Somewhat delayed... Car battery went out and torched my Labor Day travel plans.

As expected yesterday, with a bit of a wrinkle. Suiseiseki ran away with her round, Seto ended up 300 votes in front of Shion, and a Marimite character actually advanced... in a very close match with Mashiro, who got more votes than any other Otome character this far. (Not that it did her any good, but what hey, they're trying.)

F-2 is pretty straightforward - Aruru did well in last year's Saimoe, the other two are definitely also-rans. Loli doesn't beat slightly furry... not White Loli, anyway.

F-6 could be interesting, if only because a Magipoka character has a solid chance at it. Pachira is up against Momoko from Sumohowevermanymos, who irritated the heck out of me, but seems to have some fans as well. Not familiar enough with Magipoka to go guaranteeing wins for any of its characters, though.

F-10 should draw a few more votes (though I expect total voting to be pretty light). Aika's not bad as Aria characters go, sure. Montmorency is definitely a minor character, but some people like the ojou-sama type. I'll guess Montmorency, but it should be close.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 06:42 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Strikers characters take two of the three rounds yesterday, with both Ginga and Teana essentially annihilating their competition. The third round ended up going to Henrietta, with voting totals going back and forth all day. Signum benefited early from the Strikers surge, but the supporters of both of the other characters rallied enough to push her into third place. Ah well, Signum, you're not moe unless Hayate's talking about feeling you up in your sleep, you probably shouldn't go winning moe-centric tournaments in the first place...

Interesting batch today, as we kick off block F voting. F-1 will be close, though kind of bland - Yoshino from Marimite has a bit of a vote advantage over Cornelia from Geass, but only a bit, and this is not going to be a high-voting round; it could go either way, just depending on who shows up for the other two rounds.

F-5 is Suiseiseki. Last year's champ may have to worry about some anti-voting in later rounds, but neither Frandre nor Mucchii have a chance in hell of taking her today.

F-9's one of the big matches in this block, putting San from Seto no Hanayome up against Shion from Higurashi. Shion's one of the nicer and more stable of the Higurashi girls, which is to say that she's slightly more savage and bloodthirsty than the average enemy from Berserk; however, the second season did have a good amount of moe-centric episodes before the killing really began anew. Seto's an odd duck - think Aoi from AYA if her parents were yakuza instead of businessmen, with the whole mermaid thing just lying on top somewhere. "Bride with a sword" is moe, right? Right? This series has been one of the pleasant surprises of the year for me, so I'm rooting for San here.

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No surprises yesterday, except possibly the low voting volume. Nodoka crushed her opposition, Saki won over a photograph, and in the close round of the day, Asa from Shuffle edged out Ikuno from TH2. (Close, sure, but less than 1200 votes round-wide! Oy, wonder how they'll all do in round 2...)

Today's definitely Strikers day - each of the rounds has a Nanoha character in it. This is really going to warp how the voting would come out, since fans of any of the three are likely to vote for the other two unless they have a really, really good reason not to...

E-4 features Ginga versus Mai from Ghost Hunt and Hikari from Strawberry Panic. Even though Ginga's sister (and lead character) Subaru is already out, Ginga's actually a little more popular - Subaru, for all her overt lesbian leanings, is a little too much of a tomboy. Or rather, it's been commented that she's almost more of an escapee from GaoGaiGar! Then again, Ginga had a heel turn recently, so that might affect her popularity, but the competition's just not of the caliber to pose a real threat.

That's not the case in E-8, where it's a wide-open round. Signum is the least moe of the Nanoha characters today (too much bushido/severe tendencies), so she's the long shot of the Strikers today. Setsuna is one of the more popular Negima girls, though she's also cursed with a bit of the "too much warrior to be really cute" syndrome. Henrietta from Zero... damn, I just don't know here. Cute, sure, but not really a deep character from the first season. But it's not the first season anymore, and the one episode I've seen from the second season showed that she was going to be much more involved in the story, and I haven't seen how that's been playing out. All three characters had fairly high vote totals in the first prelim round, so that's no help. I can't call it; if Signum wins it, it's purely because of carryover votes from the other two matches today.

E-12 is a bit more clear-cut; Teana seems to be the most popular of the new Nanoha characters (excepting Vivio, who was a customized moe-bomb.) Nunnally has some cripple moe going for her, but it might be a bit too much - especially put up against Nanoha fans, who remember a much more active and cheerful Hayate in the same role from A's. Then again, Hayate could at least see! I don't see Nunnally winning this one - Tea had a much higher vote total in the first prelim.

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No real surprises yesterday. Shinku clocks in almost 900 votes in her round, Ayumu beats out Akira by a large margin (guess Japan is as tired of Akira as I am!), and Shimako posts the first win for Marimite in a sparsely-voted round.

E-3 today is a slam dunk - Nodoka the librarian is one of the few Negima girls who is actually popular, and I expect her to mop up the floor with relatively weak opposition.

E-7... hoo. Saki has clumsy maid moe, and the Hayate voting faction has been posting good results. Teresa has no chance at all here (again, Claymore is not moe!) Alisa... gaaah. Okay, there's promotional art of her and Suzuka having a five-way party call with their old friends from Strikers, and it's kind of nice to see that yeah, they grew up and are having a normal, fun life (unlike their friends who joined the interdimensional magical military), but she's still not in the blippin' show. With any luck, Nanoha voters will save it for tomorrow...

I can't call E-11 at all. Personally I'd kick Viletta out of this round, but the Geass vote has been more generally reliable than the Shuffle or TH2 votes; even so, all three of these are characters from the bottom half of the second prelim. (Not only that, but they all actually LOST votes in the second prelim compared to the first. Evidently most of their support isn't very strong...)

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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 11:13 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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1 E-07's result will show whether this tournament is a contest of moe or fan based popularity. I would probably say Saki will win, but then again Nanoha did win by 8 votes over Yukata. P.S. Why am I getting a proxy error? It says in the middle of management or something (ERROR ROXY規制中！！！(99)。)

Posted by: VitaminC at August 31, 2007 02:23 PM (2410A)

2 Akira's moe isn't genuine. I think that's what grates on a lot of people. If you look at her as a stick in the eye by KyoAni against prima donna celebrities, her personality becomes far more palatable.

Posted by: Will at August 31, 2007 02:53 PM (SOx9v)

3 Well, be fair, Nanoha was extraordinarily moe for the first two seasons, and still ain't bad - what she lost in little-girl moe, she made up with curvy and fan service (i.e. implied violence and lesbianism). Yutaka's cute, but not really multi-dimensional. Not that Saki's terribly well-developed either, minor character that she is... but she's actually there, putting her way ahead of Arisa, who plays absolutely no part in the new season whatsoever.

For the first few shows, I found Akira hilarious. Not because she's moe, but because it reminded me very much of the sitting-around-the-studio atmosphere. In that respect, it's quite genuine. It's just worn thin over so many episodes.

The proxy error stuff happens when the server decides that somebody's trying to hammer their server from your location/IP range. Frankly, they wield the banhammer with wild abandon and will close off whole ISPs, which means voting from the US can be tricky sometimes. (Even worse, 2ch enacted a general ban on posts coming from Time Warner or Comcast - big spam attack recently - so even if you can get a code, you might not be able to vote it!)

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at August 31, 2007 05:17 PM (LMDdY)

4 So does that mean I can no longer simply vote? Or will I gain voting priveledge after certain amount of time passed. I know I haven't done anything wrong =/ (unless you count not commenting). Cause it will be a shame just to watch the tournament, and probably will cause me to forget about it.

Posted by: VitaminC at August 31, 2007 06:29 PM (2410A)

5 Oh, one more thing, I was able to vote in the past without any problem, this just came up today. P.S. sorry for the double post, there's no edit option >.>

Posted by: VitaminC at August 31, 2007 06:31 PM (2410A)

6 Ok.... I think I solved my problem I just deleted the cookies from the website and change my ip address. I've stopped getting proxy errors.

Posted by: VitaminC at August 31, 2007 07:05 PM (qEAJy)

7 Usually the ban's temporary - they're just saying "whoa, we're getting lots of votes from here, slow down!" and telling you to come back in a few hours. If the site continues to get hammered from the same location, the ban won't go away, so you can't just vote-spam.

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at September 01, 2007 12:11 AM (LMDdY)

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Bit of a surprise yesterday, though it shouldn't have been in retrospect. Tamao and Takako won their rounds handily (though Eika from Sky Girls at least gave Tamao a run for her money.) Yoko ended up losing to Shion from Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru, which makes no sense unless you realize that Takako's from the same show and thus Shion probably got a lot of spill-over votes. Bodes well for the Koishiteru crowd, though voting was actually really, really light, around 1300.

E-2 features Shinku from Rozen versus Athena from Aria, both of which did fairly well in the early voting. Definite advantage for Shinku here, though - she's the first of the real contenders from the Rozen crowd, and unlike some of the also-rans from that show, she had a nice, meaty role in the recent OAV.

E-6 is another round about which I know squat. Shimako and Youko are both popular enough to have qualified from the first prelim, with roughly equivalent votes, but I've never seen Inukami and don't know Marimite enough to keep those characters straight.

The real action today is in E-10. All three characters qualified in the first prelim, Ayumu took second in her round... but Akira got more votes, even though it was only enough to put her in sixth for her round. The last big match was also Lucky Star versus Hayate, but it's going to be harder for Lucky Star this time around. Neither of them are major characters, Ayumu's karaoke episode was pretty nice, and Akira is just starting to grate on me at this point; even Shiraishi has had all he can take of the girl. I'm not really rooting for Ayumu in context of the series (come on, she's up against Nagi!), but her episodes are quite fun, whereas I'd be perfectly happy if Akira were murdered and her corpse dumped in a river. Then again, the Japanese seem to like the little idol types, so who knows?
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 12:03 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Little late today, but ah well - no results from yesterday's break to worry about.

Not a huge amount to comment on today, really. E-1 is likely to go Yoko, improbably busty heroine-gunner from the improbably silly Gurren Lagann. Megu might have done well against characters from an unpopular show, but out-gothing Suigintou won't win a moe tournament, heh.

I don't really have a comment on E-5 or E-9 - haven't seen any of the shows involved in either round. Tamao and Takako both had decent placing in the first prelim, so they've got an advantage on paper, but it's hard to tell.

Think I discovered the reason for Kagami's win the other day... the episode that aired right before her round featured a love letter for Kagami. Tsundere is tsun and dere, as they say... very cute. Compared to Hayate's episode last week, which was mildly amusing but featured Maria the sports angler (and was pretty off model to boot) and that could sway the voters a little.

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Pretty much as expected yesterday. Rena almost broke the thousand-vote mark, Hiro cruised in to a comfortable victory, and Akiko won as well over tight competition from Yoshinoya-sensei.

We've reached the halfway mark of the tourney, and things are going pretty well so far. Interest has increased from last year, none of the big names have bowed out save by losing to another big name, and the usual 2ch carping about foreigners only voting for shows they've seen is somewhat muted this year. (Or rather, it's expressing itself in "at least look at the promotional links in the voting threads!", which is pretty reasonable, I suppose - there's some cute stuff in there.)

No voting today, so I'll do a quick preview of the bottom half of the tourney bracket. Last year, it was something of a wasteland - all of the popular series were concentrated in the first few blocks, and so voting definitely lagged in the later half of the round. Shouldn't be a big problem this year, though...

Block E has a first-round matchup between Athena from Aria and Shinku from Rozen and Ayumu from Hayate taking on Akira from Lucky Star. Out of the four Strikers characters in that block, Teana runs up against Nunnally from Geass (blind wheelchair moe?) and Signum is matched up against Henrietta from Zero's Familiar and Setsuna from Negima in what promises to be a close three-way round.

Block F is heavy on Seto no Hanayome, with Maki vs. Iinchou in one round (glasses/shy/clumsy versus a tiny moe assassin) and San herself taking on Shion from Higurashi in another. Not the strongest characters in the block, but the other matches are either big name versus two unknowns, or three characters hardly anybody cares about.

Block G's first match is Rein Zwei from Strikers versus Ayu from Kanon, which is easily in the running with Maria vs. Kagami for the match of the first round; I'm hoping for each character to take home a four-digit vote total. There's also two Gurren vs. Higurashi matches, one putting Rika against Nia and another with Mion against Darry; they'll also be held on the same day!

Finally, in block H, we can look forward to Eri from School Rumble versus Kuroi-sensei from Lucky Star... with one of the elder Hiiragi sisters in the same round to split the LS vote. Karen and Otoha from Sky Girls ended up in the same match (sorry, girls, but the third is Louise...) Mai from Kanon may get a run for her money from Mawari from Seto, and Alicia from Aria, Reinforce I, and Margery Daw all ended up together as well.

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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 10:58 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Gulp.

Kagami managed to edge out Maria in the big round of the day, by almost 200 votes. Kagami's vote total was well over 1300. MARIA also got over 1100. That makes yesterday's voting not only the heaviest so far, but with almost a twenty percent jump over the previous top voting round. Then again, this is the sort of clash of the (moe) titans you'd expect in a block final or in the final bracket, not the first blippin' round! Can't say I would argue with the result - not only is Kagami's tsundere attitude cute (and, given that it's not involved with a romantic relationship, not annoying to the viewer), but she's definitely a much larger part of Lucky Star's charm than Maria is of Hayate's. (Darn those inconvenient male leads...)

Voting was very heavy in the other rounds, but we should take the totals with a grain of salt there - Shiori didn't really draw almost a thousand votes, and there's no way that Barasuishou and Carim managed to pull 1500 between the two, except that the bigger match already had the voters voting. This does put both the Misaka sisters in, however.

Nothing of the same kind of caliber today, more's the pity. Don't really expect today's matches to be close, even. Akiko has a huge advantage in D-4 - her attraction as the a MILF cannot be denied, and should be enough to fend off Yoshinoya-sensei easily. Rena had a great performance last year, and Higurashi's revival as a summer series is only going to increase her appeal (and, frankly, her murderous tendencies were pretty clear in last year's tourney, so the only potential negative is the episode where she was middle-aged...) D-12 will be a bit closer, but Hidamari Sketch has been drawing decent vote totals, and both Ama and Makoto were barely able to qualify for the tourney at all, so a good performance by them would be a monumental upset.

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Here's something that occurred to me a while back. I've asked a few people about it, and been stared at like I'm some sort of loon, but the logic is sound and nobody's ever come up with a specific objection to the scenario. Let me run it by all of you and see if anyone has any thoughts on the topic...

Everyone's familiar with the "baby boom" demographic bulge. But as the leading edge of the baby boomers are approaching retirement, what's the effect of this demographic bulge on the stock market?

One of the distinguishing features of the last twenty years of personal savings and retirement savings is the shift from company-funded pensions to individual retirement accounts. The individual is much, much more likely to hold stocks these days, and a larger proportion of them relative to their total savings than in yesteryear. (People once held significant portions of their savings in CDs and bonds, rather than stocks.) This suggests, at least to me, an increase in the total amount invested in the stock market.

It's also true that the average gain in the stock market is significantly above the rate of growth as the economy as a whole. This suggests that the growing economy, and increases in efficiency and productivity, cannot account for the entire growth of the value of the stock market. (Bigger than growth plus inflation, for that matter.)

Here's a plausible scenario for why this would be the case. Changes to tax laws, as well as the economic problems of paying pensions in an age of uncertain length of survivorship, have made corporations favor individual retirement accounts over defined-benefit pensions. These accounts generally favor stock investment; in fact, even though you still hear about making sure your portfolio is diverse, many people have their entire retirement savings invested in stocks. This shift of money into stocks and away from more traditional retirement savings vehicles would represent an increase in the demand for stocks - i.e., all other factors remaining equal, the prices of stocks would tend to rise in order to reflect increased demand for those stocks.

Am I missing something obvious here? SHOULDN'T that be the result of additional money chasing the same pool of stocks? Doesn't that explain the increase in acceptable price-to-earnings ratios from my childhood to the present day? (When I first learned stocks, a P/E of 13 was considered average; good luck finding one with that ratio these days!)

But if that's the case, then the precise opposite effect will take place when the boomer boom edges into retirement age. You can't eat your stock certificates, so instead of saving additional money for retirement, the boomers will start to sell their stocks instead. There won't be more an equivalent increase in the amount that the younger-than-boomers are saving, even if we accept that young people save at the same rate, simply because there will be more boomers retiring than young people entering the market. Additionally, wise boomers will be moving to reduce their exposure to the stock market as they approach retirement.

Less money floating into the market combined with increase money flowing out of it suggests that the general price level of stocks will then fall. But at that point, you've got a lot of boomers on the edge of retirement, with most of their portfolios in stocks, and stocks are suddenly falling in value... so more of them are going to sell, and earlier, in an effort to preserve retirement savings that they can't afford to lose. At this point you have the makings of a full-blown crash, no? The lower that value goes, the more desperate that approaching retirees will be to get the hell out of the market altogether. And you can't even hope that it's a temporary correction, because at the end of the day, not all the money that's invested will be returning to the market - it has to come out because retiring boomers can't eat stock certificates or pay their mortgage with them, and because the smaller number of younger-than-boomers won't be enough to keep up the incoming flow (to say nothing of not wanting to ride to the bottom themselves, heh!)

Where's the problem here? I'm pretty darned smart - the title of this blog is not entirely a joke, guys - but I can't be the only one to have considered this topic. At the same time, I can't find any other discussions of the issue. Am I missing something so fundamental that it's just a really stupid thing to consider? Or is nobody talking about it because nobody's thought about it? Or - scary thought - is nobody talking about it because everybody knows it's coming and nobody wants to be the one to spook the market first? Oy...

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 09:52 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Quite lackluster vote totals yesterday - not really any big names in any round to draw out a lot of voters. Miu won her round easily. The Kanon voters didn't turn out in large numbers for Kaori, but enough of them did to put her fifty votes in front of Black Loli. Finally, Mugi came out a hundred votes or so ahead of Yin. Was Hitohira any good?

Not the case today. D-3 won't be blowing the roof off the voting totals, though. Quite possibly the very weakest potential Rozen/Strikers matchup, though here Bara gets the advantage over Carim. (Possibly if Carim actually dressed like a nun? But she doesn't, so...) Even though Barasuishou is the weakest of the Rozen dolls, it's enough to see off characters from the bottom half of the second prelim.

D-11 is where the action is. Kagami's the author self-insert character in Lucky Star - tsundere who wants to go into law, part-time miko, and the one that keeps the otaku in the show down to earth (as it were...) Maria's a maid, a pool shark, evidently a genius, intimidates men of five times her mass, and wears cool boots. Both are major characters from one of the most popular shows this season. (Both are also the same age, for that matter!) No way to tell which way this vote's going to go. Both characters took first place in their first prelim round - Kagami pulled quite a few more votes, but Maria had a very early round, before the votes really got rolling. Overall, though, this round should give us a good idea of what a maximum-effort voting push from the Hayate and Lucky Star camps looks like. (I don't expect a lot of tactical voting here. What would be the point? You're going to get a really strong character out of the round no matter which way you go...)

D-7 should, by rights, go to Shiori, one of the archetypical sad girls in snow. The only possible wrench in the works is the insane brawl going on next door - Kagami's sister just might get enough vote spillover to upset a major Kanon girl. But probably not, since she barely shows up in the show and it's Shiori she's up against, instead of Kaori.

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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 11:26 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Evidently, being a Lt. Colonel is no bar to moe - Hayate absolutely destroyed Tamaki, with a comfortable 500-vote margin of victory. (Good to see that the "healthy" Strikers characters are actually out-polling the lolitas... with the exception of Subaru.) Yuno mops the floor with her no-competition as well. The closer round ended up going with Yue, so the Ouran vote didn't persist from last year.

Miu from Strawberry Marshmallow is highly likely to take D-2, just from lack of serious competition. Is she actually more moe in the anime than in the manga? She's even more annoying than Tomo from Azu...

D-6 will probably go Kaori from Kanon, though she got relatively few votes in the first prelim (well... for someone who qualified from there), and Black Loli also did fairly well. Still, I expect some Kanon solidarity to materialize here. (It's been pointed out that the winner of that round will end up against Hayate and that the third is likely Akiko, so maybe they'll stay home to avoid splitting the round two vote?)

D-10 is one of those where I don't know enough to call. Mugi from Hitohira polled well, but I haven't seen any Hitohira to judge. Yin is... well, an emotionless blind girl, though I did like her arc in Darker Than Black.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 11:27 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Well, even if we seem to think that Chika's kind of an empty character, it seems she's more than three times as popular as her older sister (and better than Tokiko, for that matter.) Neither the Kanon nor Nanoha fan bases turned out for their character, and Miyako got decent votes on her own to win that match. Finally, Sola continues to get high vote totals, and Matsuri cruises to a victory over Akazukin and Feena.

D block starts today. D-1's not really a contest - Hidamari Sketch has decent vote totals behind it, while Marimite and Mai-Otome just don't. Yuno should win with a comfortable margin.

D-5 comes with another big name from Nanoha. I'm honestly not sure about how this round should go. Hayate's moe has changed significantly since A's (lost the wheelchair, went from fragile to cute in a kind of busty way), but "moe" and "Lt. Colonel" don't really go together. Also, unlike the other girls with their fan-service-laden transformation sequences, Hayate got shafted in that department. Her opposition is Tamaki from To Heart 2... my favorite character from that game, but that's damning with faint praise. Overall the tremendous Strikers vote should push Hayate to the win, but it might be a little close.

D-9 is another one where the winner's not obvious. All three of the girls have a different type of moe and similar early-round vote totals. Yue is... not quite a Rei-type, just a wisecracking amateur philosopher who clocks in about ten years older than she actually is (and looks about five years younger.) Enma Ai's a solid possibility, though I only saw a little Hell Girl. Haruhi actually did quite well in Saimoe 2006, drawing from a completely different fan base than most of the girls in the tourney. Overall I have to give it to Haruhi on past performance and the general weakness of Negima in delivering votes.

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More heavy voting, though not on the same level as yesterday's tremendous pile of votes. Hinagiku cruises to a crushing victory over Jun the trap, showing that as much as people like to throw monkey wrenches in the works, they don't like it as much as they like student council presidents with agoraphobia and a touch of tsundere.

The other two rounds came out quite interestingly, though. Apparently Aono from Sola was in the lead until quite late, Japan-time, so either a tremendous amount of Strikers voters were up late, or got organized at the last minute. (Not having seen Sola, I can't say whether she's moe or not. But more moe than Ana? Criminy!) Caro, whose competition wasn't as stiff as Vita's, ended up with more votes and a big margin of victory.

C-4 today is... okay, I'd say "explosive!", but it would be a terrible pun, and it's more of an interesting showdown than a red-hot one. Steven mentioned his opinion that Nobue isn't moe at all, but now that I've read some of the manga, I have to disagree a little; she's mean, she's a smoker and a drinker at 16, and I actually like her more than her sister, who's just a target but not as cute of one as Matsuri. But Chika took more votes in the early voting (where, interestingly enough, Nobue and Tokiko both got 416.) Tokiko has an outside chance, but being in the same round as Nobue will hurt her, I think - she'd do better as a contrast between a couple of worthless moeblobs than against another character with a bit of bite to her. I'll call it for Chika just because of that split...

C-8 is tough. I couldn't get past the double-wide presentation of Hidamari Sketch, so I can't say whether she's actually moe or not. But I'd like to see her win, simply because the other two results would end up meaningless. Shari winning would end up against Caro in the next round, where she'd be slaughtered completely. Makoto (big) would end up against the regular Makoto, and while a Kanon duel has some appeal, it's not like Makoto (big) has any real chance.

In fact, each respective show is actually better off if their character DOESN'T win this round. Round 2 is already Caro vs. Makoto vs. the winner of C-8. That's going to be a close one no matter how you slice it. But splitting a show's vote between two candidates is just going to Nader the other one to victory. Less of a threat from Shari - only the most hardcore glasses fetishist could vote for her over Caro - but it'll still be a real test of organization to see how this turns out.

C-12 is the undercard of the day, though I realize there's quite a few Feena fans out there. Not really familiar with any of the shows, though all three characters qualified from the first preliminary, and Matsuri came in second in hers. After yesterday, we know the Sola fans are out there, so perhaps they'll turn out in order to get another shot at Vita next round?
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 12:33 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Heaviest voting so far yesterday, with Nanoha just barely squeaking out a victory over a surprisingly vigorous Yutaka. Was it the result of tactical voting that just couldn't overcome Nanoha's violent popularity? Or did Yutaka in a yukata at the fireworks show last week draw in that much additional support? Tough call.

But the big vote-winner was Luna from Seto, proving once again that cute and evil beats out attractively bust and hot-blooded every time. Bad luck for Subaru, but at the same time, if she was going to go up against stiff opposition, she couldn't possibly have asked for a better day to do it on.

I'm a little surprised at the lack of voting strength of Death Note. Possibly, it not really being oriented towards the moe-loving crowd, the fans of that show just don't know/care about Saimoe in the first place? Ah well, Aria characters are always welcome.

C-3 today will be interesting. There's no question about which of the characters is more moe - Hinagiku is one of the best characters of the new season, in my opinion. But with Jun in the mix, there's a lot of potential for mischief voting, and a lot of people who aren't Hayate fans might come in just for the kick of advancing a guy that much farther in a girls-only competition.

C-7 is a bit tough for me to call, simply because I still haven't gotten around to Magipoka, and haven't seen a lot of Shuffle to start with. Both Caro and Primula made it out of the first prelim, with just about the same rank, but Caro's vote total was considerably higher. Caro's got a little bit of an advantage with Vita in C-11, but that might actually help Vita more than it helps Caro, who is plenty cute in a kind of inoffensive way on her own. On the other hand, Caro got upstaged by Vivio in Strikers...

C-11 is one I'd have had trouble calling last week. Then I went out and bought three volumes of the Strawberry Marshmallow manga. Essentially, there is no longer a question in my mind that Ana is the most moe of the three. That said, I'm not certain that the voting will reflect that. The Strikers vote is pretty large, though one can hope that Nanoha fans can also see the cuteness inherent in Ana. Additionally, Vita isn't as moe in the new season (basically as Nanoha's meaner alter ego in training) as she was in A's (gothy dress plus cute domestic scenes plus smash-mouth combat style). The screwball factor is a possible pity vote, given what happened to Vita in the show last week; if she'd actually died I'd give this one to her and damn the cute, but I don't think they're killing her off just yet.
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And yesterday's rounds come out as expected, though voting was in general pretty light. Vivio did manage to pull more than half the vote in her round, but still comes in with 730 votes. The real surprise for me was Makoto's performance - sure, with light voting and real competition, I expect the vote to be split up, but her total was low enough that it calls into question the strength of the Kanon voting block. Suzu did a little better, but against a lot less opposition.

I'll start with C-10 today, as it's definitely the under-card of the day. Misa pulled a few more votes in the prelims, but only by a bit, and it's tough to say which way the votes are going to break, especially because today's voting is going to be focused on the other rounds - that is, nobody's going to bother voting for just this round's sake. I have to give Clare a disadvantage here, just because she's got the wrong assets for the tournament - while she'd be likely to win a battle royale in her round, she's just not in the possession of a lot of moe.

C-6... hoo boy. On paper this is an utter no-brainer. Yutaka had to come in through the second prelim round, and Nanoha won her round in the first prelim (not even mentioning the, y'know, former champion thing.) But Yutaka's actually a stronger contender than she looks. When her voting came up in the first prelim, she hadn't appeared yet, and was running off pure Lucky Star votes. Since then, she's established herself in the Izumi household, displayed bunches of cute-little-girl moe, and been generally precious in an "aww" fashion.

Nanoha, on the other hand, isn't a little loli anymore (though, of course, plenty of people remember the young Nanoha...) Being nice and curvy is not an advantage in this tournament, generally speaking. That said, the new season has a Nanoha that's subtly more like the fan vision of the character - some indiscriminate "White Devil" violence, some implied lesbianism (no, they don't actually come out and say it, but she's living in an apartment with Fate... with one bed... so even though it's presented completely innocently, the logical leap is not difficult.)

Nanoha still has the advantage, I think - when it comes down to it, Yutaka's relative lack of appearances would prove telling. However, if a lot of supporters from other series came in and piled up on the vote, it's theoretically possible that an already-strong Yutaka could come out on top. (This would prove to be self-destructive in the long run - galvanizing Nanoha fans with that many characters left on the bracket is not a good idea - but there you go.)

C-2 would have come out completely differently if it had been B-2 or D-2 instead. Luna -is- a cute, evil little idol singer. Sure, she's relegated to the "unsuccessful romantic rival" role, but she's definitely the type of character to do well in Saimoe. (Minus points for excessive crotch-kicking, though! Jackhammer action is not cool.) In contrast, Subaru is definitely a tomboy, with her moe coming mostly from overconsumption of ice cream (it's not a cone so much as a cluster when she's done loading it up, but when you eat a scoop at a time...) and her pursuit of her partner/roommate (nothin' implied about THIS lesbianism - though non-consensual groping is also not cool, it's not cool in a way that attracts votes).

Healthy and curvy versus little loli usually comes out bad for healthy and curvy here. But with Nanoha drawing in voters in the match next door, Subaru's chances are much greater than they'd ordinarily be - she can expect a lot of votes to carry over, and it just might be enough to do the job.

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And after a five-day break for the buying and selling of doujinshi, Saimoe comes back, kicking off voting in block C. Hope y'all are Nanoha fans - there's six of those characters out of the thirty-six competitors in this block.

C-1's likely to go Suzu (shame - still haven't gotten around to seeing Nagasarete.) Sasara's just not as popular as some of the other To Heart 2 girls, not that any of them are super-popular to start with, and Simoun never attracted a lot of attention this year.

C-5 is a foregone conclusion. Vivio's a cute little girl with heterochromatic eyes and who just wants her mommy (mommies, more like). The only question in this round is if she'll get more votes than the other two characters put together!

C-9 is the real competition of the day. All three of these characters qualified in the first round of the prelims, and none of them got that many more votes than the others. I'd like to give the edge to Makoto from Kanon, because she's a fairly important character in that show, and because Hinaichigo makes me want to feed her into a woodchipper, head first... but that's just me, and apparently the annoyin' little snot is quite popular, so it really could go either way. We did see the Kanon fan base demonstrate their strength in Nayuki's round, but we haven't really seen a Rozen character go to the mat yet. (Kazumi's road kill in this one, I'm afraid.)
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Not for me, thank goodness - I secured my degree last semester. But I'm still working tech support on the weekends here, and we're really hopping today, what with all of the kids moving into the dorms and trying to get internet access. (This isn't as bad at UH as it would be at several other schools - our dorm population is a small fraction of the student body - but there's only two of us to deal with it!)

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So, what am I still (now?) watching this season?

- Nanoha StrikerS: In good news, the second half is picking up considerably. The pacing just isn't anywhere near the extremely good level of A's. Okay, they swapped to a 26-episode format, and it's tougher to pace those than 13-episode shows, I can live with some filler. But honestly, the first few episodes of the show could have been cut down considerably without really costing much in the way of plot or character development. Now that we've been introduced to the whole gamut of antagonists, I'm wishing they spent more time developing -them- (another thing that A's did exceptionally well). Seven episodes from the end of the show, there's still a lot in the way of motivations that is totally obscure. Not a lot if you consider that the first two seasons had less time than this when they moved to wrap up, but percentage-wise? I think we could have done with a little less training of new protagonists and a little more time with the Numbers...

(I'm also knocking it because only in this season does it become clear what a ding-bat, jury-rigged idea of the military they have, putting this show together... For someone who's supposedly as good a training officer as Nanoha, she sure as hell never had the opportunity to crack open a special forces training manual.)

- Claymore: The shounen manga influence is starting to come through - too much emphasis on everybody's rankings, yadda yadda. But since they spend practically every other moment of the series fighting in bloody carnage, I can probably forgive it. Big kudos for having a freakishly huge cast of characters, all with the same approximate hair and eye color, and still keeping them visually distinct. Still not as good as Berserk, but mostly because it wears its hopelessness too far out on the sleeve - Berserk hid the funky evil supernatural elements under the cover of a fairly standard medieval setting, whereas Claymore constantly reminds you that practically all of the characters are walking time-bombs (except not when it's convenient for the plot!)

- Lucky Star. Expanded cast at mid-season. Helps to keep it fresh - only so many times they can run the same set of jokes with just Konata, Tsukasa, and Kagami - but it loses a bit when you compare it to Azumanga. There's not a whole lot of sense of growth, in that the main cast is basically who they are, and we don't see them developing any... and when they start to get stale, out comes the new characters who also aren't developing so much as getting introduced. That's probably a little harsher than the show deserves, as it's still weapons-grade funny from time to time, and some of the references are just flat-out hilarious. Biggest downside is the ED... swapping the girls' karaoke night (which was great) for live-action shots of Shiraishi singing various songs really badly was funny for a week or two, but not this long.

- Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei: Good and improving. Was worried that they were going to fixate too much on the teacher's abject suicidal misery, then that they were just going to fill the class with weirdos. The second happened, more or less, but it's quite entertainingly done so far. The real challenge is to then do something with them, since the current format isn't really oriented to getting around to a plot. Also, don't watch it around anyone else who's not already hopelessly addicted to anime. It's not quite as NSFW as Umisho, which is just naked girls without a nose, but what's there will probably make people worry about your mental health. (The opening, featuring shots of schoolgirls in bondage, is probably a good example...)

- Potemayo: Gaaaaah, too cute. I want a Guchuko.

- Murder Princess: Too short. This should have been a thirteen-episode TV series, not a six-episode monthly release. I feel that every time they leave the castle, they just end up turning around and going back immediately anyway. Still, bonus for homicidal robot lolis.

- Denno Coil: Really, really good SF, for all that it's a show about grade schoolers. They've done an excellent job of taking the computing aspect of computing and rolling it forward to the point that the user doesn't think about it as a device - it merely becomes more things with which to interact in the world around them. More hopeful than a Gibson, not as fascinated with its own message as a Lain. Definitely watching this one to the end.

- Hayate the Combat Butler: Still hit-or-miss. The show's trying to stay in a middle zone between advancing a plot (snort) and pure fan-service pandering. When it's in that zone, it's a great show. But there's both episodes which are too plot-heavy (for a show with practically no plot) and which are purely fan-service vehicles (beach episode, we're looking at you). Maybe I'm happier with the show lately because it's focused on some of the better secondary characters (Isumi and especially Maria) and less on the annoying ones (trio, Katsura-sensei, maybe Sakuya in here). Still not quite as good as the manga, though possibly my opinion is warped by the shot of Hayate in vol. 4 with an MG42...

- Seto: Been on the back burner a little. Co-worker isn't really enjoying it, so I'm watching it a bit at a time during the week. Not the kind of thing I'd want to marathon...

I'm intentionally holding off on some of the new shows (Zero's Familiar 2, Higurashi 2) and haven't gotten around to some of the others (Nagasarete is on the list). But that's my watchin' list. If there's something good and not on there, poke me!

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Urutori comes out on top in the round about which I knew nothing, Mikan is evidently moe enough to paste a not-very-moe Negima girl, and the Kanon crowd comes out very strong for Nayuki. Kind of surprising how poorly Sakuya did in contrast - either a lot of those Hayate fans are also Kanon fans, or there's some huge anti-manzai comedy sentiment out there...

Saimoe takes a break for the next five days. Why five days? Because Comiket is this weekend! Safe to say that, of the hundreds of thousands of attendees, most of the Japanese Saimoe voters would be there. So smoke 'em if you got 'em, it'll be a few days before voting starts on block C (which we might as well call the "Nanoha block" and have done... StrikerS girls every day.)
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Good showing yesterday. Siesta wins her round fairly easily, which is good news for the other Zero's Familiar characters. Chikaru's still popular, no surprise there. Best news is the strong performance by Konoka, who posted the strongest performance of any Negima character so far. But the Negima crowd didn't cross over for Chisame, so either a lot of them just like Chikaru better (a distinct possibility) or the extra votes represent an anti-Lucky Star faction that took the opportunity to bury Konata's mom...

Big match of the day is B-4. So far, even the minor Hayate characters have done surprisingly well, so even Sakuya has a fighting chance. Against Nayuki, though? That's some powerful sleepyhead moe. If Kanon is going to do anything this year, then they need to turn out for this match (and conversely, a win here by Sakuya would represent a big boost to other characters who're posted against Kanon girls.) At the same time, though, if there's an anti-Kanon faction, it wouldn't take too many extra votes to put Sakuya over the top. At any rate, it should be a day of heavy voting...

No real comment on B-12, I'm afraid. Utawarerumono is in the "borrow it from the poor saps who worked on it" pile, and the other two shows aren't on my radar at all.

B-8 is tough, because I suspect the winner will be Mikan, but I haven't watched Manabi Straight yet. Kaede's just a bit too mature/fox/smile for true moe, leaving aside the whole ninja thing. Balalaika's got a huge disfiguring facial scar, which would count against her even if she was absolutely moe in every other respect, which she certainly isn't.
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