1 How many total participants in this round?

2 32

3 You could at least count 'em, Xel.

There's a total of 97. Thirty-two voting matches of three participants each, except for the one today with four because of the tie. Next round it'll be down to 32.

Second-round bracket picture here.

4

The numbers are how many votes they got in the first round?

Looks to me as if Matsuri faces stiff competition from the cute girl who likes poison (Rika) in G2, but if she wins that, she's got easy sailing through the next round.

It's a bit disturbing how many Rozen Maiden characters won through. I count Kanaria, Barasuisho, Shinku, Suiseiseki, Sugintou, Tomoe, Souseiseki -- 7. That's a lot of characters from a single series.

It's even more disturbing that Hanaichigo wasn't one of them. You'd think that if any of those characters were moe, it'd be her.

Other comments: Sia's got easy sailing through this round (A1). Chika (C1) is going to be a smear on the pavement against Nanoha. Miu (D1) is going to be one of many heads mounted on the wall by Rozen Maiden. Fate (H1) will have a real struggle avoiding the same fate.

Chigusa (G1) will fall under the Ayu train. Yukari (A2) may actually win through this round, which would really be weird.

Long, long, long shot prediction: the final will be Rozen Maiden versus Lucky Star, but I'll be damned if I know which character from each.

5 Hinaichigo is the most infantile of the Rozen Maiden dolls and she gets annoying very quickly, cute though she may be. I'm more surprised by Kanaria and Barasuisho, who aren't particularly interesting characters.

6 Sia's quite possible, given that she's up against a TH2 character (none of them are getting heavy amounts of votes) and a background character from Hayate... except that said Hayate character pulled the "I'm going to flash the bike shorts under my skirt at Hayate" trick that helped launch Hinagiku's popularity a couple of weeks ago. We'll see what impact that has in the long run.

Hina's the least popular of the Rozen dolls and was up against a Kanon character in her round, even if it was just Makoto. Not a good draw for her. Most of the other Rozen dolls either had a weak first round (Kanaria, and Tomoe had pretty weak competition) or are perennial high-vote drawers in their own right (Shinku, Suigintou, Souseiseki, Suiseiseki.) Only real surprise was Barasuishou, who got a significant number of votes I wasn't expecting.

Dunno how they're going to affect the larger tournament, though. Suiseiseki and Souseiseki can't both advance out of the same block, and either of them would have to come through Tsukasa from Lucky Star - tough but not insurmountable. Tomoe is roadkill against Nagi from Hayate, as is Kanaria if she somehow made it out of her round today, which ain't likely. Bara is up against Hayate from Strikers in the third round. Suigintou has Fate in the second round and either Mai or Louise to worry about in the block final. The only Rozen doll without tremendous competition to buck is Shinku, who should be all right until the block final, which is looking like Teana from Strikers at this point (and even Teana out-polled her in round 1!)

Nanoha Strikers has nine characters still in the poll, but there's going to be a significant amount of mutual fratricide going on - they're all packed into four blocks. Likely to end up with the three captains plus Teana in the long run. Ironically, this is Chika's very very best possible shot at getting out of C1 - there's always the danger of a vote split when you have two very moe characters from the same series going at it, and everyone who wants Nanoha the hell out of the bracket will be piling on someone else. (Unfortunately, as of last week, we know what happens when Nanoha and Vivio get in a fight...)

Hayate the Combat Butler is another series to worry about, as it were. Seven competitors left in the tournament, two of them with thousand-vote polling potential in the first round (not even counting the one with that kind of voting that lost!) And there's still Kanon to consider too - even though the voting intensity isn't quite as high, there's still eight of them kicking around.

Early on, it all comes down to mobilization of the fan base, which is why Rozen and Nanoha have an advantage early - as shows that have been here for a couple of years, they have relatively organized support groups from the get-go. Lucky Star has the advantage of timely popularity, if it can get those fans to vote. Finally, Hayate's the only one of those shows that isn't over or about to end, so it has the potential of fresh moe injections at a crucial point (whereas the last Lucky Star has aired, there's only one more episode of Nanoha this season, and Rozen is already running off its OAVs...)

7 It looks like Konata has a very decent change of winning both parts of B1. I think it would be really cool if she won the whole thing, because she's an otaku, just like most of the voters. And it could happen; she is not only moe, she's also got geek cred.

8 ...decent chance... that should have been.

9 As far ongoing series helping thier character in Saimoe. I think Nanoha just her chance to advance in spite the anti-Nanoha block. Her starlight breaker along with Fate's sonic form/twin zamber just fire up the fanbase.

Also even after the StrikerS ends there is still a ton of fan stuff being release. First and foremost is the 4komas that is release every week.

10 Konata has a reasonable chance of going all the way, really. Not what I'd call a good chance, though - she attracts a bit more hate than Kagami does, much the same way Haruhi attracted more hate than Yuki. She's got so much personality that there's more to dislike, no? ;p

I'll talk more about Nanoha in a few days when their rounds come up - don't want to blather endlessly about it. Safe to say that I definitely follow the Strikers Nano strips (but, er, they will stop when the show does, unless he does a few of the sound stages again.) 'course, that's true for all of these characters nowadays.