You know, something went badly wrong somewhere in Saimoe.

Okay, first, sorry for falling off the face of the planet over the weekend. Fully recovered from the Nanoha loss. (...I'm saying, like I was too broke up to blog over it instead of just being lazy...) Regular Saimoe coverage should resume here, or rather, there's only a few more matches anyway.

But come on, TWO of the four characters from the semi-finals from Higurashi? And the surviving Rozen Maiden is Shinku? That's not merely odd, it's bordering on perverse.

A friend commented that the reason we were seeing odd results (that eventually led to this) is because the floating opposition-vote was easy to keep organized, so to speak; a lot of strong characters ended up losing by a thin margin to weak characters because of very large numbers of votes cast by a loose coalition of "everyone who doesn't have a character in this round". Extreme popularity became a detriment, even - it just marked you as a target in later rounds.

That's not to denigrate the moe-ness of the characters who are left - they didn't get this far purely on spite and bile. I personally like Shinku, Nagi deserved every win she got, and I'm aware that my negative perception of the Higurashi girls is colored (practically dyed!) by the negative perception of that show in general. But at the end of the day, does anyone really believe this is a good reflection of which characters are the most moe? It's like watching a sports playoff between teams that muddled through their seasons, after all the good teams flamed out at the end because of injuries and hack-a-Shaq-style play.

So is the basic premise of Saimoe just flawed? In becoming more or less organized, and having grown to more or less maturity, has it gone beyond "which girl has the strongest moe" and become a pure selection process to weed out spectacular moe in favor of milquetoast characters who don't pose a threat?

I'm not really cross - I mean, if we take the sports analogy further, it's not the playoff that matters so much as the fun you had watching that season. But maybe it could be improved to make these issues less, well... less this way?
Semifinal matchups:

竜宮レナ＠ひぐらしのなく頃に(Ryuuguu Rena@Higurashi no Naku Koro ni)
三千院ナギ＠ハヤテのごとく！(Sanzenin Nagi@Hayate the Combat Butler)

古手梨花＠ひぐらしのなく頃に(Furude Rika@Higurashi no Naku Koro ni)
真紅＠ローゼンメイデン オーベルテューレ(Shinku@Rozen Maiden Ouverture)

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 06:28 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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