet and prickly, yandere girls are alternately sweet and completely insane. Think Rena in one of her Oyashiro moods...) Kaede has the voting advantage, but only a small one - Manabi came in just behind the top eight in her first prelim round and won the second prelim outright.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 10:49 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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