Yesterday, the fans of El Caldazor de la Bruja got a little bit back - Ellis took her round over Rin from Nagasarete by 23 votes. CC cruised to an easy victory, and Yui took the top score in a round where the gap between first and third was less than 90 votes.

Today's B-3... kind of a tough call. Nerine has considerable moe. I happen to like Karen - School Rumble isn't doing well this year, but she's a cute character (extraordinarily so for a wrestler!) Siesta is... well, she's a maid that can come across somebody bathing in an impromptu cauldron onsen and hop in herself, so that has to count for something. I get a feeling that Siesta is going to win the round, but it's definitely not a foregone conclusion.

I want Konoka to win B-7, but I don't think it's going to happen. In a tourney where the Shana fan base voted Yukari in, and with as many Lucky Star fans as there are floating around, a Kanata victory is almost obligatory at this point. Shame, though, because Konoka was always one of the good things about Negima... nice, relaxing character in a series full of one-dimensional moetypes.

Not a lot to say about B-11. Chikaru was a semi-finalist last year, she's up against a second-string Negima girl and an Otome girl. Only question is the strength of the Strawberry Panic voting squad, but even that's hard to gauge against lousy opposition.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 10:11 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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The results from yesterday came out as expected, but the magnitudes are something else again. Isumi utterly crushed the other three competitors in her round, pulling in just short of a thousand votes; Konata did the same against her two competitors, though they pulled in more votes in opposition; and Sae took a normal-sized victory over Moa and Yuuko.

Vote totals are definitely higher than last year's across the board. Should make for some heavily-contested later rounds!

Today's card is a little less high-powered. B-2 puts up Ayaka from Negima against Yui from Lucky Star (and Mariya from Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru, but I haven't seen that and don't really want to.) Ayaka has her charms, certainly, but I have to give this one to Yui - not only does Lucky Star have the stronger push behind it this year, but Yui is absolutely Konata's enabler when it comes to lousy study habits. And how much fun is a cop who has to be told, "No, DUI is bad!"

B-6... I'm left with no real ability to comment here. Didn't see any of the series involved. Rin had a better vote in the first prelim over Ellis, but not by much. At this point I expect nothing of the Otome crowd...

I have to give B-10 to CC. Okay, Mishio's from Kanon, drew pretty good vote totals, isn't exactly bad-looking, all that jazz. But up against Pizza Butt? (For those who don't know, CC's diet is almost entirely delivered pizzas... all from Pizza Hut, of course.) CC's personality isn't exactly moe, but it's a popular show and we're talking about a character whose costume design is a full-body straightjacket.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 01:24 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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A surprise in every round yesterday. Definitely a day for series mojo, as it were! Izumi handily defeated Tenma, Yukari from Shana takes her round, and Ayano from Lucky Star squeaks out over Erstin Ho.

I can live with the other two rounds, but Tenma losing is a very strange result. It's true that School Rumble wasn't nearly as popular this year as last, the new season of the show wasn't as good, and the focus shifted away from Tenma (thank goodness)... but oy, getting shot down by one of the trio of schoolgirls from Hayate? That's just saaad.

B block starts today. B-1 is another four-person block, but I don't expect the close call of A-1. One of the Otome girls might have had a chance on her own, but with two of them there to split the vote, versus Isumi from Hayate (who has the lost girl yamato nadesico actual moe thing going, from a show where background characters are knocking out actual contenders?) Sucks for Nadie, too, who IIRC was El Caldazor de la Bruja's only real contender.

B-5... three contenders here, but no real contest. Tabitha's got a bit of Rei and some glasses-girl moe, and Euphie is pretty moe until a certain event (and doing surprisingly well given her anti-Eleven sentiments, heh), but they're up against Konata. Slaughter, man, pure slaughter - how do you compete against a wise-cracking, ero-game-playing, MMO-tanking, Haruhi-cosplaying loli otaku? The character is a female reflection of practically every guy voting in the tourney.

B-9 doesn't have the contenders of the other two rounds. Gotta give it to Sae on pure popularity of Hidamari Sketch - xxxHolic just doesn't have the fan base, and Angol... she's... well, okay, there's something fun about a cute Lord of Terror that occasionally fires off a micro-apocalypse, but the whole ganguro thing kills it for me. Just not attractive...

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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 01:33 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Voting went as predicted yesterday - Kanaria winning with a fairly slim margin over Anya, Nagi absolutely crushing the competition with a whopping 1100 votes, and Miki from Hayate enjoying a lot of pro-Hayate votes to take the win. Pretty satisfying overall.

Last day of voting in the first round for block A. A-4 should go Tenma, assuming School Rumble hasn't slipped too far off the radar. Idolmaster's not quite popular enough, and Izumi is a very secondary Hayate character, so neither of them should be able to knock Tenma out of the voting. (Last year, both the Tsukamoto sisters and Eri did quite well...)

A-8 is a popular character from an otaku-oriented show versus a popular character from Detective Conan, which has been running for... well, a very, very long time, heh. Gotta give the win to Yukino, 'cause the mainstream doesn't vote in this thing. Yukari doesn't make as good of a proxy-Shana as, say, Kanata and Konata.

Dunno how to call A-12, honestly. I expect nothing from the My-Otome crowd after last year's massacre in the early rounds - haven't heard anything about the new season that would have increased its support any. But she's up against a character from an even weaker show, and Ayano from Lucky Star, who is only really notable because she's the classmate of Kagami who isn't the fang girl. (She did get some lines and screen time in last week's episode, though, so maybe that's enough?) All three of these characters barely squeaked in through the second prelim, so it's not like any of them have major support (or for that matter, a snowball's chance in hell against Nagi in the second round...)
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 11:44 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Karen walks to a victory, over surprisingly stiff opposition from Wilhemina. Konomi and Shirley ran neck and neck all day, but a strong push for Konomi in the final hours put her over the top. Finally, Tomari from Kashimashi beat out Chiyo from Strawberry Panic in what we'd have called a close match if not for A-1's tie...

A-3 today could be interesting. Kanaria's one of the least popular of the Rozen Maiden dolls (in point of fact, she's so annoying that I'd probably just break her and have done...) Against a stronger Negima candidate she might have had trouble, but Anya's a pretty minor character in a series that's packed chock full of characters.

A-7... tougher call. Neither Sei from Marimite nor Miki from Hayate got a whole lot of votes in the early rounds. I'm going to give this one to Miki, simply because it's on the same day as A-11 - every Hayate fan is voting today and that's a good amount of fans. Definitely the down-card match of the day, however. Sorry, Blossom, Power Puff Girls need not apply for moe.

A-11 is the title match of the day. I feel bad for Isako - having watched a few episodes of Denno Coil, I really like her character. But she's... well, she's in a round with Mee from Manabi Straight and Nagi! Early exit for you, yes? I'm not familiar with Mee, but she did well in the early voting, and there's a good push behind some of the Manabi characters. But Nagi is more or less designed to be moe - twin-tails, slightly tsundere, a scary otaku in her own right, and cute as a button to boot. (Okay, okay, so I reread my Hayate the Combat Butler manga yesterday. Pure coincidence!)

On a pure meta level, the high vote totals are encouraging. Last year, some of the first rounds came in with less than a thousand votes total, whereas here we're seeing even the uninteresting matches with 1200. Of course, it's early in the first round of matches, fatigue hasn't really had the opportunity to set in...

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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 10:51 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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No surprises in two of yesterday's rounds - Tomoe and Sia won handily, Tomoe pulling in pretty decent amounts of votes, Sia just under 600.

Big surprise in A-1. Tie score! Shana and Eva both took 754 votes, so both advance to the next round. If anything's going to get across the idea that it doesn't take a whole lot of votes to change the outcomes, here we go.

I'll put in a bit of advice - don't look at preliminary results (ando posts 'em about halfway through the day), as they tend to include an awful lot of fake votes. Shana had a few more votes than Eva if you just search for the text string in the voting threads, but both of them had just enough "bad" votes (without a valid voting code) to bring them even, about 10% of the total. Early on, especially in round 1, it probably represents mistakes more than outright vote-spamming efforts, but it'll get there...

Probably no excitement like that in today's rounds. Karen from Code Geass is pretty certain to take A-2 (Steven mentioned that Wilhelmina had no business being moe, so I'll take his word for that). A-10's a tossup between Tomari from Kashimashi and Chiyo from Strawberry Panic, both of which are about as popular as the other - not very, but you only have to beat the other characters in the round, right? A-6 is a bit trickier. Shirley has the advantage, especially having the voting on the same day as Karen (anyone showing up for just one character is likely to drop a vote in for the other, unless they really like Konomi...)
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 11:29 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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And... we're off. A-1, A-5, A-9 today, and at least one of them is a hum-dinger right out of the gate - Shana vs. Evangeline from Negima. Frankly, it's a tough call, though I have to give the edge to Shana. She did make the quarterfinals last year, so she's definitely got a solid fan-base. Additionally, the majority of the Negima girls have a history of not doing so well in the Saimoe tournament - in 2005 they absolutely flooded the bracket, but virtually all of them lost in the first round. On the gripping hand, how moe is a gothloli vampire?

Nothing to say about A-5, never really saw any of the shows involved.

A-9 is interesting in that it's pairing two of the human characters from Rozen Maiden. I've got to give the edge to Tomoe, who has the classmate advantage, and isn't the comic foil that Nori is; I don't think Nori's brother-complex is enough to save her.

They're working on the translated bracket chart - or rather, the translation's complete, but they've got to go back and throw in the character icons. I'll post a copy when that's done.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 12:35 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Okay, here's the big list - all 290 entrants in their rounds, with voting dates (Japan time, heh). I'm going to stick with meta-commentary here, so as to not run out of stuff to say for individual rounds later. ;p

The draw seems actually random this time, which is a welcome change for last year. Not many cases of big names from the same show being clumped in the same block. Worst case of that seems to be block C with Strikers, though it's basically Nanoha and a bunch of their secondary characters... and they're in there with Ana Coppola and whichever of the Itou girls wins C-4. Both of the Misaka sisters from Kanon are in D, but otherwise the Kanons are spread out. Suiseiseki and Souseiseki are both in block F, but they can't complain, as former champ and former runner-up... though the Seto no Hanayome crowd is a little screwed, with Seto and Maki both in F. G sports both Rika and Mion from Higurashi.

Should make for an interesting tournament overall - there's relatively fewer "doomed rounds" where it doesn't really matter who the winner is. The only danger is that a single series may end up taking multiple blocks, but with any luck, the normal faction and anti-faction strife will keep that to a minimum...

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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 02:07 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Another tie for sixteenth sneaks an extra entrant into the game - that should put us at 290 total participants. Bit of a surprise in a victory by Izumi, though I'm more pleasantly surprised by Montmorency doing fairly well. Pretty low vote totals for the bottom half, but eh, it was the last round and fatigue had doubtless set in.

They'll be setting up the voting brackets over the next two days. (Actually, it's less of a matter of them setting it up, and more of a "gotta wait for the translations to come in", but I'll post 'em as they come regardless.)

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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 11:28 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Well, there we have it - little sickly girl reigns supreme, as Yutaka cruises to an easy victory. Not really surprising - she's hellishly moe, but she'd only made a token appearance by the voting in the first round. Another high finish by a Sky Girls girl as well - despite everything that I hear about this show being crap, obviously someone out there likes it.

Last round of the second prelim today! (Thank goodness.) Favorites include Athena from Aria, Izumi (one of the secondary characters, not Isumi the yamato nadesico Ryoga) from Hayate, Mariya from Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru, another of the elder Hiiragi sisters from Lucky Star, and Mishio from Kanon (pure secondary, but it's Kanon!) Also, we can't count out the two girls from Gurren Lagann - Darry started off as a little brat, but is apparently quite nice after the time gap in that show.

Wouldn't mind at all if Oono from Genshiken or maybe Montmorency from Zero's Familiar made it in, but realistically they're long shots...

After today's voting, there's a two-day break. The qualifying characters will be randomly assigned into brackets (and when I say "randomly", I mean that it's supposed to be random, but it ain't; it's pretty clear that the brackets are specifically manipulated so that a single show won't win two of the eight blocks - last year, Haruhi, Yuki, and Mikuru were all in the same block, as was Fate and Nanoha, as was Suiseiseki and Suigintou.) It's a bit much for coincidence, but in the long run, it's definitely better for the tournament. I'd rather see two or three of the brackets packed full of the three or four moe shows, rather than get a quarterfinal which has nothing but Nanoha and Lucky Star and Rozen Maiden in it.

At any rate, I'll post the brackets as soon as they're generated and translated, thanks to the good offices of Kinny Riddle and Ando from the Animesuki message board.


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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 01:33 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Hm... Manabi indeed won yesterday's round handily (with a fairly low vote total), but that makes Momo's fifth-place performance interesting. Almost a quarter of the people voting for Manabi either didn't like Momo, or had enough other favorites in the round to push her off their ballot - assuming Momo didn't get any non-Manabi votes, which I'm not sure we can do. Uma's in from Magical Pokan, "Cat Girl" from Gegege no Kitaro takes fourth, and a Wang and a Zhang from Mai Otome tie for fifteenth.

Favorites today include Yutaka from Lucky Star, Matsuri from Strawberry Marshmallow, and Makoto (big ver.) from Kanon. Hard to tell who has the edge here... Matsuri had a much larger vote total in the first round, but there's a lot of Lucky Star voters out there, and Yutaka went from barely-debuted character to Konata's little sister in the meantime, packing her full of fresh-baked little sickly girl moe. But it's not like the name Kanon doesn't have any draw - I think Makoto (big ver.) is the only named female character from the show who didn't get in the top eight in her round.

Also in strong contention are Mikoto from School Rumble, Sanae from Sumomomomomomo (man, I could get really tired of typing out that name), Iori from Idolmaster, Mai from Mai Otome, and perhaps Eika from Sky Girls or Sasara from To Heart 2.

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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 11:37 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Three-way tie for fourteenth place yesterday, with the entire round having a very tight band of voting - the difference between 5th and 14th was 15 votes.

There's definitely characters making it in that aren't necessarily moe at this point. Clare isn't moe at all, unless you're talking blond moe, or Berserk moe, and if there's a Berserk moe I'm not sure the term has any meaning anymore. Yukiji isn't moe unless being the older sister of someone with some moe is moe (and she's a bit of a jerk to boot; ah well, it's a comedy.) At this point, we're basically filling up the bracket, against the chance of a dark horse or two having been knocked out in the first elimination.

It's Manabi Straight day today. Manabi and Momo are going to go 1-2, though I haven't seen the show and don't know which one is really more moe. Don't know a lot of the competing characters today, don't really care much for some of the ones I do know. But I'd be very surprised if Agito doesn't do well (so far being six inches tall is definitely a bonus, and she had a very sympathetic episode last week... and she's the spitting image of Etna!) I also actually like Chachamaru, who is essentially a moebot...

Two more rounds after this, then we get a couple of days off, and then the actual tournament begins.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 11:35 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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1 Moe has different meanings to different people. No point in trying to pigeonhole the concept of moe.

And yes i can't wait for the main rounds that is when the blood letting begins

Posted by: Xellos-_^ at August 02, 2007 11:57 AM (12gxe)

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Low vote totals from yesterday's round, with Seto no Hanayome's Maki well in front of a fairly tight pack. Amazingly, one of the Power Puff Girls made it into 16th... go figure.

Today's round is a tossup between Enma Ai and Makie from Negima - both of them did quite well in the first round. Tougher to pick it after that... Gretel from Black Lagoon, Haruhi from Happiness, Chiyo from Strawberry Panic, Yumi from Marimite, Asa from Shuffle, Momokan from Ookiku all did decently enough. Kind of tough on a personal level - don't really know any of the favorites (but Makie, who does nothing for me), and the characters I'd like to see do well (Lindy, Clare, Oguie) are almost certainly not going anywhere. Ah well, can't hurt to put in some votes, right?

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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 02:24 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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1 How in hell does Margery Daw come up as "moe"? Ye Gods.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at August 01, 2007 07:30 PM (+rSRq)

2 Magery has Adult moe

I predict the winner to be Gretel. She score more votes then either maki or Ai. Only reason she didn't get in was because the bracket she was in.

Posted by: Xellos-_^ at August 01, 2007 11:43 PM (a9eFu)

3 Margery = MILF Moe.

And how dare you speak ill of my Beloved Goblet?

Posted by: 0rion at August 02, 2007 02:14 AM (9e2pT)

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Manaka walks away with yesterday's round. The two Sky Girls characters definitely did better than they did in the first round - did this show suddenly get good or something? Haven't watched any yet. Also notable is Teresa, way back in 16th place - at least one of the Claymore characters makes it in, even if she's absolutely doomed...

So on to today's round, where Maki from Seto no Hanayome is practically guaranteed the win - not everyone can be six inches tall, cute, and also an assassin. Ami from Idolmaster also looks to be a strong character here. Natsuki, as one of the stronger Mai-Otome characters, will do well. Also notable are Nori from Rozen, Misa Amane from Death Note, and Yuuko from Dennou Coil. Two StrikerS characters may or may not qualify - Shari's not that moe, but Sein has a much better chance now that she's had some screen time.

There's also Puchiko and Waragetcha Black, at least one of which would be fun to have do well... ;p

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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 12:09 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Responding to comments on comments...

Look, we all know the Japanese come up with a lot of stuff that gives ordinary Americans (and ordinary Japanese, let's be fair) a pretty strong squick reaction. This isn't news to anybody, I hope. An afternoon browsing 4chan, even the work-safe areas, should be enough to clue you in on that topic. (Side note - do not assume 4chan is work-safe, even if you are in the work-safe parts.)

One of the interview questions I was asked at ADV was, "Are you okay working on tentacle rape porn?" Uh, well, it's not my bag, but I took the job...

But keep in mind that, even at its most terrible, there's limits to what can be posted there - which is the same thing as saying that there's Japanese stuff that's worse than can be posted on 4chan. Heck, there's Japanese stuff that's worse than can be posted on the places which were specifically created to house the stuff that's too far out there to post on 4chan (and no, sorry... I'd tell you where, but I never really had a great desire to go look.) It's probably safe to say that, no matter what outrageous perversion you can invent, there's already six doujinshi detailing it, three of them with underage girls.

So let's not harp on it, huh? It's not really clever to see how many people you can gross out by bringing it up in random conversations. It's also a really bad habit to be in - these are things you do not want to talk to normal people about, they are things you do not want normal people to even know about, they are definitely things you do not want normal people to know that you know about!

If you're really interested in discussing that sort of thing, take it to your own blog (which I hope for the love of little green apples is pseudonymous.) And definitely don't post it to Steven's blog - he's not even fond of mild profanity, much less... well.

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 11:47 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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And we have a tie! With two characters tied for 16th place, an extra character will sneak into the tournament. This happened last year too, actually; they just adjust the first round so that one of the matches has four entries instead of three.

No complaints about the results - everyone I expected to make it made it, and everybody I didn't want to make it didn't. Can't beat that.

Today's round is much weaker, relatively speaking - fewer high performers from the first round. Manaka from To Heart 2 is a shoo-in; she could have placed as high as third in many of the first groups, with well over four hundred votes. Also keep a lookout for Ibara-hime from Otogi Jushi Akazukin, Kagome from Strawberry Panic, Viletta from Code Geass, Ellis from El Caldazor de la Bruja, and Nagasumi's mother from Seto no Hanayome (unnamed character, but she's a lot more than a bit part; how'd she not get a first name in production?)
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 11:42 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Not a whole lot of comments about yesterday - came out more or less as expected. Notably, Skuld and Urd both got hammered, coming in 43rd and 47th. Don't know if any of our winners will do well, but a few of them are at least good enough to give a good run to their opponent.

Belldandy might do better in a weak round, but unfortunately for her, she's in today's round, and it's not looking too weak. Four people from today's round came in 9th in the first prelim (one of the Hiiragi family from Lucky Star, Ayaka from Negima, Saki from Hayate [clumsy maid moe!], and Kana from Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru), plus a couple of tenths, and even a few of them further back with really high first-round vote totals. (Nagisa from Strawberry Panic came in 12th last time, for example, but with almost 400 votes; first place from yesterday was 308.)

Can't read too much into the last-round vote totals - sure, the big names aren't competing for the votes, but they're also not drawing in the voters for those halo-effect wins...

Nobody in this round that I have much moe for, aside from Saki - for some reason the maid characters in Hayate are really working for me, I guess. There's a couple I'd rather have NOT win... we don't need another StrikerS photograph character, we don't need Kirche from Zero's Familiar, and we don't need Tomoyo from CLAMP's "we're living off doujins of our own work" series. Fortunately, there's no negative voting, so I'll just have to rely on the collective good taste of otaku everywhere.

...what the heck am I saying? Has that ever worked?
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 01:30 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Finished watching Skull Man today. Nice show, high production values... Thematically, I can definitely see the common heritage with the Masked Rider series. Plot was nicely involved, though there was a twist or two that you could see coming from a bit of a distance. Did a good job of telling a suspense/action story and avoiding the "monster of the week" syndrome. But the ending was a bit too open for me - it's like this is a prequel to a longer show that they wanted to do...

One ep of Denno Coil was enough to make me want to see more. Co-worker mentioned that he got a Miyazaki vibe from it. Thoroughly enjoyed - think something with the theme and possibilities of Lain, but without the heavy philosophy.

Seto no Hanayome... hm. It'd be too much to call it "good", I think - it's too obviously a parody of bad Yakuza movies I never saw. But it's definitely funny, occasionally very funny. Remains to be seen if they'll manage to keep going without the big joke wearing thin - a lot of shows of this type get around that by constantly introducing new characters, and I'm hoping this one doesn't go that way. Seto is saving the show, though - simultaneously pretty moe and also a pure hard-ass of the old, OLD school.

I'm torn about Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei after one ep. Too abstract in the visuals, I think. There's room for occasionally cutting to silent-film dialogue pages and silhouettes and the like, but establish a plot first, huh? This is another one of those where they're going to have a real problem spinning the plot out, it looks like...

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 08:39 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Yesterday's round went more or less as expected, with a couple of the Lucky Star characters doing far better than they did in the first round; this makes sense, as they've actually appeared in more than the opening dance sequence now. ;p Interestingly, no Negima girls made it in.

Today's favorites are Lutecia, Tokiko, Shion from Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru, maybe one of the Simoun or Mai-Otome characters. Tokiko has tsundere moe, though with a slightly disfiguring scar (but hell, Balalaika made it) and standard "female lead in a shounen action show" uselessness... Lutecia is yet another bloody StrikerS character, but at the same time, she's pretty damned cute (think Rider from FSN at ten). Orihime has the same problem as Tokiko, bigger bust but no school uniform moe... ah well.
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Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 01:21 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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1 I also wouldn't underestimate the popularity of Sendan@Inukami, who made it into the main tournament last year and even won in the first round.  She seems to still have lots of Japanese fans rooting for her, and a very unscientific sampling of ballots so far today shows her getting lots of attention, so I'd expect her to place high.

Also keep an eye on Kasuga Tsukasa@Tokimeki Memorial Only Love, who pulled in a good percentage of the first prelim's votes even considering that group's particularly strong competition, and Amber@Darker than Black, who despite not having had much screen time has already managed to secure a surprisingly loyal fanbase.

Posted by: 0rion at July 28, 2007 02:26 PM (9e2pT)

2 Which one was Amber? Was that the cosplaying detective girl? It's not a good sign when I can't recognize the name of someone from a show I watched... ;p

When I'm doing color commentary, the only things I can go off are shows I've seen or heard about, and the past voting records I have on-hand, which ain't comprehensive - after all, that's one of the reasons to pay attention to this thing. So heads-up are appreciated.

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at July 28, 2007 04:49 PM (PyY3O)

3 Amber is the blond girl with the baseball cap that's appeared in episodes 15&16 so far, who has the power to stop time.

And no problem, just trying to fill out the predictions for the round, since no one person can be up to date on single every character in every show.

I appreciate you providing the pre/post-round analysis and flavor text; makes the game that much more interesting.

In addition, I forgot to mention earlier that Lisianthus from Shuffle stands an excellent chance of qualifying; she placed 13th in the first prelim, and I've seen her name showing up pretty frequently in the voting thread today as well. I don't pay much attention to Mai-Otome, but I've noticed a surprising number votes for the Mai-Otome cast as well, so I wouldn't be surprised if at least one of them continued on to the next round.

Posted by: 0rion at July 28, 2007 05:11 PM (9e2pT)

4 Ah, that explains it... stopped watching when it got picked up, but I've seen her in screen shots.

Not really all that enthusiastic about the chances of the Mai-Otome crowd. They qualified a bunch of characters last year, but absolutely got creamed across the board. Part of that was unlucky - their toughest people tended to run into a Rozen or a Nanoha character early - but part was just lack of support. And to hear tell, the last season wasn't an improvement...

Didn't watch more than an episode or two of Shuffle - it's in the "will watch it if I can borrow it from somebody" stack, or maybe if Funi put it up for a really good sale. No real reason, just didn't get into it.

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at July 28, 2007 05:42 PM (PyY3O)

5

IIRC, Primula from Shuffle got past the first round. I don't remember if she's in the second round or made it to the final.

I guess I understand: an autistic loli with lavender twintails and a dolly; almost the epitome of moe. But for crying out loud; even God and the Devil are afraid of her! Is it moe to represent a danger to the physical structure of the universe?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at July 29, 2007 01:49 AM (+rSRq)

6

Rats, I posted this in the wrong thread. Could you delete the other copy, please?

I just went back and looked through the results again.

Not only did Pachira (the vampire) get in, so did Uma (the witch) and Liru (the werewolf) from Magipoka. I didn't notice if Aika (the android) also qualified, but I wouldn't be surprised either way.

Wilhelmina was in the top 8 in her bracket? Ye Gods. Gotta be a deliberate voting bloc.

Hirai Yukari from Shakugan no Shana made it through the first round. That's really, really strange -- because she dies in the first episode.

When it comes to Strawberry Marshmallow, the voters are nuts. Ana got in, and that's completely justified. Miu got in, and that's questionable. Nobue got in, and that's really weird, because Matsuri did not? Matsuri is the Goddess of Kawaii. She puts Chiyo-chan to shame. And Nobue isn't cute at all, at least by comparison. What in hell were they thinking? Maybe Matsuri got a tough bracket or something. (Or did you miss her?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at July 29, 2007 02:08 AM (+rSRq)

7 I didn't start keeping track of these here on the first day, so it's possible her round came up early; but the recap had all the top 1-8 finishers in it, so she definitely wasn't in that. Could just be a tough bracket - there was one with three Kanon characters and multiple Rozen and StrikerS characters, for example.

It's a little early for strategic voting, I think. Looked up Wilhemina's first round, and it wasn't terribly strong - Ana and Ginga took 1-2, and third through ninth had a pretty tight grouping of votes. (Ironically, Nobue came in eighth in that round, Saki from Hayate ninth, and Pachira tenth! Talk about topical results.)

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at July 29, 2007 01:43 PM (OltDj)

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Because it's not a day on the Ego's Nest without a Saimoe post. ;p

Rules change a bit for the second prelim. These are the characters that came in 9th through 32nd in the first prelim. You can vote for up to six, and the top sixteen of the forty-eight (forty-nine, for a couple rounds... there were some ties) will advance to the main tourney. Nine total days of voting, to give us another 144 characters to add to the 144 that made it in already.

Picking winners among these will be tough, simply because the relative performance band has narrowed so much (and because it's difficult to predict where secondary votes will go - people show up to vote for one or two characters they really like, then toss in a few more that they like a little just to fill up the ballot.) Looking at relative performance from the first round, we can expect Pachira from Magical Pokan, Akira from Aria, and Barasuishou from Rozen to do well - they all came in 9th or 10th in their first prelim round.

After that, it's a toss-up between Balalaika from Black Lagoon (not moe at all, but somewhat awesome), Carim from StrikerS (slight nun moe, but do we really need more of these?), Ama from Shuffle, Megu from Rozen (sickly moe, emo moe, Suigintou halo moe), the Red Loli from Saint October, and Nadie from El Caldazor de la Bruja. I personally like Saki from Genshiken, but she ain't gonna make it.

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