march madness: round 1 (part 2)
Categories: anime, march madness
Tagged: darker than black, spice and wolf
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The final 32 contenders revealed. This ain’t one of them.
First Voting Results
After the first heat, Death Note, Ouran Host Club, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and Black Lagoon & Second Barrage earn byes for the next round, with Ouran currently in line for the #1 overall seed with 343 votes and Haruhi as #2… beating out Death Note by 3 votes. Mushishi, Honey and Clover, Full Metal Panic Fumoffu, and Fullmetal Alchemist stay alive for round 2. What’s not decided yet are the wildcards, but right now, Minami-ke, Stand Alone Complex & 2nd Gig, and Azumanga have the inside track for the wildcards.
The most brutal division was the comedy with the most competitive race, and it may end up advancing four series while shoujo was not competitive and may just send two. It’s like the Western and Eastern conferences. I am kind of surprised that Haibane Renmei did well, as did GTO. Shows you guys have great taste. But I am surprised to see Keroro bring up the rear, but it was in a difficult division.
A Trophy of Sorts
Oh, one more thing. The Champion will be immortalized (as immortal as anything on the internet can be) as Derailed’s new banner, courtesy of Sixten.
Round 1 (Part 2)
Second batch up for voting are the Sports, Harem, Giant Mecha, and Atlantic divisions. Voting will start now and end around 11PM PST on March 7th. Round 2 (Part 1) will start once I figured out the seedings. Rules and the first 32 batch is here.
Also, for people complaining about the division names, look, it’s arbitrary. No anime is really just one genre. Look at a typical show on Anidb and for even something that might be straightforward, there’s a lot of genre tags. I think you just need to calm down and think of everything in terms of hockey. YES WE CAN!
If you have a strong argument for any of the series, please send me an e-mail with your pitch. Best ones will make it into a future rigging the vote or Dr. Jack style post. Thank you.
Sports Smythe Division
- Hajime no Ippo: 12/20. Highest top 40 ranking in the sports division, which isn’t saying much. Kinda like the Eastern Conference this year in the NBA.
- Hikaru no Go: 32/not ranked. Never watched this series.
- Major: 17 and 40/not ranked. Major is apparently beating out Gundam 00 in the prime 6pm Saturday time slot. Ookiku Furiabutte had superior baseball, though.
- School Rumble: 25/not ranked. Desperately needed another sports series, so I tossed in Tenma and friends. It had sports elements, even if they were ridiculous… I mean… Hige was like LBJ, MJ, and Kobe put together.
- Prince of Tennis: Sports is, by far, the weakest division in the top 40 rankings with the lowest overall Anidb/ANN rankings. I would say most sports anime is just not realistic or compelling enough. With that said, Prince of Tennis did get over 150 episode, and Initial D is getting there too.
- Initial D: One of the greats, I think. Eventually, Takumi and Project D will have to lose… right… or are we getting a spiral energy thing happening, only really, really slowly over 4+ seasons?
- Slam Dunk: I love the NBA, and the world desperately needs a good basketball anime. This isn’t exactly it, but it’ll do.
- Otome wa Boku: I wish I were kidding. I had no idea what to stick as the eighth series for this division and just went for the trap factor, and it did have a few sports-related episodes. Hilarious if Mizuho’s melonpan carries it to victory in this division. Oh, lowest scored series (<7.5) on Anidb out of all 64 shows. It’s like a community college headed to the NCAA… only if the team starred a trap at the 4.
Giant Mecha Norris Division
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: 3/5. Third highest overall series in the rankings. Won Best of 2007.
- Cowboy Bebop: 26/2. One of the larger differences between Anidb and ANN. For this show alone, I tend to agree more with ANN. See you space cowboy; I just wish I knew how to quit ya.
- Code Geass: 16/12. Rollerblading mecha is ranked higher than Mikuru’s melonpan. Hun.
- Full Metal Panic: The Second Raid: Kyoto’s finest ab-lib: twincest and squirrel pr0n. I dare you to name a better audible that they have called.
- Evangelion: Cannot believe no ranking had Evangelion in the top 40. You’re kidding me right? It’s like Jefferson Purchase of anime history.
- Escaflowne: Kimi wo kimi wo ai shiteru…
- Eureka 7: Surfing robots are really that much different from rollerblading mecha?
- Gundam SEED: Ridiculous if I had a March Madness without a Gundam series. Then again, there weren’t a lot of compelling choices… the original, Shinn-less SEED is the most palatable. Also highest rated Gundam series on Anidb.
Harem Patrick Division
- Kanon (2006): 8/9. Higher ranking than Haruhi Suzumiya. Maybe with the Nayuki/Akiko ending, but not with the Ayu ending or the plain Nayuki ending. Harem division is the second weakest, and it’s propped up by two recent Kyoto series. Hence why Haruhi went to Comedy Division, because three Kyoto series… egads…
- ef ~a tale of memories~: 36/13. More shows from the harem division are from the last 1-1.5 years than any other division. Maybe it’s because harem is the most evolving and growing genre… after all, how much more can you do with giant mecha after fighting with galaxies?
- Clannad: Not ranked/16. Have a starfish. Dozo!
- Rozen Maiden: It is a delicious strategy.
- Ichigo Mashimaro: A year ago, I probably would have put Shuffle or Ai Yori Aoshi in this wildcard spot. This year? Thanks to Kana and Chiaki… you get this series. And I wanted this series in this division because…
- Mahoraba: … it gets to go up against Kozue-chan to give Sixten something to angst over.
- Urusei Yatsura: Lum! Uh, dated as hell… but I wanted an old school series on this list, and it sure wasn’t going to be Kanon (2002).
- True Tears: Most likely to get a bump due to the timing of March Madness. It’ll be like Gonzaga.
Atlantic Division
- Higurashi no Naku Koro ni & Kai: Didn’t have enough action series to make another division, so I justed lumped the more random series into one. Casey and Friends Kai ranked 18/24 and the original was unranked. I… I… I’m very perplexed. *goes to stare at Sonozaki twincest*
- Mononoke: Not ranked for Anidb, tail end for ANN. Think I watched one episode, decided I didn’t have the narcotics on hand to properly enjoy this series, and stopped watching anymore.
- Baccano: 14/17. I needed an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of all the characters.
- The Twelve Kingdoms: 19/28. Never finished watching this series. I was busy that year.
- Planetes: 20/23. Another series I never finished watching. Maybe I should have called this the “The I Never Finished Watching” division and traded Higurashi for Kaleidostar.
- Detective Conan: Yep… you guessed it… never finished watching. But at least with this one, it’s frickin’ long.
- Lucky Star: Decided to toss on a series I did watch.
- Shakugan no Shana: Hoping to get a bump due to the timing of March Madness. Yuji’s sudden emergence much like Carmelo in 2003 is a nice surprise.
52 Responses to “march madness: round 1 (part 2)”
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That Harem division was so hard to choose but in the end it had to be ef..
Clannad tagged as Angst? wtf is Angst? A feel of anxiety, dread, anguish? I think that might have been what I was feeling for DOZO STARFISH!~~~~ but I can’t see the show being tagged as so overall I was definitely not feeling any sort of angst during Kyou in gym room scene.
No Bamboo Blade in the Sports Division? ^^;
Cheers.
Where to start? evil eyes Hanyo *aka “I don’t need your 10 yen you dirty beyoch”* > Overlord Yuji. The five in one mpd harem? Is that even a contest? Oh and eva becuase i will forever have nightmares of joker fish production models.
Duh… I didn’t say squat yet, because I thought there was going to be a Drama Division or something similar, but I now I really miss Kimi ga Nozumo Eien. Which is surely an anime that has touched many viewers.
These divisions seem a little unbalanced. You have Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, Gurren Lagann, and Escaflowne all in the same division. Those would all be Elite 8 teams if I was drawing a bracket. Meanwhile Otome wa Boku gets a free pass in the sports division.
Also, where are some of the classic harem shows like Love Hina, Mahoromatic, and Chobits? It looks like you are trying to balance the number of shows from each genre, but that doesn’t represent the readership of this blog (ahem). You should include more mech/action/harem/fan-service shows and fewer shojo/sports shows.
If Oofuri was in the sports bracket I would have voted for it.
School Rumble slightly got the edge over Major though. The 4th season for Major is… eh. Brought the grade down for me.
F*** yeah Ouran.
That should be “Urusei Yatsura” (spelled with a star). I think that the spelling error is confusing people and causing them to vote for other, less worthy, shows. In the unlikely event that someone has not yet watched the show in its entirety, please pause the voting long enough for that unfortunate to watch 200 episodes, 6 movies and 11 OAVs.
Eureka 7: Surfing robots are really that much different from rollerblading mecha?
IMO the best thing about Eureka 7 was trying to catch all the random pop-culture references, from the character names – Adrock? Jobs and Woz? Gidget and Moondoggie? Dr. Greg Egan?- to the Bebop-aping tactic of naming episodes after songs, to just plain randomness, like a mine being named after Factory Records’ nightclub (Fac51: The Hacienda) and a dream sequence
It’s kind of like the mecha equivalent of a good blog in that way…right down to the annoying, pointless filler episodes that popped up from time to time to round out the episode count.
That said, E7 is probably my 5th favorite in that category – and as far as Bones giant-robot series go – well, I think RahXephon was better. And why is Bebop in there? Because now I have to pick that over TTGL.
I hate you so much Jason for making me vote between epic deaths. (Cowboy Bebop and TTGL)
I hope Kamina and Spike come back fom the grave and give you a whuppin’…of course now that I think of it two GAR characters giving you a spanking might not be such a bad thing…
Hockey Divisions FTW Jason. I hope I’m not the only one who caught that.
Am absolutely CRUSHED not to see OoFuri in sports… Being the only sports anime I ever finished watching, it had my vote already, lol.
School Rumble it is then… (for the heck of it :P)
Historically speaking, Urusei Yatsura may be the most influential of all the participating anime series, for it is the series with so many historical ‘first’s. It is unlikely to gain much vote, due to the fact that it is an old series, but I encourage everyone to try out some of its episodes, knowing that the manga series started in 1978, one year before Gundam. You will be amazed how funny and relevant this series is, despite its age: why without this series, there would not have been Maria’s cat/tiger-stripe bikini/underwear scene in last week’s Hayate no Gotoku.
I liked Urusei Yatsura better than Ranma 1/2, as far as Rumikomedies are concerned. It has girl on spce bikes, the original ice queen and it hit my sci-fi geek nerve good.
Man, the mecha division was tough for me. Very close between FMP! TSR, TTGL, and Escaflowne. Eureka 7 had a lot of quality too, but I never made it to the finish line. Also, I freely admit to screwing up the sports bracket for having never watched all of them to completion (I did read the School Rumble manga, though). Also, I have to pull for Love Hina. It’s an embarrassing admission, but it’s a classic for me. Probably the series that pulled me in more than any other. I’m pretty surprised it didn’t make the harem list, at the very least. I suppose a similar argument could be made for Tenchi Muyo (ok) and Maison Ikkoku (the manga was really good).
eyeshield 21~
i don’t agree with some the categorization of some of the shows there…
i wanted to see escaflowne, 12 kingdoms and haibane renmei go head to head to head in their own category. in their current categories, they just have no chance to win.
with ookiku out there, why was it so hard to find another sports anime for the bracket. I think that deserves biggest snub of the year.
I personally don’t agree with Clannad’s classification as Harem, but, eh.
For the sports division, I agree that you should have included “Bamboo Blade”. I’d also have suggested “Princess Nine”.
I think the list you prepared was pretty good for what you have to work with. It’s not like there are 8 good shows in every category around that fit perfectly. Things cross-over like crazy, so this is fine. Only gripe I have is a lack of Bamboo Blade in the sports section. Other than that, Otome wa Boku is extremely delicious and I don’t know why it isn’t ranked higher. I guess the American anime watcher isn’t comfortable enough with their sexuality to enjoy fappable traps voiced by Yui Horie.
No one has yet commented that in the second image you can see Horo’s… what’s the least vulgar way to say it… vagina?
I haven’t watched any of the sports animes up there >.<, but in looking up some of the ones I have watched, I’ve realized that the newer ones haven’t had any time to gather a following and so are ranked highly but not with many votes. The two i have watched are Bamboo Blade and Overdrive. Most people didn’t give Overdrive enough chance in my opinion. It was a truly exciting anime for me. Bamboo Blade doesn’t really need to be explained.
As for the Harem division one series that I immediately thought of but was not included was Tenchi Muyo OVA…does OVA disqualify it? It may just be me but I didn’t really consider, EF~ a tale of memories, a harem at all. It was a great anime but it wasn’t like one guy got all the girls. I guess the Hirohiro side could be argued but that was only 2 girls.
Smythe, Norris, Patrick divison…
I LOVE YOU SO MUCH JASON
;-)
(He says, anxiously awaiting Peter Forsberg’s come back)
>> No Bamboo Blade in the Sports Division? ^^;
Well, let’s see… Hajime no Ippo is 8.7 and one of the highest ranked series on the meta rankings. Pretty much everything in that division is above 8.5 except for Otome wa Boku (which got the YTAMR exception). And this is one of the weakest divisions. Bamboo Blade is 7.8. If I had to plug in a series instead of Otome wa Boku, I would have taken Touch at 8.6 on the meta rankings.
For people who think that stuff like Bamboo Blade or Ookiku are the pinnacle of sports anime, you probably haven’t watched Hajime, Slam Dunk, H2, or even Touch.
>> eyeshield 21~
7.7.
>> Princess Nine
7.7.
Despite these suggestions, the funny thing is that all the sports series are getting crushed by School Rumble and Otome wa Boku. It tells me that very few readers really care about sports, despite my love for the NBA. Seriously? Hajime fans, you’re going to let Otome wa Boku crush you? Put up a fight!
>> Also, where are some of the classic harem shows like Love Hina, Mahoromatic, and Chobits?
Mahoromatic 7.5, Love Hina 7.8, and Chobits 7.7 compared to Clannad 8.5, ef 8.6, and Mahoraba 8.0.
>> These divisions seem a little unbalanced. You have Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, Gurren Lagann, and Escaflowne all in the same division. Those would all be Elite 8 teams if I was drawing a bracket.
You are not, and it’s not your opinion. It’s the collective opinion of everyone who reads this blog, and people who support Death Note, Ouran, and other series would strongly disagree with you. Plus, if you actually read the rules, it’s a wild card system with reseedings, so stronger divisions can easily advance 4 or 5 series while weaker ones 2. The only thing winning a division guarantees is a bye week.
>> You should include more mech/action/harem/fan-service shows and fewer shojo/sports shows.
The balance is 51 to 13… so I’m not sure what your point is.
>> of course now that I think of it two GAR characters giving you a spanking might not be such a bad thing…
Yep… these are my readers.
Jason predicted angst… well here it is!
I love both Mahoraba and Strawberry Marshmallow to death, but I thought it would be easy to uphold my contract with J.C.Staff – despite Marshmallow being the source of the universal truth “Cute makes right!” – and vote for Mahoraba. But as I moused toward the Vote button, Matsuri Sakuragi announcing sweet potatoes for sale came to mind, and I hesitated. Thank you for all of your support, potato lovers…
Then I realized it would hurt more to vote against the umeboshi princesses, and J.C.Staff would probably punish the world for my breach of contract by subjecting its fanboys to a fourth season of The Familiar of Zero. With that in mind, remembering as well the heartful days of Narutaki-Sou – too many to count, wrapped in the best potato-mayonnaise, snow-fairy-sugary cuteness J.C.Staff is capable of, I voted for Mahoraba.
There’s a strawberry-shaped hole in my heart today, as big as the hole left when Kamichu got crushed. But I know I did the right thing.
Come on guys a vote for Ippo is a vote for world peace!
>>I personally don’t agree with Clannad’s classification as Harem, but, eh.
Seriously, how many hawt unattached girls who pine after the male lead do you want?!
Much better divisions this time round, I can’t decide at a glance which to vote for in each.
>> Spam_vt (00:07:57, #157281) :
>> These divisions seem a little unbalanced.
NHL Divisions aren’t balance either XO
TTGL for final 4!
Jason: Despite these suggestions, the funny thing is that all the sports series are getting crushed by School Rumble and Otome wa Boku. It tells me that very few readers really care about sports, despite my love for the NBA. Seriously? Hajime fans, you’re going to let Otome wa Boku crush you? Put up a fight!
Perhaps if a few of them watched the epic conclusion of Ashita no Joe they would come to appreciate the genre more.
damn, OoFuri is better than all those sports animes… I’m disappointed I couldn’t vote for it. Everyone who watches it says it’s awesome, but I guess there aren’t enough viewers
>>I personally don’t agree with Clannad’s classification as Harem, but, eh.
Neither is Ef a harem. And in a nutshell Rozen Maiden isn’t exactly what I’d consider a harem show either. Got to admit the categorizing is a little odd, but whatever. If the almighty Jason says so, so be it.
Wow, that Harem and sports division are really weak. Ended up voting for Ichigo Mashimaro and School Rumble for lack of a decent alternatives. The other two were tough, but in my opinion, Spike just squeezed out Kamina and the flying pussyfoot just nudged a toe ahead of Shana.
Still, the same pattern i noticed before lingers, what is new is winning. The atlantic’s top 4 and Harem’s top 3 have all aired within a calendar year of today. TTGL is also new, and even School Rumble is only a couple years old.
Based on the current results, it is clear that MANY people have not seen slam dunk, which is a damn shame.
I’ll admit that if Ippo isnt gonna win the sports section then Eyeshield has no bleeping chance but it has been getting good recently!
>>Seriously, how many hawt unattached girls who pine after the male lead do you want?!
That isn’t the point of the show, though. School Days is a (nightmarishly awesome) harem show. Shuffle is a harem show. Heck, even Kanon is a harem show. Clannad is not.
>>Neither is Ef a harem. And in a nutshell Rozen Maiden isn’t exactly what I’d consider a harem show either.
Maybe there should have been a “romantic drama” category. Oh well, maybe next year.
I wouldn’t call Honey & Clover, Nodame Cantabile and Nana shoujo either, but that’s not the issue. The issue is that your tastes obviously suck and I am going to complain about it. Nah. Maybe if I cared hard enough.
I think you mean Louisiana Purchase; unless of course you were talking about Sally Hemings.
I’m a little disappointed with the sports and other stuff division, since the only thing I’ve actually watched on there is Oto Boku. I would’ve been happy to vote for Bamboo Blade (apparently so would a fair amount of others) or eyeshield 21 (It made football watchable for me, I gotta give it props for that.)
But in any event I had to go with Initial D if only for this:
Cokematic: Sure the NHL’s balanced. You have the Red Wings, and then you’ve got Dallas, and they after that (way, WAY after that) you’ve got the rest of the league (/Expat Detroiter).
Something tells me, after seeing the low rankings of some of my old-school Harem classics (Love Hina and Mahoromatic particularly), I don’t want to know what the rankings had in store for UC Gundam series. Guess naming a division for Norris is tribute enough. I look forward to seeing who got what final rankings in Norris and Smythe (“Smythe?”) Divisions though.
SJ Sharks will eat you. I’m just saying.
I’m beginning to think that no anime made BBT (Before BitTorrent) stands a chance at winning. Seriously? Code Geass is doing better than Evangelion? I’ve never felt this disappointed of my readers.
That is until I opened my inbox and got my mail dose of Mako-cakes fan mail.
Discussions like “is Clannad a harem anime” or “is Nana a shoujo anime” are probably the dumbest discussions I’ve seen since “Is Joe Smith a power forward or center?” during my NBA fantasy draft.
I’m so disappointed, I’m not going to post any more about Mako-cakes until someone– anyone!– writes an intelligent comment about why one series deserves your vote. It could be for Initial D, School Rumble, I don’t care. Something actually about the content of a series. I know you guys can do this. YES WE CAN!
(I’m very tempted to just call off March Madness and spend the month reviewing shows like Initial D and Slam Dunk.)
I think that BBT shows would be doing much better if they didn’t share the same bracket with recent shoes that had decent trainwreck potential or EPIC MANLINESS!! Evangelion is what got me into anime, yet with TTGL so fresh in my mind it’s hard to vote against it. Although, I’d think that Eva would be doing much better had the poll’s been set after the remakes & new footage have had their run.
I tried to sexy up the link with tags earlier but failed miserably. So without further ado, here is awesome reason #1 why Initial D deserves your votes!
I’m beginning to think that no anime made BBT (Before BitTorrent) stands a chance at winning. Seriously? Code Geass is doing better than Evangelion? I’ve never felt this disappointed of my readers.
If youve read my comment, youd know i agree. Berserk getting absolutely no love is frankly disturbing. You know who Kamina had a picture of on the wall when he was growing up? Gutts! The undisputed king of badass in anime. Also I must ask, where are R.O.D the tv, Paranoia Agent (for Kon) and Now and Then, Here and There?
Ill tell you why I voted for Bebop though, because it has style, lovable characters, great music and well done action. The stand alone episodes have great short stories and develop the characters, while the 5 main storyline episodes are simply some of the best anime youll ever watch. Watanabe shows his genious in spades.
I also voted for Haibane Renmei and GitS:SAC. HR is one of the best anime ive ever seen, so smartly done and emotional, while GitS is great in its philisophy and action in the future setting, great characters and the best english dub make it a joy to watch.
Love Hina is missing from the harems. I remember you being a fan of that series, I guess you were afraid of having an outright sweep of the division.
I voted for Ippo. The show was awesome. He goes from being a world class wimp to being an excellent boxer without the sudden jumps in power you normally get in those kinds of shows. All of the boxers, the good and the bad, had more than enough character to carry several series. I thought the humor was spot on, the fight choreography engaging, and it made me like a sport that I’d always actively despised. I could feel the hits through my damned TV screen. I still listen to the soundtracks.
The only bad thing about the show is that it ended right when Ippo started going into haremland in the manga. That would have been epic animated.
Plus, to this day, anytime I see a match between a black guy and someone not black my mind instantly goes into “B-brack boxer!!!” mode.
It is criminal that Ippo is loosing out to School Rumble. My guess is not enough people actually saw the show. There just isn’t any other explanation for why it isn’t dominating the sports devision.
I’m disappointed how Otome wo Boku and School Rumble is beating out Hajime no Ippo or Prince of Tennis. You really ought to have put H2 or Touch or any one of Adachi’s baseball series, and if they got beaten out, then there is no hope for sports animes anymore…
Seriously, the problem probably is that people simply cannot appreciate sports (or even microbes) anymore without some dorama or hot girls giving fanservice every 10 seconds…. but then, that IS what your blog is all about, anyway.
I’m a fan of sports anime, so I’m a bit sad to see two apparently non-sports shows top the sports division, but I think it’s simply about lack of interest – most haven’t seen Hajime no Ippo, Slam Dunk or any of the other sports shows because the topic doesn’t interest. I felt I had to give my vote to Hikaru no Go – it was the show that seriously got me into anime. I even began playing Go, inspired by the show.
I think it matters little. When School Rumble goes up against any of the heavy weights, it will be bye bye.
It seems somewhat pointless to name the good points of a series when the primary reason for a series losing the vote is simply because people haven’t seen it. I brought out my DVDs ready to take screenshots to prove the superiority of Kamichu, and even started drawing a Yurie x Kenji picture. But then an hour later I realized that all the screenshots and fanart on earth would only work if they convinced someone to start watching Kamichu and if that person saw enough of it before the polls closed to get them to vote Kamichu over Death Note or Mushi-Shi or another series in the same category that they had already seen and enjoyed. And if Jason couldn’t convince people back then, who am I to think I can do so now?
I’ll eventually watch Fighting Spirit because of all the glowing recommendations I’ve seen, but since I can’t get it from Netflix fast enough to see it (15 volumes!?) before the poll closes, my vote goes to Hikaru no Go – which actually got me started playing Go.
Thanks for bring up GTO in the last set of poles I saw that and started to rewatch it again. The animation is crap but it has great story telling and Kamina did not have a picture of Gutts above his bed growing up he had a picture of Onizuka.
Negima seems to have a simular set up but I think GTO has ruined me for anything that is like it.
I’m a bit surprised that you didn’t have PRINCESS NINE, or YAWARA! in the sports division. Both are great sports series.
lucky star should just disappear from the collective consciousness of mankind.