With my defeat in the quarter-finals (which I totally expected and helped along by voting for Kurogane) as well as the end result of this year’s aniblog tournament in sight, I feel this is a good time to reflect on the Aniblog Tournament and post a couple of suggestions for next year’s aniblog tournament (assuming the organizers will run this tournament again).

I’d first like to thank everyone that voted for me throughout the tournament; I appreciate the support. Even in my loss to Kurogane, I couldn’t believe the number of votes I received. I know some of the votes were made in attempt to get the weaker blog to advance but even discounting those, I received far more votes than I thought was possible.

It felt very surreal to make the final 8 and it left me with conflicting feelings. I have no illusions that I’m one of the top eight blogs in the anime blogosphere but to say it was a fluke would belittle my opponents from the first four rounds which would be wrong. I wasn’t very familiar with my second round opponent, Bokutachi no Blog, third round opponent, Unmei Kaihen, or fourth round opponent, Anime Diet, before the start of this tournament but I now know that they (and bad luck party too) are quality blogs and beating them definitely meant something. However, the ease that Kurogane beat me means that I’m still no where near being one of the titans in the anime blogosphere so I won’t let my performance this time go to my head.

General Thoughts About the Aniblog Tournament

The Aniblog Tournament was a complete surprise to the vast majority of the anime blogosphere when it started and I was very curious to see how the bloggers and readers would take it. There were so many different ways it could have turned out; it could have been ignored or it could have generated tons of animosity and bitterness between blogs or it could have turned into a big joke after being swamped by fake voting. Instead, the result was very close to the best case scenario and I think that says something good about everybody involved (from the voters to the organizers).

I wasn’t expecting much from my involvement since this tournament was “just a popularity contest” so I felt blindsided when I realized that my participation would yield great unsolicited feedback about what I was doing right and what I needed to improve upon. Some of the suggestions for improvement where things I was privately thinking that I should do but it took someone else pointing it out and the desire to fix these deficiencies before the next round match up to actually get me to fix them.

I also wasn’t expecting to discover new blogs that I should follow but that happened as well. Upon becoming an anime blogger, my intake of anime increased drastically and as a result I radically cut back my anime blog reading. I had less time to read other blogs and my need to read episodic blogs disappeared because I was now watching all the anime that interested me in the slightest. I also stopped checking out new blogs as they started because I liked the mix of anime blogs I followed and didn’t see the pressing need to find more. The product of this mindset was there was a depressing amount of blogs I was not familiar with and before I voted I wanted to make sure I was voting for the “right” blog. (Never call me an uninformed voter in anything.) This lead to discovering blogs like ghostlightning’s where I had previously read a few posts from but never connected these posts together in my mind to tell me that I needed to follow this blog and established blogs like Behind the Nihon Review that I can’t understand how I missed in the past and newer blogs like Scamp’s that I found having an interesting author/style of writing behind it.

For “just a popularity contest”, I think the Aniblog Tournament did a great deal of good.

Suggestions for the Next Aniblog Tournament

I was very happy with how this tournament was set-up but I thought of a couple tweaks that I think could improve next year’s aniblog tournament (assuming and hoping there is one).

I like the general format of the tournament, how it has 96 spots for blogs and gives a first round bye to the stronger blogs, but using a set number will always mean some blogs are left out or there’ll be not enough blogs to fill the required spots. The best solution, I think, is to have a round zero where all the blogs not getting first round byes are put into different pools  – I was thinking 8 – and the top 8 vote getters in a poll of that pool would be used to seed the first round match-ups.

Another needed change is to publish the tournament bracket early, giving the voters time before the start to review blogs they’re unfamiliar with and to allow bloggers time to prepare their blogs to look and read their best.  (And allow any blogs to opt out if they so desire.) Assuming the my first suggestion is implemented the added time could be used for feedback to ensure no anime blog gets left out. For example, next year around mid-February, the initial bracket with the blogs getting first round byes could be published along with the proposed list of participants in the various pools. People could then mention anime blogs that were not included that they feel should by included and a revised listing of the pools would be published about 7-10 days before the start of March. Then on March 1st, the polling would commence on the pools and by the middle of March the winners would be known and placed into the tournament bracket. From there, people would have a couple of weeks to read and/or prepare for the start of the tournament on April first.

I also thought trimming the matches from 7 days to 5 days was a good idea and wonder if it could be shortened to 4 days.

I have seen the suggestion somewhere else that editorial and episodic blogs be segregated more in their pairing next time. I think the idea is tempting but ultimately not a sound one. Yes, they are completely different types of blogs but one can still measure how much value reading a certain blog gives to oneself independently of the content of the blog. And looking over all the match-ups, I don’t see the editorial blogs doing that badly anyways.

Completely Off the Subject

The lack of anything new on The Null Set recently can be attributed to my decision to pick up a game called Hearts of Iron 3 and the insane difficulty it’s taking to learn how to play. I didn’t expect this game to be this difficult to get after playing so many games of the same genre but it is and trying to figure it out has been taking up a lot of space in my brain. I’m at the point now that the game is starting to make sense and becoming fun to play. If you’re wondering, it’s a strategy game set between the years 1936 – 1948 and the player can pick any country to play out WW2 or an alternative WW2. In my game, I’m playing one of Chinese political factions and so far I’ve been able to reunite China, push Japan off the Asian continent then invaded and conquered Japan turning myself into the Asian superpower. And in Europe, Germany started the war like normal but then invaded Spain and England. And America finally joins the war in mid-1942 (no Pearl Harbor to bring it in sooner) and invades/frees Norway from Germany. At the present moment, England is trying to convince the Chinese Empire to become an Allied power but I’m being tempted by the largely undefended Allied holdings in Asia (India, Indonesia, etc.) not to join, though, the idea of a European invasion by the Chinese Empire to save England, France, etc. is almost too absurd to pass up.

Completely Off the Subject 2

My younger sister graduated high school this year and for her party, last week, she wanted to rent a farmhouse in Amish country and spend her time shopping and relaxing. At night I marveled, once again, about how awesome the stars look outside of the city and decided to see if I could take a picture of them. A tripod would have been extremely helpful but I did get a couple nice pictures.

Filed under: meta/office keeping, other wallpapers and pictures

As usual, if you see me criticizing something about your blog, it’s nothing personal.  I tend to tear apart people’s websites when I do comparisons such as this, so just keep that in mind.  If you want my input about about the three categories I’m using, read the first page of this post.

Aniblog Tournament | HTML Bracket

Go below the fold for the goodness.

Round 3, Day 5

Vote Here

Match 9 – #2 Random Curiosity vs. #34 Listless Ink

Design: For Random Curiosity, the same thing stands for this round as the last round: a pretty common wordpress theme plus obtrusive ads.  Meanwhile, Listless Ink has a pretty unique design, despite using wordpress.com, and pretty much everything of importance (except maybe archives) are right up front.  Winner: Listless Ink

Post Style: Ditto on the post style for Random Curiosity from last round.  I don’t mind having a stack of pictures in your reviews (heck, I have one).  However, I’d think it should come after the review (or at least after a good portion of your post) rather than before you get to anything at all.  If I had never visited RC before, I might think their posts were nothing but screenshots after a couple scrolls of the mouse down the page.  However, Listless Ink I think has an issue with IPIP.  It’s somewhat mitigated, however, but a larger font, I think, but it’s still quite prevalent. Nevertheless, I find Listless Ink’s IPIP less obtrusive than RC’s image front-loading.  Winner: Listless Ink

Content: Random Curiosity has pretty good writing, and while I think they discuss the episode at hand pretty well, I think they still skip what I think makes an episode blogger really good, which is to try to peer into the future.  Of course, as I noted last week, the fact that RC is pretty much THE first to get episode reviews out cannot be dismissed either.  I think Listless Ink is a pretty good editorial blogger.  Perhaps not the best, but still pretty good.  Perhaps my main complaint is that none of the topics of her posts (at least her most recent ones) necessarily made think too much.  They were well written, yes, but…I just didn’t necessarily feel like there was very much new.  I think it is extremely close, but I might throw content to Random Curiosity here.  Winner: Random Curiosity

Overall: As I explained in the last round, RC has some problems, in my view, which are kind of difficult to overcome.  While it may not be a problem for some, I sometimes don’t like visiting it personally for the very reason that it gets episode reviews out so fast.  I usually like watching an episode myself before getting spoiled by another blog, which makes visiting RC difficult at times, as by the time I’ve seen the episode, the post about it on RC is already long gone.  Second, about the only reason why I didn’t make content a push is because, as the most important category, I really dislike not deciding a winner for it, but I think for the purposes of the overall winner, I feel like treating it as essentially equal.  That brings the decision down to design and post style, both of which Listless Ink wins.

Winner: Listless Ink

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Match 10 -#18 Mistakes of Youth vs. #50 GAR GAR Stegosaurus

Design: Mistakes of Youth is kind of narrow, and the gray-on-grayish-blue sidebar could possibly use some work.  Otherwise, I guess there isn’t too much wrong with it.  GAR GAR is using wordpress.com, so I can’t say too much about it.  It’s using a design which I’ve noticed a few other blogs using, though.  However, it seems to be a change, as looking at my notes from last week, I noted that it was rather dark (which it isn’t this time, much to it’s benefit I think).  I think, in the end, GAR GAR’s design looks a bit brighter and cleaner.  Winner: GAR GAR Stegosaurus

Post Style: For Mistakes of Youth, nothing much I can stay.  A pretty standard 1 pictures and the rest of the post format, for the most part, which is pretty much the same format GAR GAR uses, which pretty much makes this category a push.  Winner: Push

Content: Mistakes of Youth is pretty much a mix of editorial post as well as some posts where he displays his art.  While the few editorial posts seem pretty good, and the art is pretty good as well, I’m not sure if it’ll be enough to get by a pretty good opponent.  And GAR GAR, while perhaps not the best editorial blogger out there, is certainly a good one.  They have some pretty well written and interesting posts.  I’m not sure how much I’m personally interested in some of the stuff that’s written there, but I don’t think that’s really a good enough reason to not vote for it.  Winner: GAR GAR Stegosaurus

Overall: As is generally the case at this point in the tournament, a pretty close match, but I gotta give it to GAR GAR

Winner: GAR GAR Stegosaurus

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Round 3, Day 6

Vote Here

Match 11 – #23 Josh’s Anime Blog vs. #74 Fuzakenna

I think what I’ll do this time with my match is what I did last time: skip reviewing my opponent, since I kind of personally consider it rather uncouth to do a review of my current opponent.  So I’ll just (mostly) copy and paste what I wrote in the last round:

Design: I think my design is simple and effective.  I try to keep the more important things people are looking for high on the sidebar, as well as in the nav.  For example, see the “blogged series” link, where you have easy access to the categories for the series I’ve bloggged. Or the “anime reviews” nav link, where you can find the series reviews I’ve written.

Post Style: I try to post something every day, though I’m not always 100% successful at it. I also try to fashion my posts to be read easily, and to be easily accessible.  (for example, while I haven’t done a full out season preview post for a while, I used to make them with links to each series at the top of the post, so people could just click down.)

Content: I try to mix up what I post, having episode reviews, series reviews, new DVD and Manga releases, and anime credits, so that I don’t get stuck with only one type of post on my blog.  In any case, I hope it is informative and entertaining for people.

Overall, I just hope people like my blog to vote for it.  Of course, if you have any suggestions or comments, feel free to leave them on this post.

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Match 12 – #7 Hashihime vs. #26 Reverse Thieves

Design: Hashihime has a rather blah design, I thought, though I may not be able to say too much, with it being on blogspot.  Nevertheess, there isn’t really much to it.  Reverse Thieves isn’t necessarily much better, though I think it is better. And they have a cool logo.  My main complaint about RT is that their font is pretty small.  Winner: Reverse Thieves

Post Style: I think Hashihime’s post style is generally OK.  There are images mixed in with the text, but I think, for the most part, they are spaced out OK.   Reverse Thieves does pretty much the same, too. Winner: Push.

Content: Hashihime is mainly a seiyuu blog, which has some interesting posts (if you’re into seiyuu) but I think some posts which are, well, kind of short and of questionable interest (at least to me).  Reverse Thieves certainly has a unique posting style, in that the two authors share input on the same posts.  I think they have some pretty well written posts, but I think it’s kind of distracting to switch back and forth.  I know it’s their style, and I think it works well to an extent, but I’m not sure I find it ideal.  Having said this, however,  I think I still find their content more interesting and compelling than Hashihime’s.  Winner: Reverse Thieves

Overall: Rather unbelievably, this is the first match in the 3rd round to feature two teams who received byes in the tournament (to show you how much those helped, though there are two other bye vs. bye matches later in this round).  In any case, I find myself voting against another niche blog.  I think their uniqueness might have gotten them into the 3rd round, but I’m having a hard time getting myself to vote them any further.

Winner: Reverse Thieves

As usual, if you see me criticizing something about your blog, it’s nothing personal.  I tend to tear apart people’s websites when I do comparisons such as this, so just keep that in mind.  If you want my input about about the three categories I’m using, read the first page of this post.

Aniblog Tournament | HTML Bracket

Round 3, Day 3

Vote Here

Match 5 – #4 Star Crossed Anime Blog vs. #29 Rabbit Poets vs. #93 JanaiBlog

Design: In this match, Rabbit Poets certainly has the overall best looking design.  Star Crossed is a little bland and JanaiBlog I think is kind of dark and maybe a little hard to read.  JanaiBlog definitely has the best placement of RSS, Archives, and Categories, though, being 3 of the top 5 items on the sidebar, and the other two items are pretty small.  Star Crossed has quite a few things on the sidebar before you get to the categories and archives, while Rabbit Poets dumps the categories and archives to the bottom of the page.  However, given that all three sites do have all three of those elements on their page, I’m going to go with the best well designed site and the site which I found had the best readability: Rabbit Poets.  Winner: Rabbit Poets

Post Style: Star Crossed has a pretty standard post style: 4 images at the top and then the rest of the article.  For better or for worse (I’ll get into which in the content section), the content isn’t long enough to create a “wall of text” after the initial images, so I think overall their post style is OK.  Rabbit Poets has some serious, and consistent, IPIP issues in their posts.  JanaiBlog has some minor IPIP issues, but nothing too bad.  They’re also one of the few blogs out there that I’ve seen actually float text around images, instead of using the whole width of the content area to post pictures.  I think this one is close between Star Crossed and JanaiBlog, but I think I’ll give the edge to Star Crossed on this one.  Winner: Star Crossed Anime Blog

Content: Star Crossed’s episode reviews is all review and no recap, which is good in that you don’t have to read through a ton of review, but bad in a sense that I have no idea what the episode was even about, other than what I can gleam from clues in the review.  Star Crossed, while very well written, mostly writes about the events of the episode (which of course, most people do) but doesn’t seem to talk about the possible implications on future episodes all too much.  Rabbit Poets may not be quite as well written as Star Crossed, but they possibly make up for it by, I think, going a bit more in depth into some of the issues surrounding the series they are reviewing.  They do spend more time doing recap than review sometimes, though.

JanaiBlog is different in that it’s not an episode review blog.  JanaiBlog mostly publishes a podcast, does some top 10 lists things, and does some other reviews.  While I thought the review I read was pretty well written, personally I find doing lists as your blogging to be somewhat a cop-out.  I mean, doing lists is interesting it’s own way, but, I don’t know. I just don’t seem to find it as compelling content as “regular” editorial content.  I think overall, while I think they could go a bit more in depth in their posts, Star Crossed’s writing quality wins this one.  Winner: Star Crossed Anime Blog

Overall: I think Rabbit Poets made this competitive, but I just liked how Star Crossed did their reviews better.

Winner: Star Crossed Anime Blog

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Match 6 – #45 Beta-Waffle vs. #52 Canne’s Anime Review Blog

Design: As I said in the last round, I’m pretty sure Beta-Waffle’s designs are intentionally offensive to the eyes, so I’m not sure how much I can talk about it.  It’s a bit narrow, but maybe that’s about it.  Canne’s blog is on wordpress, so I can’t say too much about it, but I didn’t really find it to be anything special.  I think Beta-Waffle wins this category, just via the effort it took to make his blog as intentionally ugly as possible lol.  Winner: Beta-Waffle

Post Style: Beta Waffle is part comics and part other posts.  There isn’t very much I can say about the comic posts since, well, they’re comic posts.  Their other posts don’t seem too bad.  Maybe a bit heavy on the mixing images in, but not too bad.  The staple of Canne’s Anime Review Blog is, shockingly, their anime review posts, which seemed to be pretty well laid out.  Personally, I think their posting style is similar enough that I”ll give this one a push.  Winner: Push

Content: As I noted above, the bulk of the content on Beta-Waffle is comics, which makes it hard to compare to other blogs.  Since I’d say that the comics on Beta-Waffle are pretty decent (sometimes funny, sometimes not), it may kind of depend on the content of the blog it’s going up against.  In this case, I think Canne writes some, for the most part, well written and in depth reviews (and other posts) on their blog.  Perhaps the only thing that gives me pause is how often they post (I know I took off post rate as it’s own category, but I may still use it to decide a close match).  However, I think they might post just enough for me to look past it…this time.  Winner: Canne’s Anime Review Blog

Overall: Design was close, and Post Style was a push, which basically means whoever won Content wins.  But it was still close.

Winner: Canne’s Anime Review Blog

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Round 3, Day 4

Vote Here

Match 7 – #69 Major Arcana vs. #92 Mecha Guignol

Design: Major Arcana’s banner is a bit big (300 pixels tall), but otherwise is a pretty nice, if not somewhat unoriginal looking, design.  Mecha Guignol has a smaller banner, and maybe a blander design, but I think they do some important things, such as categories higher on the page, and they put some of their major categories or sections into the nav bar.  I think these little things puts Mecha Guignol over the edge in this category.  Winner: Mecha Guignol

Post Style: Major Arcana’s post style appeared to be pretty good.  They mix in images with the post at a good pace so that it doesn’t disrupt the readability of the text.  Meanwhile, I can pretty much say the same thing about Mecha Guignol, so I’ll make this one a push.  Winner: Push

Content: Major Arcana had some very well thought out and written posts.  The one that kind of stood out to me was the one comparing Working to Dilbert.  I hadn’t really thought of thinking of Working!! in that respect, but after reading their article, it kind of makes sense.  Unfortunately (or I guess, really, fortunately), Mecha Guignol is also very well written and thoughtful in their posts, which makes this decision very difficult.  However, I think I found Major Arcana’s posts just slightly more interesting, so I think I’ll go with them in this category by a sliver.  Winner: Major Arcana

Overall: What makes this match interesting is that, while it’s not the only match between blogs who competed in the first round (I believe there are 2 others, including the one I just finished), it is the only match between blogs who were both the lower seeded blogs in their first round matches.  I realize that seeding isn’t really a signal of popularity or how good a blog is in this tournament, but it is a suggestion of perhaps how new they are or how recently they came onto the scene.

Indeed, Major Arcana is merely only 8 months and a few days old (though, while I”m not familiar with the writers there, it looked like they both had perhaps blogged separately before).  Meanwhile, Mecha Guignol is slightly newer, at about 7 1/2 months old.  Just to put it into my perspective, my now almost ancient, 4+ year old has been around for about 3 times as long as these two blogs have been, put together.  The fact that these two blogs have vanquished two blogs older than they are twice, and one of them will continue to advance is saying something about their quality, I think.

This is just further confirmed after I went and looked at both blogs again.  Both of these blogs are really excellent, and both of them are worthy of winning this match, I think, and perhaps even more.  However, being that this is a poll, and I have to pick one, I think I have to go with who I picked in the Content category, given that the other two were either equal or very close.  Of course, content was very close as well, but I consider it more important.

Winner: Major Arcana

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Match 8 – #12 THAT Anime Blog vs. #44 Anime Instrumentality

Design: I decided against THAT in the design category last round, not because I disliked their overall design less, but because I think they had several silly mistakes with their design, which I felt shouldn’t be there.  Two of the three biggest ones have been addressed (the weird gray space below the banners and categories – even if not all that obvious).  The footer text is still utterly unreadable, but at least that’s more of a minor issue.  The only other possible complaint is the blog header being a hair large (260 pixels) but it’s kind of right on the border of being overbearing. (My preferable banner height is around 150 to 200 px).  While I think I gave Anime Instrumenality the win in design in both of it’s previous matches, I think it’s definitely met it’s match in this one.  THAT’s design just looks more professionally done to me.  Winner: THAT Anime Blog

Post Style: What I wrote for THAT last time still mostly holds true this time, I guess.  The episode review posts range from OK to kind of heavy on the pictures (especially between paragraphs), dependent on the author.  Most of the other posts seemed to be, for the most part, OK.  There might be some occasional IPIP, but the paragraphs some usually long enough to mitigate it some.  Anime Instrumentality has a pretty nice post style, which is done pretty well considering the topic of their blog.  It’s hard to judge this category for THAT, since they have so many authors, but I kind of like AI’s post style, given it’s context, better.  Winner: Anime Instrumentality

Content: I think, re-reading the content review from last time, I might have been a bit harsh on THAT.  Maybe it’s because most of the more recent posts then were episode reviews while most of them now are more editorial, or what, I’m not sure.  In any case, I still agree that pretty much all the writers write pretty well, and most of the content seems pretty interesting.   I still think the episode reviews are still kind of meh, but the editorials seem pretty good.  I’ve voted for Anime Instrumentality twice already, and for good reason: some quite excellent content involving anime OSTs, which are something that I personally like as well.

So this brings us to this question: Which is better, someone who blogs about a niche topic really well, or a blog which does a pretty good job blogging about anime overall?  This really is a rather difficult choice to make for me.  Just my gut feeling, I am kind of leaning towards THAT.  The reason is this:  While Anime Instrumentality indeed has excellent content, especially given that it’s a niche blog, I think the fact that it’s about OSTs makes the content, well, not as impressionable I guess.

What I mean is this: OSTs are, by their very nature, an audible topic.  And while AI does give plenty of audible samples, I think that writing thoughts in the written word about why a piece as good or bad is perhaps less important than listening to that piece itself, which can be done without the aid of the blog.  I suppose one can say the same thing about episode review blogs (someone can, after all, just go watch the episode themselves) but I just kind of get a feeling that it’s different with an OST.  An OST is audio, rather than audio/visual and, while an OST may provoke an emotional response, it doesn’t necessarily make you think.  An OST isn’t typically a chain of separate episode or pieces that fit together in the end (though I suppose it CAN be) and so on.  While I appreciate OSTs perhaps as much as anyone, I’m not sure how much AI can ultimately stand up against a “regular” blog of equal or better quality.  Winner: THAT Anime Blog

Overall: This is yet another contest in which, I think no matter who wins, they are worthy of moving on to the next round.  I guess it’s not particularly surprising, since it’s the 3rd round now.  In any case, I have to decide, with the content category being so close, does Post Style and Design now come into play as determining factors?  In this case, even if the answer is yes, I don’t think the winner changes.  It would probably come down to design, which I rated THAT better in anyway.

Also, what is it with blog mascots?  First Seas Slugs!, and now THAT is coming up with their own mascot (who is apparently much loved by Trap-Impz).  If I cared enough, I’d look into it too. (I’m probably sure I don’t have the spare cash lying around to commission getting a mascot done for my blog either lol).

Winner: THAT Anime Blog

In this round, I’ll keep the same 3 categories, but If I’ve already talked about some things I liked or didn’t like about a specific blog, I’m not sure how much I’ll really expand on it.  I may just do more of a “I like A over B because C” in this round.  If some people have made improvements, or I’ve noticed different things, then I may add them in.  I’ll see if I can expand on my Content section a little bit based on some feedback. I’ll see how well I can do with that.  I think I’ll also eliminate the Post Rate part of the review, to a large part because most of the blogs that don’t post much have already been weeded out, and those that haven’t probably are good enough to make up for it.

As usual, if you see me criticizing something about your blog, it’s nothing personal.  I tend to tear apart people’s websites when I do comparisons such as this, so just keep that in mind.  If you want my input about about the three categories I’m using, read the first page of this post.

Aniblog Tournament | HTML Bracket

Round 3, Day 1

Vote here

Match 1 – #1 Sea Slugs! Anime Blog vs. #33 The Cart Driver

Design: I don’t really have anything to add beyond what I said in the 2nd round.  I generally like Sea Slugs! better because of the wider design, and I think the overall design just looks cleaner than The Cart Driver.  I also like how the text is nice and big and easy to read on Sea Slugs.  The one thing I’ll add is that I still don’t really like the white links at the top on Sea Slugs, and when I was rolling over them, some of them I think have a sub-nav link which I almost missed because they just kind of pop out of nowhere.  I think The Cart Driver’s design is still pretty good.  I think it’s a little dark and a little narrow. Winner: Sea Slugs

Post Style: Post style seems to be pretty good on Sea Slugs.  There is some IPIP in the recap section, depending on the author, but overall I think the posts are laid out pretty neatly.  The Cart Driver sometimes has IPIP and sometimes doesn’t.  When they do, the paragraph size is at least usually long enough to make it not all that bad to read.  I think overall this section is a push.  Winner: Push

Content: Sea Slug’s episode reviews are generally well written and detailed thoughts about what happened in the episode, and what they think it means for the future of the series, and they all tended to be a pretty interesting read, and they also tend to be rather snarky while they’re at it (especially in the image captions).  I thought that the Cart Driver was a pretty good read as well.  I just think that Sea Slugs does a bit better job going in depth regarding what was going on during an episode, and the implications of it.  Winner: Sea Slugs

Overall: The Cart Driver was a pretty formidable opponent, as to be expected as it’s won two matches already, but I think Sea Slugs just does the good stuff a bit better.

Winner: Sea Slugs! Anime Blog

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Match 2 -#17 Baka-Raptor vs. #49 Hanners’ Anime ‘Blog

Design: Hanners’ uses blogspot, so I can’t talk too much about the design, but I still sometimes feel like getting violent (well, not really) when seeing really huge banners like his.  It just needlessly pushes the content way down the page.  However, I think even considering that, I still just like the blog design better than Baka-Raptor.  I know he made a comment responding to some of my comments from the 2nd round, but I still kinda think some post preview is a necessity on a blog nowdays.  Winner: Hanners’ Anime ‘Blog

Post Style: I realize that part of this is just driven based on how Baka-Raptor does his posts, but I think the propensity of images when compared to text (and the IPIP) just makes his posts more difficult to read, at least to me. I also kind of thought that the olive-green text on the black background kind of wore on my eyes after a while (though the text being pretty big does help with that).  Hanners’ has a pretty standard (and more readable) 2 paragraph – image – 2 paragraphs+ posting format which I just found to be better.  Winner: Hanners’ Anime ‘Blog

Content: If there is one thing Baka-Raptor is good at, it’s is writing pretty biting satire posts, and is a rather interesting read.  It’s not necessarily my cup of tea, but some of the posts I still found personally pretty well done.  Hanners’ does a decent job doing episode writeup, though I think they write more their thoughts about the current episode, and don’t write as much about what they think the implications of the episode are to the future of the series (though they do some).  So I think I’ve got to give this one to Baka-Raptor.  Winner: Baka-Raptor

Overall: In this tournament, content is king, and while Hanners’ won two of the three categories, those don’t really determine who wins unless the content category is close enough for me to think that they should start being an influence.  While I think Hanners’ does a pretty good job, I just think Baka-Raptor does a better job with content and being creative.

Winner: Baka-Raptor

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Round 3, Day 2

Vote Here

Match 3 – #8 Tenka Seiha vs. #89 2-D Teleidoscope

Design: Neither blog design particularly thrills me in this match up.  Tenka Seiha kinda looks like something someone just kind of threw together, and as I remarked last week, 2-D has probably the most simplistic design in history.  2-D did fix a couple of the problems that I mentioned in the last round (adding an archive drop down and RSS link, though still no category or tag link that I can see), though one thing I’m noticing this time which I don’t think I did before is that I don’t think any of the posts have a “read more” link, which sometimes means a lot of scrolling for longer posts.  Tenka, however, doesn’t really have much of anything as far as an episode preview – usually 4 images and a short, snarky sentence.  I think overall, I’m making this one a push.  Winner: Push

Post Style: Tenka has a pretty standard post style, which is actually pretty similar to mine, so I can’t say too much about it lol.  2-D does a pretty good job intermixing pictures in with their posts without breaking the text up.  I don’t think there is very much here to differentiate these two blog’s post styles, but I think I’ll give the slight edge to 2-D for the image intermixing, just because it’s done well.  Winner: 2-D Teleidoscope

Content: Tenka does a pretty good job writing about this thoughts about the episode, but doesn’t seem to do too much regarding the implications of that episode for the future, which, if you haven’t noticed yet, I think is something which makes episode reviewing that much better.  While I’m not sure that 2-D is the best editorial blogger out there, they still write quite a bit of pretty interesting content, and writes it well.  And I just have to say…an OK episode blogger who writes two paragraphs per post vs. a pretty good editorial blogger, well, the editorial blogger will generally win that one.  Winner: 2-D Teleidoscope

Overall: If there is one thing I’ve learned so far, it’s when an OK-but-not-great episode review blog goes up against an editorial blog, unless the editorial blog just blows it, it’s probably going to win.  That’s not to say I’m anti episode blogging.  Far from it.  It’s just that I think it’s a lot easier to make content which is more compelling, at least on a post-by-post basis, if you’re doing editorials.  Of course, I think there are some episode bloggers that can hold their own against any editorial blog out there as well.  However, Tenka just didn’t seem to be one of them, and 2-D’s editorial content was pretty good.

Winner: 2-D Teleidoscope

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Match 4 – #24 OGIUE MANIAX vs. #73 chaostangent

Design: Ogiue has a pretty simplistic design, though I think it’s executed pretty well, overall.  However, as I think I mentioned last week, chaostangent’s design is pretty sweet looking and done in an actual user-friendly way, which is a rare combination sometimes.  As a result, I’m giving design to chaostangent.  Winner: chaostangent

Post Style: Ogiue has a pretty standard and non-offensive post style from what I can tell.  Usually a single image or so, and the rest text.  No mucking up readability or anything.  chaostangent throws in a few images here and there to break up the text some, which I think is a nice thing to do when one’s articles have so much text.  I also still dig the little insert thing.  Winner: chaostangent

Content: I found Ogiue’s content to be pretty interesting, though I sometimes felt that they could expand on some of the things they were writing about a bit more than they did.  Some of their posts seemed a little shortish to me at times for a purely editorial blog.  Much as I thought last week, chaostangent is an extremely well written and in depth editorial blog.  Not to take away from what Ogiue does, but I think the type, quality, and amount of writing chaostangent has just blows it out of the water.  Winner: chaostangent

Overall: And it’s chaostangent with the first true sweep of the 3rd round.  I think people who vote for Ogiue Maniax just because they happen to visit it and aren’t familiar with chaostangent are really doing CT a disservice.

Winner: chaostangent

Since I’ve been tracking them, here are some statistics from the 2nd round (as well as overall) from the AniBlog Tournament:

The second round had 32 matches, 30 of which resulted in an actual vote count (there was one resignation, and the one game with vote manipulation that was canceled).  Over those 30 matches, there was a grand total of 7,539 votes cast, which is a 16% increase in votes, despite having 2 fewer vote-counting matches.  It comes out to an average of 251.3 votes per match, which is a 24% increase.  So far, 14,024 votes have been cast in 62 matches, for an average of 226.2 votes per match, which I think is pretty respectable.

The most voted upon match in the 2nd round was the match between Star Crossed Anime Blog and Just as Planned, in which 671 total votes were cast, which is also the tournament high so far.  The top 5 winning vote getting blogs in the 2nd round were Star Crossed Anime Blog (584), Baka-Raptor (334), Hanner’s Anime Blog (318), Kurogane’s Anime Blog (280), and THAT Anime Blog (252).  The 5 blogs which received the highest percentage of the vote in their poll was Star Crossed Anime Blog (87%), Sea Slugs! Anime Blog (76%), Kurogane’s Anime Blog (76%), Reverse Thieves (75%), and THAT Anime Blog (75%).

The top 5 closest matches in actual votes were:

1. Rabbit Poets vs. JanaiBlog (tie)
2. Mainichi Anime Yume vs. Memories of Eternity (1 vote)
3. Unmei Kaihen vs. blogSuki (2 votes)
4. Anime Diet vs. Anime Princess (5 votes)
5. Hanner’s Anime Blog vs. We Remember Love (6 votes)

Top 5 closest matches in percentage were:

1. Rabbit Poets vs. JanaiBlog (tie)
2. Mainichi Anime Yume vs. Memories of Eternity (0.6%)
3. Unmei Kaihen vs. blogSuki (0.8%)
4. Hanner’s Anime Blog vs. We Remember Love (1.0%)
5. Anime Diet vs. Anime Princess (2.8%)

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Now, I’m not going to spend too much time responding to 21stcenturydigitalboy’s rant about my blog and my posts about the tournament.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell if someone is being serious or just trolling (especially since I am unfamiliar with his overall blogging style), though he certainly sounds serious, going as far as making sure to post a comment with a link to his post onto one of my posts.  Most of the things he brings up in his rant I have already addressed various times elsewhere, and I don’t particularly feel like rehashing those things again.

The only things I’ll add are these: Yes, some blogs (such as his) I had never visited before.  I do my best evaluation by reading and/or scanning over what appears to be a representative sample of posts – usually 3 or 4 posts – sometimes more if there appears to be a variety of different types of posts – as well as maybe glancing over several more, with the assumption that if I’ve evaluated the quality of writing, etc. on 3 or 4 posts, I can probably assume it holds for most of the other posts.

Now, I’m not going to go counting actual words like how 21stcenturydigitalboy felt compelled to do, but if one blog is writing longer articles than another, then I’ll generally favor the person who writes more if the quality of the content is roughly equal.  As for the images – I do consider how one inserts images in one’s post as far as the Post Style category.  Generally I don’t care as long as it doesn’t disrupt the flow of the writing or I have to scroll past a million images before I even get to to the post text.  However, these factors alone aren’t going to cause me to vote for or against your blog.  (Just as design alone won’t, but perhaps 21stcenturydigitalboy mistakes my writing about people’s designs as my making a voting decision based primarily on their design, which I do not unless that is the only thing that really distinguishes the two blogs.)

One also has to make room for the fact that, you know, people have different tastes, and I fully admit that it is impossible for me to completely dispassionately make a review, because the very act of reviewing is dependent on what my tastes are.

As far as whether I win or lose, yes, I pretty much fully expected to lose badly in the 3rd round.  I already knew I had no shot against Omo, and if someone beat him, it would stand to reason that I wouldn’t have a shot against whomever beat him.  21stcenturydigitalboy is right, no, I don’t particularly care.  If I win, then great, and if not, so what.  And yes, I do find it rather sad that he’s taking this tournament, my tournament write ups, my review of his blog (and perhaps the fact that I’ve voted against his blog – twice) so seriously.

I was planning on being courteous towards any opponents I might face in this tournament (which hopefully Chii felt like I was in the last round) but I am very seriously considering not being so considerate this time around.  I don’t mind criticism.  If you think my reviews of the blogs are BS, fine.  If you think I should do it differently, then great.  However, 21stcenturydigitalboy’s post, as one of his own tags on his post describes it, is nothing but unproductive, over the top shit talking.

Anyway, I just felt like I should respond to his post.  If he was, in fact, posting it in jest, then I apologize for taking it seriously.  However, that was definitely not my impression upon reading it.

As you might have guessed by the title, yesterday marked the start of my match in the second round of the Aniblog Tournament. You may have also guessed that this post is the type of post that at some point, maybe after trying a bit of bribery or trash-talking or arguing for my superior worth, I’ll ask people to please go here to vote for The null set. And you’d be right on both accounts, but I’ll try to keep this interesting for you nonetheless.

Three Reasons Why You Should Vote For The Null Set

1.   I Have a Cute Nephew

And I have the pictures to prove it:

If that’s not a good enough reason to vote for me, I don’t know what is.

2.   I’m From Youngstown and I Know People

Sure some cities have nice sounding nicknames like ‘The City of Brotherly Love’ or ‘The Big Apple’ but my hometown has cooler sounding nicknames:  ‘Mob Town, USA’ and more recently ‘Murder Town, USA’. And don’t think these nicknames are misnomers, in the 90’s, for instance, Youngstown had the highest per capita homicide rate in America for many of the individual years of the 1990’s and we were either #2 or #3 all the other years.

3.   I’m Part Elven

If J.R.R. Tolkien is right about how elves develop a yearning for the sea the first time they get near it then it’s conceivable that I’m part elven because I seem drawn to it. Look how often it’s come up on my blog, here and here and here. In two months I’m going on a week long vacation at a beach house and that’s in addition to the beach trip I just went on (found a bunch of nice sea glass) and another trip sometime in June. Here’s some new pictures I took on the most recent visit.

Isn’t my blog the most awesome, so go here and vote for The null set now.

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Okay, so this list wasn’t a serious one, though, everything said about me true. I do have a cute nephew and I’m proud of being from Youngstown and I do enjoy going to the beach. I included being from Youngstown because it is an important part of who I am. If you look past the nicknames and the murder rate and the inability to park your car on the street because sooner-or-later someone will break the windows in – I still think of it as a great place to live, it’s got the second largest urban park in America behind Central Park in New York City; the people are by and large good, hard-working people; and I’m optimistic the worst of it has past and the future will be a better one for Youngstown.

Now for the serious list as to why I think people should vote for The null set.

Three Reasons Why You Should Vote For The Null Set

1.   Unique Philosophy to The Null Set

I wanted The null set to be a successful anime blog and not wither away after a few short months. To do this, I needed to find something that would separate this blog from other blogs and I needed to believe that whatever this blog did, it had some importance to my potential readers.

What I eventually came up with as The null set’s mission is to get people to watch good anime, even if that means trying something they normally wouldn’t and to steer people away from wasting their time with bad anime. This influences everything I do, even if it’s not apparent. I normally write my anime posts as if the audience reading them has not seen the anime in question which means including as few spoilers as possible, among other things. The types of anime posts I write mainly – impression posts of new anime, series reviews, season previews, and seasonal/yearly anime awards – are designed with this mission in mind. I’d rather have people spending time watching good anime then spending time reading what I have to say about good and bad anime.

2.   Wider Variety of Content

I have only the highest respect for episodic blogs and their ability to cover the same shows week in and week out; I’d probably burn out quickly if I tried. I think the format, however, is very constricting and it would limit the quality of my blog since many of my most read posts and the posts I’m most proud about wouldn’t fit into that format.

For example, there was my rebuttal to Mr. Sherman, president of Bang Zoom, about the impending death of anime in America and from a couple of years ago, my two-part (1, 2) rebuttal to the “documentary” that Otaking put out. There’s also this post where I used the licensing patterns of the anime from 2008 to show that instead of blaming fansubs, maybe studio execs should be looking at the shows they license; the post still holds up well though there’s been some more licensing of 2008 anime shows since I wrote it back in November.

From time-to-time I like to pit two series or two characters against each other to see who would win. The most read one remains the Haruhi vs. Gurren Lagann one I did back in 2008 but the one I had the most fun putting together was the Haruka Minami vs. Ibuki Ikaruga battle because I was surprised by the winner.

I also enjoy dabbling with Photoshop because it exercises my creative side a different way then writing does. The result is often posting wallpapers that I’ve made. The Soul Eater ones (1, 2, 3) have been the most popular; my Toradora ones actually got linked to by a Japanese anime blog which I thought was great. My favorite wallpaper was one I did for Bakemonogatari that splices Araragi and Mayoi onto a picture I took while on vacation at Washington D.C.. I also once tried out vector tracing using Muraski from Kure-nai. And I also sometimes take the time to stitch together those pan-up shots the animators do of a really awesome outfit/character. The latest was one I did the other day after watching episode 5 of Katanagatari and I might as well share it with you know as thanks for reading this far down.

There’s also those posts that are hard to categorize except to say that something about the anime I was watching or manga I was reading at that time interested me and I wanted to share. There was a recent post about fixing a joke I read in the Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei manga, there’s this post where I mention anime songs that make me cry, the post about how animators seem fascinated with the night sky, a post about how anime needs more mature characters, and the post where I talk about When an Anime Becomes a Keeper.

3.   Winning Would Do The Most Good For The Anime Blogosphere

I struggled with how to word this one without sounding presumptuous and I still don’t think I quite got it right. I’m not saying that my anime blog is super important or even more important than my opponent, Bokutachi no Blog, but the feedback I received during the first round and pressure to make my blog competitive for the second round pushed me to improve The null set and winning in this round will push me even harder to improve the quality of The null set to make it competitive for the next round. I have several ideas that I think would make very interesting posts which have been kicking around in my brain for a while now, waiting for a good time to get written, and trying to win in the third round would be a very good reason to get them written. I’m even thinking about bring back my weekly anime review.

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So, hopefully, something I said has convinced you to go here and vote for The null set in the Aniblog Tournament; I’m currently behind by a little bit but with your help, I might just win.

I wasn’t going to try the bribery route but I just had an idea that attempts to bribe while still keeping within the parameters of running The null set like normal. If I win my second round match-up, I’ll watch and write a series review of any one randomly selected anime (up to say 40 episodes in length) picked from a list generated of people leaving a comment at this post saying that they voted for me and the name of the anime they’d like me to review. Of course, I can’t verify if the winning person did, in fact, vote for me but I’m willing to trust in my readers. And  no matter the legitimacy of the comment, I’ll still be reviewing a show I haven’t done yet and I’ll only do it when I win so it’s a win-win for everyone involved.

Filed under: anime, general anime interst, meta/office keeping, other wallpapers and pictures

As usual, if you see me criticizing something about your blog, it’s nothing personal.  I tend to tear apart people’s websites when I do comparisons such as this, so just keep that in mind.  If you want my input about about the three categories I’m using, read the first page of this post.

Aniblog Tournament | HTML Bracket

[Personal Comment]: Oh yeah, and don’t forget to vote for me in the AniBlog tournament.  Today is the last day to do so! [/Personal Comment]

This group of reviews might be kind of short, cause I don’t have much time to write them up. Sorry.

Round 2, Day 15

Vote Here

Match 29 – #6 blogSuki vs. #59 Unmei Kaihen

Design: I’m not really one for blogSuki’s design.  I think they pull off the one-post-per-page thing as well as anyone can hope to, but it’s annoying to have to click to see each and every article.  Also, no category list. Search is at the bottom.  It’s laid out nice, but there are just some other things about it I don’t like.  Unmei Kaihen is on wordpress, so I can’t say too much about it, but there is nothing particularly wrong about it.  I don’t think it’d be enough to keep me from voting for it, if it came down to it, but I just don’t like the one-post-per-page thing blogSuki does.  Winner: Unmei Kaihen

Post Style/Rate: Neither site has a problem with post rate.  I like how blogSuki does the full-width image thing, but they have some IPIP going on as well.  I think Unmei Kaihen paces out his images a lot better. Winner: Unmei Kaihen

Content: I think this is a close call.  They both write good entertaining posts.  I might give the slight edge to blogSuki, though. Winner: blogSuki

Overall: I think how blogSuki does their blog, some of the weaknesses pointed out in the design and post style sections are minimized to a great extent, and I kind of feel like just ignoring those two sections because of that, which would give it to blogSuki by a nose on content.

Winner: blogSuki

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Match 30 – #27 Bokutachi no Blog vs. #38 The null set

Design: Both use wordpress, so there is only so much I can say.  I guess I thought that Bokutachi’s sidebar was a little less cluttered, so I’ll go with them.  Winner: Bokutachi no Blog

Post Style/Rate: Bokutachi doesn’t have a problem with post rate.  The null set, however, does seem to. They have 7 posts in May, but they only have 4 in April, none in March, and 4 in February.  Bokutachi has some IPIP going on, though.  I like The null set’s post style better, so I think that cancels out the post rate issue. Winner: Push

Content: Bokutachi seems to be all over the place as far as their posting style (even for the same author).  Sometimes it’s a long recap with a paragraph of review. Sometimes it’s seemingly all review. Sometimes it’s something else.  I just kind of think that The null set writes more per post, writes more consistent, and writes slightly better.  Winner: The null set

Overall: Since the first two categories were effectively equal, winner of content wins.

Winner: The null set

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Round 2, Day 16

Vote Here

Match 31 – #22 Atarashii Prelude vs. #86 Desu ex Machina

Design: Atarashii Prelude has a pretty good design concept overall, I think, though I’m coming to dislike these “featured content” things at the top, just because they usually don’t actually say or do anything useful most of the time.  Also, category list is awfully low on the page. And can you have more ads, please?  Dexu ex Machina uses a somewhat common theme, however.  Despite that, while I think Atarashii definitely has the better design concept, I think some of the smaller things just started to add up.  Winner: Desu ex Machina

Post Style/Rate: Atarashii only has 6 posts since the start of April which is not very good.  Desu ex Machine doesn’t post a whole lot, but they at least posts more than Atarashii does.  Neither blog has any particular problem with post style, though Desu does seem to do some IPIP in their K-ON posts.    I’m not sure it’s enough to make up for the post rate, though.  Winner: Desu ex Machina

Content: While Atarashii Prelude doesn’t post much, what they do post seems pretty interesting for the most part.  Desu has some interesting stuff, though I think the post more non-anime related posts than I might be happy with.  I think on this one, I’ll give a slight edge to Atarashii. Winner: Atarashii Prelude

Overall: So this is another case of quality of content per post vs. post rate.  I think I liked Atarashii’s content more, and while Desu ex Machina posts more, I don’t know if they post that much more.

Winner: Atarashii Prelude

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Match 32 – #11 Anime Diet vs. #75 Anime Princess

Design: Anime Diet definitely has a snazzy design, and unlike some of the other snazzy designs I’ve seen, this one is actually somewhat user friendly (though they do have one of those featured content things).  Anime Princess’s design is OK, but nowhere near Anime Diet’s.  Winner: Anime Diet

Post Style/Rate: Anime Diet has no problem with post rate, while Anime Princess does, posting, I think I counted 11 times since the start of April.  Anime Diet’s posts seem rather sparse on the images, but otherwise seem to be OK.  Anime Princess looks OK too in some posts, so they look like they do some IPIP in some others.  I think overall this section goes to Anime Diet as well.  Winner: Anime Diet

Content: Anime Diet seemed to be rather wordy in their posts, and both blogs seemed to have a somewhat similar level of quality, so I’ll throw this one to Anime Princess by a nose.  Winner: Anime Princess

Overall: I think the win by Anime Princess in content was very narrow, while I think Anime Diet’s win in the other categories were much bigger.  Probably enough to overcome the things I didn’t like about their content.

Winner: Anime Diet

So that wraps up Round 2!

As usual, if you see me criticizing something about your blog, it’s nothing personal.  I tend to tear apart people’s websites when I do comparisons such as this, so just keep that in mind.  If you want my input about about the three categories I’m using, read the first page of this post.

Aniblog Tournament | HTML Bracket

Go below the fold for the goodness.

Round 2, Day 13

Vote Here

Match 25 – #3 Kurogane’s Anime Blog vs. #62 _____ism

Design: OK, well, I can at least do a review of Kurogane’s blog, but for _____ism, he appears to be trolling right now, so I may need to rely on my not-as-thorough 1st round writeup for him.  In any case, Kurogane doesn’t exactly have the most beautiful design out there, but it works.  I thought they had some stuff at the top of their sidebar (page links, twitter feed, etc.) which may belong further down (like, below the category list) but that’s my main complaint there. (though one big reason why he may have decided to push that down was because it was so long).  For ___ism, well, this is what I had to say in the first round: “I know that the design is probably meant to be quirky, but still…”  OK, not very informative.  Since I didn’t seem thrilled with ____ism’s design in the first round, and since I kind Kurogane’s functional, if not a bit land, I’ll go with Kurogane. Winner: Kurogane’s Anime blog

Post Rate/Style: No post rate problem for Kurogane.  Unfortunately, they seem to indulge in the IPIP style, except for usually the final review at the end of their episode review posts.  In the first round, I had issues with ______ism’s post rate, and that still holds true, with only 3 posts in May, including the current troll post.  They might win on post style, but I think Kurogane wins this section on post rate. Winner: Kurogane’s Anime Blog

Content: Pretty much doing the trolling that _____ism is doing I think causes him to auto-lose this anyway, but even taking that out of the equation, while Kurogane sometimes has a somewhat questionable amount of content on some of his posts, but they still write pretty good.  ____ism I think mostly posts gag posts which, maybe temporarily funny, I’m not sure how much I’d feel like following their blog over it.  So I think on both quality and amount of content (and for non-trolling), Kurogane gets this.  Winner: Kurogane’s Anime Blog

Overall: Sweeps are easy. And don’t feed the trolls.

Winner: Kurogane’s Anime Blog

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Match 26 – #30 Mono no Aware vs. #35 Astrobunny

Design: Mono no Aware certainly has one of the more unique blog designs out there, I thought.  I guess my main thought is that it looks like something is missing in their design (though upon closer inspection, it’s supposed to look that way).  I’m kind of unsure myself if that’s good or bad.  It just kind of looks….weird.  Astrobunny’s design is as artsy, though in a different way.  I don’t know about the double sidebars, though I certainly understand having double sidebars, since I’ve experimented with them in the past (though they were on the same side of the design).  I like the nice picture in the banner (even if it’s a bit big), but I just think MnA’s is a bit slicker.  Winner: Mono no Aware

Post Rate/Style: I haven’t seen this since the first round, I don’t think: a battle between pretty infrequently posting blogs.  Mono no Aware has 3 posts in May, and 9 posts since the start of April.  Astrobunny has gotten a lot better since the first round, though, having 9 posts in May after having only 3 in April.  As far as post style, I think Mono no Aware does a pretty good job, while Astrobunny suffers from IPIP disease.  I think the difference in post rate and difference in post style kind of balance each other out here.  Winner: Push

Content: When it comes to amount of content, there is no contest in this one, since Mono no Aware posts more per post and, I think even though they’ve posted less frequently lately, still has quite a bit more overall content as well.  From what I can tell, their writing style and quality seems comparable, which means I’m pretty much always going to take the one with more content, unless there is a really good reason not to (and there isn’t in this case).  Winner: Mono no Aware

Overall: I still haven’t exactly pinned down what, exactly, Mono no Aware blogs about most of the time, since i only took a somewhat brief look at their blog (and this was my first time visiting), but it seemed pretty interesting.

Winner: Mono no Aware

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Round 2, Day 14

Vote Here

Match 27 – #19 Mainichi Anime Yume vs. #46 Memories of Eternity

Design: Well, I’ve tried not to be too tough, especially on the design aspects since I could probably rip just about any webpage’s design to shreds, but Mainichi Anime Yume’s design is, well, not very good I didn’t think.  It looks like they used some sort of default template, which maybe I could understand if they were using some little used and no-longer updated blogging software, but they’re using Wordpress, and apparently on their own hosted domain, which basically means I leave them no excuse for not using a at least somewhat decent theme, even if it’s a commonly used one.  But as it is..the banner clearly seems to be too wide for the theme, pushing down the gradients along the side of the design down the page and, well, that’s just the start.  Memories of Eternity doesn’t necessarily have a flashy design, but it’s still pretty well done.  Winner: Memories of Eternity

Post Rate/Style: MAY doesn’t seem to have a problem with post rate, which is good.  Meanwhile, Memories of Eternity, while they’ve posted twice in the past week, only have 6 posts since the start of April.  Both blogs seem to have pretty similar posting styles, so I’ll go with the post rate on this one.  Winner: Mainichi Anime Yume

Content: I thought both blogs has pretty good writing, though I think I kind of liked Memories of Eternity a bit better. And they had prettier pictures lol.  Other than that, I’m not sure what more I can add for this category.  Winner: Memories of Eternity

Overall: I spent a lot of time deciding between these two blogs, but I think perhaps the content on Memories of Eternity that I liked a bit better, plus the more attractive design, ultimately lead me to them.

Winner: Memories of Eternity

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Match 28 – #14 SNAG Vs. World vs. #51 Eye Sedso

Design: SNAG has a pretty simplistic design, though I’d be nice to see categories/tags a litter higher on the page, but other than being very white, I don’t think there is anything too bad about it.  Eye Sedso has a decent design, I guess, though I don’t see any sort of category listing at all.  It’s also dark, but I guess it’s OK.  Both of these blogs are kind of in the “OK” design category I guess.  However, if you click on the nav links…you get nice 404 erros.  Oops.  While I think I might like SNAG’s design a hair more, having your main nav links going to 404 pages is a rather big no-no.  Winner: Eye Sedso

Post Rate/Style: Both blogs post at a good rate, so that’s a non-factor.  I guess I like SNAG’s post style a bit better, since Eye Sedso seems to have some IPIP.  However, it’d be nice if SNAG checked any YouTube videos he embedded to make sure that they don’t bust his page.  Winner: SNAG Vs. World

Content: Both blogs seemed to have some interesting content, though I think SNAG might be a bit more thoughtful, and while SNAG appears to have some posts which are questionably related to anime directly, Eye Sedso appears to have more posts like that.  I think just overall, I like SNAG’s amount of type of content more.  Winner: SNAG Vs. World

Overall: I think SNAG could do a lot better paying attention to detail sometimes (the nav links, the YouTube videos) but I think they do a pretty good job.  Eye Sedso is certainly entertaining at times, but I just thought SNAG was a hair better.

Winner: SNAG Vs. World

As usual, if you see me criticizing something about your blog, it’s nothing personal.  I tend to tear apart people’s websites when I do comparisons such as this, so just keep that in mind.  If you want my input about about the three categories I’m using, read the first page of this post.

Aniblog Tournament | HTML Bracket

Go below the fold for the goodness.

Round 2, Day 9

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Match 17 -#2 Random Curiosity vs. #63 Behind the Nihon Review

Design: Random Curiosity uses a pretty standard theme, which I think will hurt them a bit since they don’t have to.  I don’t know if it’s standard because other people have just used the same theme they did or what, considering they’re such a popular blog, but it’s always nice to change things up after a while too.  The first thing that I really don’t like is the banner ad.  I can take ads in the sidebar, since they’re out of the way.  But a banner smack in the middle of the page? No thank you.  Other than that, though, it has an OK design.  Behind the Nihon Review doesn’t have a wild design, but it is a bit of a different design than what I sometimes see around.  Again, despite my hatred for tag clouds, their swirling one is kind of cool, and I like their rollover Category/Authors/Archive thing.  Winner: Behind the Nihon Review

Post Rate/Style: Random Curiosity most definitely doesn’t have a problem with post rate.  In the first round, I was concerned about BNR because they only had 6 posts in the month of April.  They already have 7 in May, so they’re doing better, with a post about every 3rd day.  Random Curiosity has a pretty standard post style: a whole bunch of pictures, then their write-up.  Unfortunately, I think a well-done blog should probably do the reverse, at least if they’re going to have so many pictures. (having a few before the text is fine, but you don’t want to overdo it).  The font also seems to be a bit on the small side. BNH has what I would almost consider the ideal layout for an editorial blog: A long writeup with a few pictures thrown in, but not so many that it breaks up what you’re writing.  So in this category, BNR is only on track for about 10 posts per month, which is in the moderate category for me, but I’ll take their posting style any day.  Winner: Behind the Nihon Review

Content: Random Curiosity, if it’s not known for anything else, is known for this: getting episode reviews out faster than anyone else.  They aren’t perfect.  I think on a couple occasions, even yours truly has beaten it out with a review, but chances are, if you want to see a review as fast as possible, you go to Random Curiosity.  I haven’t really been able to fully evaluate how much this is still the case now that it’s under new management, though some quick anecdotal evidence suggests they’re still pretty fast.  On top of this, they appear to write some pretty lengthy and well written reviews.  I already noted in the first round how well I thought the articles on BNR are written.  I think Random Curiosity wins the content, but just by a nose, and only because of the speed factor.  I think the actual content on the two blogs are pretty similar.  Winner: Random Curiosity

Overall: OK, here’s the thing about Random Curiosity for me: they certainly hold up very well as an episodic blog.  They post quickly, and they post a lot of review content (as opposed to recap content), so they can pretty much hold their own against pretty much any editorial blog they might come up against in that respect.  Having said that, I have three things I want to point out.

First, while speed is nice, it can sometimes be a hindrance.  One of the problems with posting so fast is that, sometimes you’ll post things before the fan subs – even fast ones – are out.  If you don’t care about this and want to read a review asap, then RC is probably the place to go.  However, I kind of found that I don’t visit RC for that very reason.  If they’re writing a review of a show I’m interested in, it usually comes out before I even have a chance to see it.  And by then the comments tended to be so full that there was little point in adding my own.  Reading the thoughts is interesting, but I actually thought the speed almost hurt my wanting to go to RC than helped it.  But that’s just me personally.

Second, I really, really think RC should rethink their posting style.  Screen shots are nice, but I don’t really want to scroll through 40 pictures or whatever before I can even read anything.  I also thought that the font was too small – or maybe too light – or something. I just seems like, even though the text is all together, it still gets overpowered by the stack of images you just had to scroll through to get to it.  Finally, the banner ad.  I thought banner ads died a horrible death years ago.  I don’t mind ads.  Heck, I had text link ads on the sidebar of my blog.  But at the very least don’t put the ads in the most annoying place on the page.  Yes, I know that probably earns them the most money, but it also makes me want to leave before I even read anything.

I think these problems may still not be enough for me to vote against Random Curiosity if they came up against a mediocre blog.  However, Behind the Nihon Review is, I think, one of the better examples of how to do an editorial blog out there.  Yes, Random Curiosity has more content, but it’s not like BNR has nothing, and I think those weaknesses for Random Curiosity more than make up for the very close win they had in the content category.

Winner: Behind the Nihon Review

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Match 18 – #31 Xebek’s Blog vs. #34 Listless Ink

Design: First thing I noticed on Xebek’s blog is this: HUGE banner. It pretty much takes up half of the vertical space on my screen.  They also seem to have some frivolous things on their sidebar, but other than that, there is nothing particularly good or bad about it’s design.  Listless Ink has a pretty white design, but it’s still pretty good I thought, though I think the contrast in the nav under the banner could be better.  I can’t say too much, though, since it’s on wordpress.com. The one thing I didn’t really like was having the categories and archives at the bottom of the page, but they’re at least there, so they do kind of have their own quasi-navigation on the sidebar.  I think I’ll give this one to Listless Iink by a hair.  Winner: Listless Ink

Post Rate/Style: Xebek doesn’t have a problem with post rate, but Listless Ink, as can sometimes be a problem with editorials, does seem to have one.  In the past year, they’re averaging only 5.5 posts per month.  On the post style, Xebek has a similar problem as RC above, in that they pretty much have a load of pictures before you even get to any content (sans a very brief – usually a sentence – of recap).  Listless Ink has their own problem, however, with it’s tendency to do some IPIP in their posts.  I think since both blogs has issues in style, I’ll go with post rate, which goes to Xebek.  Winner: Xebek’s Blog

Content: I thought Xebek had a good amount of review content, which was well written and thought out from the pieces I read.  Listless Ink also has some pretty good content.  However: 1) I don’t think the quality is any better than Xebek, 2) I don’t think the actual original content per post is any more than Xebek.  Listless Ink does have the advantage of having a somewhat original slant to their posts, but I just think they post too infrequently, and there isn’t enough quality difference to make up for it.  Winner: Xebek’s Blog

Overall: I think if Listless Ink posted more or wrote more per post to make up for the infrequency, they would have done much better, but I think that Xebek writes enough actual review to pull this one out.

Winner: Xebek’s Blog

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Round 2, Day 10

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Match 19 – #18 Mistakes of Youth vs. #47 AstroNerdBoy

Design: Mistakes of Youth seems to have an OK design, if a little narrow, though I thought that his sidebar was kind of hard to read, with dark blue and gray on, well, bluish-gray.  AstroNerdBoy also has a pretty narrow blog, but the green is kind of overpowering.  I also don’t really see any category or tag list.  I think, end the end, Mistakes of Youth wins this category.  Winner: Mistakes of Youth

Post Rate/Style: Neither blog has a problem with post rate, so that’s not an issue.  Mistakes of Youth seems to have a pretty normal posting style.  Nothing good or bad.  With AstroNerdBoy…I still just think the images disrupt the flow of text more than they could otherwise, either by being separated from the text or being floated to the right instead of the left.  I just think I like MoY’s style a bit better. Winner: Mistakes of Youth

Content: Mistakes of Youth, along with his comic, has some art posts, as well as some editorial and reviews.  The posts that are written (ie, the editorials and reviews) appear to have a pretty good amount of content as well as an OK quality.  AstroNerdBoy does largely anime episode and manga chapter reviews, as well as some posts about other random things, nowdays usually relating to Angel Beats.  I think MoY and ANB’s “content” posts were pretty equal, but I think MoY’s other posts win out, especially since some of this are his own art, and then you have the comics.  Winner: Mistakes of Youth

Overall: Well, this is a toughy for me since I like AstroNerdBoy and we comment on each other’s blogs, but I’ve tried to keep things like having more interactions with certain bloggers or which blogs I visit more often out of decision making.  I think these blogs are pretty close, but I just think AstroNerdBoy has some design weaknesses that Mistakes of Youth doesn’t have, and Mistakes of Youth has some original content that AstroNerdBoy doesn’t.

Winner: Mistakes of Youth

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Match 20 – #15 Drastic My Anime Blog vs. #50 GAR GAR Stegosaurus

Design: Drastic My Anime Blog has a pretty decent design, though they’re on wordpress.com, so I can’t say too much about it.  Categories seem to be awfully low on the page, though.  GAR GAR Stegosaurus is also on wordpress.com, but the design is rather dark.  That isn’t necessarily inherently bad, but I think lighter designs are better.  They don’t really have a category list, but they do have a tag cloud, and it’s higher on the page.  I guess, in the end, there isn’t a lot I can say since they’re hosted, and the things they can control, both sites have a couple of issues, so I’ll make this a push.  Winner: Push

Post Rate/Style: Drastic has a moderate amount of posts, though in his post about the Tourney, he notes he’s still in school, so I can certainly empathize with trying to post while still taking classes.  The post style seems to be pretty standard, with nothing particularly good or bad about it.  GAR GAR appears to have a somewhat similar post rate, so that doesn’t look like it’ll be much of an issue.  Much like Drastic, there isn’t anything about the posting style to really make a note about, so I think again, we’re looking at a push. Winner: Push

Content: Boy, this is a tough one too. I’d be tempted to call this a push except, the other two categories were a push and I kind of need to find something to distinguish these two blogs in some way.  Both write more editorial style or reviews.  Both write a lot in their posts (generally) and both seem to write pretty well.  I think GAR GAR might have just slightly more content overall, so I guess I’ll have to go with them.

Overall: I think I pretty much just said what I wanted to say.

Winner: GAR GAR Stegosaurus

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Round 2, Day 11

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Match 21 -#10 Omonomono vs. #74 Fuzakenna!

Design: I’m not really sure one can call what Omonomono has a design, since there pretty much isn’t anything there than text.  It doesn’t even have a sidebar.  Part of the problem with this (though it doesn’t have to be) is that there isn’t any category list or anything.  Fuzakenna!’s design doesn’t seem to be much better, but it is better, with categories, archives, and rss right there at the top of the sidebar.  Winner: Fuzakenna!

Post Rate/Style: Omonomono has a pretty good posting rate, which bumps up against where I usually stop counting.  I guess not shockingly, his post style is as simple as the blog design: usually a single picture and then the rest of the article (not that there is anything wrong with that).  Fuzakenna also doesn’t have a problem with post rate.  While this isn’t always the case, Fuzakenna seems to have an issue with IPIP.  I think given that, Omonomono wins this category.  Winner: Omonomono

Content: Omonomono certainly has quite a bit of content per post, so that’s a big plus.  Fuzakenna on the other hand…I don’t know.  It just doesn’t seem like they write as much, and the fact that it’s all broken up between pictures doesn’t help.  I think I have to go with Omo on this one.  Winner: Omonomono

Overall: I obviously have an interest in this match since, if I win my own match, I’ll be facing the winner.  I personally think Omo would be the tougher match for me in the 3rd round (though I also personally think it just might not matter who I face, except for determining the final margin).  Having said that, while Omonomono has a bland design, everything else about it seemed pretty good.

Winner: Omonomono

Added note: Perhaps ominously, the vote I just cast for Omo just broke a tie and put him in the lead 51 to 50 lol.

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Match 22 – #23 Josh’s Anime Blog vs. #87 Oishii Anime

I’d been debating about how to deal with my own match up for a while.  Do I just review it like normal (and what if I conclude my blog is the one which sucks lol)?   Do I just review my opponent’s blog (though there would be an easy claim of having an interest in dissing it if that’s what I did)?  What I think I’ve decided on is just a short post on why I think people should vote for me, in each of the 3 categories, without necessarily doing a full review.

Design: I think my design is simple and effective.  I try to keep the more important things people are looking for high on the sidebar, as well as in the nav.  For example, see the “blogged series” link, where you have easy access to the categories for the series I’ve bloggged. Or the “anime reviews” nav link, where you can find the series reviews I’ve written.

Post Rate/Style: I try to post something every day, though I”m not always 100% good at it. I also try to fashion my posts to be read easily, and to be easily accessible.  (for example, while I haven’t done a full out season preview post for a while, I used to make them with links to each series at the top of the post, so people could just click down.)

Content: I try to mix up what I post, having episode reviews, series reviews, new DVD and Manga releases, and anime credits (and I’m fishing for another idea to fill my Friday slot, assuming I can ever get around to posting Working!! on Wednesdays like I mean to).

Overall, I just hope people like my blog to vote for it.  Of course, if you have any suggestions or comments, feel free to leave them on this post.

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Round 2, Day 12

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Match 23 – #26 Reverse Thieves vs. #39 Cross Channel

Design: Reverse Thieves definitely has an interesting logo, even if they have a rather non-design design.  Maybe the main thing I would point out is that I think their font may be a bit too small.  Other than that, I guess there isn’t anything particularly bad about the design.  Cross Channel uses wordpress.com, so there isn’t much I can say about it, and they have categories, etc.  I guess I’ll give this to Reverse Thieves cause they have a cool logo.  Winner: Reverse Thieves

Post Rate/Style: Reverse Thieves’ posting rate can go up and down, but on average it seems to be about in the moderate range.  One thing I don’t really like about how they post is that they seem to mix a lot of topics into a single post, like in their Ongoing Investigations post.  Cross Channel seems to post up to about my cut-off point (or they did in April anyway).  They were a bit below that in March, and seem to have slowed down in May.  They still post more than RT, but not significantly more.  RT’s post style appear to be, generally, a single photo then the rest of the post.  Sometimes other pics are thrown in, but they’re well paced.  CC appears to post in a similar style, so I think that’s a push.  Since CC posts slightly more often, I’ll give this category to them, and because of RT’s topic mixing.  Winner: Cross Channel

Content: Reverse Thieves seems to do something which I haven’t really seen done before: not only is it a team blog, but from the looks of it, they team post as well (meaning several writers contribute to a single post).  They have their Ongoing Investigations segment which, I’m not really sure what’s going on with it.  I guess they’re just talking about what they’re following or watching for the moment.  Cross Channel seems to have a lot of good content as well, though I’m not sure it personally interests me too much.  I think on sheer content, Reverse Thieves probably wins this category. Winner: Reverse Thieves

Overall: So here’s my problem here.  I think Reverse Thieves has better content, both in quality and amount, but I think a good portion of their content is in a format that isn’t easily digestible, ie, in their Ongoing Investigation segments where one might has to wade through a lot of unrelated stuff to get to something you might want to read.  The question for me is, is this enough to counter their advantage in actual content (or do I dismay Author again by voting for CC again).  Well, actual content is the most important factor, and I think RT does win that category by a significant amount, in my opinion.  So I think how they do some of their posts is problematic, I’m still going to go with them

Winner: Reverse Thieves

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Match 24 – #7 hashihime vs. #58 ∑Xce7ion

Design: I don’t see anything particularly good or bad about hashihime’s design.  It’s on blogspot, so it’s likely a template (you CAN make your own template on it for free, unlike wordpress.com, but doing so is still a pain in the ass. Believe me, I did one for a project at work).  ∑Xce7ion seems to have a pretty nice design.  They also have one of those funky tabbed things on the sidebar.  While I think they’re cooler in concept, I still think they have a couple flaws, such as the mystery meat tabs and, at least in this case, the font looks way too small.  ∑Xce7ion also has a pretty large header, both image and the stuff that’s above it.  I barely see the top of the content section in my browser.  I think I like the general idea of ∑Xce7ion’s design better, I think hashihime’s is executed better.  Winner: hashihime

Post Rate/Style: The rate that hashihime writes is up and down, but it seems to average out to a somewhat moderate about.   It also looks like their posting style, while maybe not the best, isn’t too bad.  Meanwhile, ∑Xce7ion hasn’t posted since early April, only 4 times since the start of March, and only 12 times this year.  Otherwise, the post style seems OK, though there does appear to be some occasional IPIP.  However, ∑Xce7ion’s post rate is killer. Winner: hashihime

Content: hashihime appears to be mostly a blog about seiyuu (or largely about them) which we had, I think, one other blog about that topic in this tournament (can’t remember who right off the top of my head).  Not necessarily my cup of tea, but they seem to have pretty good content given the focus.  ∑Xce7ion, when they actually do write, seems to write a good amount, and with good quality.  I think on sheer content per post, ∑Xce7ion wins this category.  Winner: ∑Xce7ion

Overall: OK, so we have ∑Xce7ion, which has, I think, more content per post, but hasn’t posted in a month and a half, and posted sporadically before then, and hashihime, who may not have as much content per post, but posts consistently.  I just don’t think ∑Xce7ion’s content per post is good enough to make up for the fact that they just don’t post.

Winner: hashihime

Yes, it is finally that time…Josh’s Anime Blog’s turn in 5camp’s AniBlog Tournament.  It’s been a long wait, but this blog’s fateful day is finally here! It’s time to vote! (and while you’re at it, vote in all the other open polls too, as well as visit my opposition’s blog.)

Sorry for not doing this over the weekend, but I ended up doing a sudden Harry Potter movie marathon just cause I felt like it lol.  In any case, based on the comments from my last batch of sites, I thought I would clarify and correct a couple of things:

1) Content – Content absolutely comes first.  Things are listed pretty much in reverse order of importance (though design and post rate/layout are similar in weight).  If someone has a clear win on content, it’ll pretty much win the overall, no matter who wins the other two categories.  That doesn’t mean I still won’t make comment about the other two categories, but content still rules.  Winner of content is a combination of quality of content and total amount of content (post rate x content per post).  My deference is to quality, if you just don’t post that often, I may very well not pick you, no matter how well you write.  While creating quality content is important, actually creating content, period, is important as well.  So someone with medium quality, but a good total amount of content may beat someone with superior quality, but with a low level of content.  Having said that, I’ll try to read a bit more thoroughly than I have up to this point to perhaps better gauge quality.

2) Post rate – Post rate only matters up to a certain point.  When I see someone posting, on average, about every other day, I pretty much stop counting.  I’d consider posting every 3rd day (about 10 posts a month) to be moderate, and someone posting less than twice a week (usually 6 or 7 posts or less per month) as a low posting rate.  If someone has recently come back from hiatus, and they haven’t been back long enough to really tell what their post rate post-hiatus is, I’ll look at how they posted before they went on hiatus.  If someone is currently on hiatus, then they’ll get penalized for that, depending on how long it’s been.

3) Post style – On this point, I’ll kind of say “my bad.”  I think I need to be a bit more clear when talking about this on whether I think someone’s post style is a problem.  For example, last time I tried to say that, while a couple of blogs had the IPIP (image-paragraph-image-paragraph) post style, they had done it in a way that didn’t make it so bad.  However, I apparently still left the impression that I thought it was bad, so I’ll try to be a bit more clear on this.

4) Design – While this is technically the least important of the two categories, it can still determine the winner if I feel the other two categories are close or counter each other.  Also, being a web designer myself, I kind of feel an uncontrollable urge to point out every little thing that I see that drive me nuts about a design.  That’s why I include my disclaimer at the top of the posts not to take my criticisms personally.  I routinely tear apart people’s designs (including my own).  I try not to be too hard on people who have hosted blogs, such as on wordpress, though things like categories, rss feeds, etc. I will take into account since they can put them on their sidebars.

OK, having said all that, I’ll try my first attempt at making a multipage post here doing my reviews.  As usual, if you see me criticizing something about your blog, it’s nothing personal.  I tend to tear apart people’s websites when I do comparisons such as this, so just keep that in mind.

Aniblog Tournament | HTML Bracket

Once again, if you see me criticizing something about your blog, it’s nothing personal.  I tend to tear apart people’s websites when I do comparisons such as this, so just keep that in mind.

Aniblog Tournament | HTML Bracket

Round 2, Day 3

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Match 5 – #8 Tenka Seiha vs. #57 Open Your Mind

Design: I guess there is nothing inherently wrong with Tenka Seiha’s theme.  It might be nice if the RSS link were higher on the page maybe, and, again, I’m not much of a fan of such a dark design (but you do have a choice between 3 color themes too!) but there is nothing which just screams at me.  I wouldn’t necessarily call it a good design, but I wouldn’t call it bad either.  Open Your Mind uses a pretty common design, but is on wordpress.com, so there is only so much they can do about that.  However, I don’t really like how far down the page the categories list is, and an RSS links seems to be nowhere to be found.  Also, and this is kind of a pet peeve of mine but… *whispers* no one cares how many visitors you’re getting…especially not enough to put it as the 3rd thing on your sidebar! *ends whispering*.  Having a monthly web stats post or something…OK, fine, it’s once a month. But on the sidebar? And so high on it?  I think this may be the third time in a row, but I think considering the two designs, I’m going to make this one a push again.  Winner: Push

Post Rate/Style: Neither blog appears to have an issue with posting rate, so that’s good.  For posting style, I’d think it’d be a bit nice for Tenka Seiha to perhaps have a bit more in their preview text.  Otherwise I don’t really see anything wrong with the post style.  It pretty much consists of the thoughts on each episode and then the gallery.  With Open Your Mind, again, posting style is typically a picture and a couple of paragraphs, so I don’t really see anything wrong with it.  so far, and not very much to distinguish the blogs.  Winner: Push

Content: Tenka Seiha’s typical amount of content for their episode review posts is about 2 paragraphs of thoughts, then the image gallery.  That seems to be running on the low side, for me, especially since that seems to be the standard.  However, Open Your Mind seems to have even less content, which is compounded by the fact that it set up to be an editorial blog.  In fact, it’s lack of content is why I voted against Open Your Mind in the first round, and it’s the reason why it appears like I’ll do the same in the second round. Winner: Tenka Seiha

Overall: Well, I didn’t find either of these blogs to really stand out all that much, but Tenka Seiha had more “there” there.

Winner: Tenka Seiha

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Match 6 – #25 Borderline Hikikomori vs. #89 2-D Teleidoscope

Design: Other than the dark design, there isn’t very much to say about Borderline Hikikomori.  I guess I do have to say that the search box is so dark, it almost gets lost, and the RSS link is toward the bottom of the page, but otherwise it seems OK.  2-D Teleidoscope has probably the most bland design in the history of the web, though I guess it doesn’t necessarily hurt anything.  My big problem with them is this: no links to archives. No links to categories. No links to RSS.  Nothing.  While I’m not a huge fan of their color choices, I still think BH still handily wins this category.  Winner: Borderline Hikikomori

Post Rate/Style: Both blogs have a pretty decent posting rate, with Borderline Hikikomori doing a little better, but probably not enough to make a difference since they’re episode blogging and 2-D is editorial blogging.  BH uses the dreaded IPIP (Image-Paragraph-Image-Paragraph) post format, though in this case, the larger font and the smaller images makes it at least bearable, since the text doesn’t just get lost.  2-D does the IPIP thing a little bit too, though they typically have at least a couple paragraphs together at a time, which makes it better.  I think as a result, 2-D might take this category by a nose.  Winner: 2-D Teleidoscope

Content: BH seems to have quite a bit of content per post, which is always good, though it seems to depend on the author how much of it is recap and how much of it review.  Meanwhile, 2-D Teleidoscope also has some pretty good content as well, and when it comes to several paragraphs of episode review vs. several paragraphs of editorial, given similar writing quality, I’m pretty much going to give the edge to the editorial blog, unless the review site has enough actual thoughts by the author to make up for it.  Winner: 2-D Teleidoscope

Overall: This match might be the hardest for me to decide on so far.  2-D won the content category, which up until this point, has pretty much decided to winner, but in this match, they didn’t really win it by much.  They also won the Post Rate/Style, but again, not by much.  The only category Borderline Hikikomori won was the design category, but they won it by a larger margin than 2-D won either of their categories, but it’s also the least important category out of the three.  I think BH has just enough “review” in their episode review posts to make the content category close enough, that their design win can overcome the content difference and the post rate/style difference.  But it is just.

Winner: Borderline Hikikomori

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Round 2, Day 4

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Match 7 -#9 hontou ni vs. #73 chaostangent

Design: hontou ni has a pretty good design to their blog.  It’s very clean and organized.  All the important “sidebar” things are easily accessible (RSS, Search, Categories).  It’s just an overall excellent design.  I’m trying to find something to criticize about it, and about the only thing I can come up with is maybe the order of items in the sidebar.  But that’s still a personal preference.  They order they have things in still makes sense, depending on what way you think is the easiest way for people to find content (I personally like to put the search box first thing, but you don’t have to).  However, they go up against perhaps the blog with the best conceived design of the entire first round, and perhaps the entire tournament: chaostangent.  It really is hard to say how impressed I am with chaostangent’s design.  The one noticeable missing item, however, is that I can’t easily find a link to the RSS feed.  I can’t find one on the page at all actually.  I mean, I can find it by adding “feed/” to the URL, but a visitor shouldn’t have to do that.  I also never really got why people have RSS feeds from other sites on the sidebar, but that’s just me. (and you have no idea how far I’m having to reach when it comes down to criticizing that).

However, why I think I’ll end up putting choastangent first in this category is this:  hontou ni took and modified a standard wordpress theme which, normally, would probably give you a great shot at winning the design category right there.  However…I have no idea what theme – if any – chaostangent is using.  The only thing I could gleam from their code was that they are using WordPress, but that’s about it.  However, given the author’s background, and what I saw in the code, I wouldn’t be a least bit surprised if he built his design from scratch.  I think it is this, which ultimately leads me to picking chaostangent here. Winner: chaostangent

Post Rate/Style: Neither blog has a problem with post rate, so that’s a non factor.  There isn’t anything particularly wrong about the post style at hontou ni that I can really see.  Nothing that particularly annoys me anyway.  chaostangent has a minor case of IPIP, though it’s more like IPPIPP, so it’s certainly not as bad, and most of the paragraphs have some beef to it, which make it even better.  They also have a little insert on their post, which is something I haven’t really seen anywhere else.  At least not in the anime blogosphere.  I just like chaostangent’s post style a tad better, especially with that little added uniqueness.  Winner: chaostangent

Content: Unfortunately for hontou ni, it’s primary author, Zyl, now writes for Sea Slugs!, meaning that a good deal of the posts nowdays is a picture, with a link to the Sea Slugs! post about that episode.  Indeed, 4 of the 10 posts on the homepage are currently like that.    However, that doesn’t mean that there still aren’t some pretty good posts on the site.  However, even with that, I just think chaostangent runs them off the road with content.  Perhaps the only thing bad I can say is that he occasionally writes about non-anime things, but for now, he does it with such infrequency, that I can’t really hold it against him very much. Winner: chaostangent

Overall: I think the main thing that hurt hontou ni is just the fact that Zyl is doing most of his episode blogging over at Sea Slugs! now instead of here, and that takes a good chunk of the site’s good content away.  Maybe it would have had a better shot at winning otherwise, and I think against a mere mortal opponent, hontou ni may very well have won, but as it is, I’m not sure how I can give this match to him.  Meanwhile, the more I look at chaostangent, the more I feel that it is going to be quite a formidable out for anyone who faces it in the future.

Winner: chaostangent

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Match 8 – #24 Ogiue Maniax vs. #88 Caraniel’s Ramblings

Design: Ogiue Maniax’s design is pretty, well, black and white, but there isn’t anything that I’d say is glaringly wrong with it.  I think the sidebar headers (the light green) is kind of hard to see on the white background, perhaps, and the site is unusual for having the sidebar on the left instead of the right (not that there is anything wrong with that), but other than that, there isn’t much to note other than just the general lack of colors.  Ogiue Maniax, along with Caraniel’s Ramblings, is hosted at wordpress, so there is only so much I can say about the designs.  For whatever reason, I kind of feel that Ogiue is a little easier on the eyes, so I’ll go with them.  Winner: Ogiue Maniax

Post Rate/Style: Ogiue has posts pretty much daily, which, for an editorial blog, is quite impressive.  They don’t use any kind of annoying post styles, so that’s also a plus.  Caraniel’s also posts quite a bit, which appears to be a mix of episode reviewing and other writing, so that’s a non-factor in this match.  Maybe the only thing I have to say about Caraniel is that they use some of the IPIP style in their episode review posts, and since pretty much everything else in this category is equal, I think that pushes it over into Ogiue’s favor.  Winner: Ogiue Maniax

Content: This is where, I think, Ogiue Maniax starts showing some chinks in the armor.  Not because of writing quality, because it’s good, or necessarily because of writing length, because the posts are of a pretty decent length, especially for an editorial writer who is writing almost daily.  Where I think the chinks come in is that there are sometimes topics which aren’t necessarily anime related, and that is something that I decided I would look at.  It normally isn’t an issue, but it does come up eventually.  For an example, on the current homepage, I think I counted 3 out of 10 posts which had no relation to anime, even tangentially, and another couple where the connection was tenuous.  There’s nothing wrong with it…it is their blog.  I just wanted to point that out since it is something that I explicitly stated I’d look for (and have already before).  Caraniel’s Ramblings has a pretty good level of content, though half of it does deal with episode reviews.  So the question comes down to this: does Ogiue’s main anime-related editorial content overcome the fact that maybe a quarter of what they write isn’t anime related?  I think in this case it does, but it was close for me.  I went through a bit more of the archive to get a better feel for the blog, and I just kind of felt that, even though there was some of the non-anime content there, most of the other posts did seem to make up for it.  So I’m calling this one for Ogiue as well.  Winner: Ogiue Maniax

Overall: Despite this being a sweep, Caraniel’s Ramblings is hardly a bad blog.  I think it’s still a pretty good blog.  I just think that it ran up against another blog which was a tad out of it’s league in this round.

Winner: Ogiue Maniax

Once again, if you see me criticizing something about your blog, it’s nothing personal.  I tend to tear apart people’s websites when I do comparisons such as this, so just keep that in mind.

I may try a different layout in this round…I’ll see how I like it.  I think it’s making my write up for each match longer, so I may end up posting more frequently as well.  But more information is never bad, is it?

Aniblog Tournament | HTML Bracket

Round 2, Day 1

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Match 1 – #1 Sea Slugs! Anime Blog vs. #64 Calamitous Intent

Design: Sea Slugs definitely wins here, not only having their own unique design, but having their own friggen mascot.  I mean really, your own mascot?  How are you supposed to beat that?  Meanwhile, while Calamitous Intent’s site design is clean, it’s using a pretty common theme (though one has to give it a bit of a break due to being hosted on wordpress.com).  Winner: Sea Slugs

Posting Rate/Style: Neither of these blogs have a problem with posting rate, so that’s a good sign.  I would say that Calamitous Intent certainly has the “prettier” posts, with the nice artsy pictures and all. Sea Slugs has a more “traditional” post format (though it changes dependent on the author).  The recap section of the posts often uses the detested “image-paragraph-image-paragraph” format, though the review section typically doesn’t.  Not counting amount of content, I’d say that Calamitous Intent probably eeks out a win here. Winner: Calamitous Intent

Content: Calamitous Intent’s main problem that I see is that most of the posts are somewhat lacking on content, being usually a picture (or a few) and then a paragraph maybe two.  There are exceptions, but they are, well, the exception.  Sea Slug post length and quality is somewhat dependent on who writes it, but the writing quality always seems to be pretty good, and I rarely see posts that have fewer than at least four paragraphs or so, so there is still at least a moderate amount of content per posts, many of which have rather lengthy review sections, which is even better.  I’d say that, as far as amount of content, Sea Slugs is the clear winner here. Winner: Sea Slugs

Overall: With such a clear winner in the content category, the two other categories don’t have a lot of influence on the winner, but I’d say even then, Sea Slugs has a bigger win in Design than Calamitous Intent does in the Posting Rate/Style, so I’d give this as a pretty clear win for Sea Slugs.

Winner: Sea Slugs! Anime Blog

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Match 2 – #32 Kitsune’s Thoughts vs. #33 The Cart Driver

Design: I thought both of these sites used very narrow design’s for today’s day and age (both are around 700px wide).  However, I found Kitsune’s Thoughts’ design to be a bit more appealing, never being much of a fan of such a dark design, such as the one The Cart Driver uses.  The Cart Driver might get some kudos for having such a small banner, but it’d be nice to have some image in it, even if not very big.  I think overall, Kitsune’s Thoughts wins the design category. Winner: Kitsune’s Thoughts

Posting Rate/Style: Kitsune’s Thoughts has 11 posts since April 1st, which is a tad over 1 every 4 days, which is in the moderate category for me.  Also, I’m not sure how much I like having to scroll on their episode review posts before actually getting to any written content.  Having pictures is good, but at first I thought they had nothing but pictures.  I like a lot of the nice art in the posts, but I think it’s actually somewhat hurt by the narrow page design.  Meanwhile, The Cart Driver appears to have a pretty good post rate, but they use the annoying “image-paragraph-image-paragraph” (maybe I should just call it IPIP from now on) layout, though their non-episodic posts seem OK.  However, I think the IPIP layout is better than the “have to scroll for 2 hours before finding content” layout, so that, with the better posting rate, gives this section to The Cart Driver. Winner: The Cart Driver

Content: I’m somewhat worried about Kitsune’s Thoughts’ amount of content.  Their episode review posts have an OK amount of content I guess, and some of the other posts are post types where one might not necessarily expect a lot of written content but I’m still not sure about it.  The Cart Driver, even if it’s in an annoying format, didn’t seem to be a problem, with it still having a pretty good amount of content.  I think The Cart Driver pretty easily wins the content section. Winner: The Cart Driver

Overall: Well, this is an interesting situation.  Winning the 2 most important categories, looks like I’m picking The Cart Driver to win this match, despite the fact that I didn’t even pick them to win their first one.  I guess that’s how things go sometimes.  More Content + Better (if still bad) post style = The Cart Driver, even if I like Kitsune’s Thoughts’ design better.

Winner: The Cart Driver

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Round 2 Day 2

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Match 3 – #16 We Remember Love vs. #49 Hanner’s Anime Blog

Design: Both of these blogs are on hosted blogging platforms (Wordpress and Blogspot respectively), so there is only so much one can say about their design.  However, Hanner’s has easily accessible RSS feeds while WRL does not.  On the other hand, WRL has a category list near the top of the sidebar, while Hanner’s has a tag cloud at the bottom of their sidebar.  WRL also has a wider page, and a better sized header, but Hanner’s perhaps has a slightly better color choice.  I think in the end the design is probably a push here.  Winner: Push

Posting Rate/Style: Hanner’s definitely has a higher posting rate, with, I think I counted 16 posts since the start of May, while WRL has 13 from the start of April (which works out to just about 2 posts a week).  One does have to take into some consideration, though, that Hanner’s is blogging nine series while WRL is more of an editorial blog, and thus will pretty much never be able to post as much as someone blogging that many series.  13 posts in 6 weeks is still borderline, but it’s not bad for an editorial blog.  Both blogs appear to have pretty good posting styles however.  I guess I’ll go with Hanner’s in this category because WRL is borderline on the posting rate while Hanner’s is not.  Winner: Hanner’s Anime Blog

Content: What We Remember Love might lose in the posting rate, it makes up for in the level of content per post.  Just going through the last 5 or 10 posts shows that quite a bit of thought and writing went into each.  This isn’t a blog that posts a 2 paragraph editorials.  These things are long, and while the writing quality (I’m trying to do a better check of actual writing quality this round if I can remember and find time) could use a slight improvement, it’s nothing bad.  Hanner’s is, well, basically your typical episode review blog, at least as far as amount of content – typically about 4 paragraphs per post.  However, from reading a few of the posts, it looks like the typical routine is 3 recap paragraphs and 1 review paragraphs (though there might be some “reviewing” in the other 3 paragraphs as well).  One paragraph of the author’s thoughts per post isn’t really doing it for me.  If one has four paragraphs in an episode review post, I would hope that the ratio would be, at the very least, reversed, with 1 recap and 3 review.  Winner: We Remember Love

Overall: So this match has kind of turned onto sheer volume of posts vs. volume of content per post.  While WRL’s post rate is borderline, I wouldn’t necessarily put it into the “concerning” category.  Given the sheer amount of content per post for WRL, and the questional amount of “original” (i.e. non-recap) content at Hanner’s, I don’t think the sheer number of posts they have can save it.

Winner: We Remember Love

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Match 4 – #17 Baka-Raptor vs. #48 Paper Flower

Design: I’ll say it up front because it affects how I can review all of the categories: It’s somewhat difficult to get a handle on Baka-Raptor, since it is pretty much an anime satire/troll/snark/whatever website, and so everything, even down to the design, has to be seen through the lens.  Normally I’d look at B-R and be like “what a crappy design!” But then again, it’s pretty much meant to be that way, so I’ll try to do what I can.  Keeping that in mind, the main thing that I think Baka-Raptor could do in the design which they don’t is have a least a short review of what the post is about on the home page.  Otherwise, there isn’t anything that I find particularly wrong with the it’s design.  Paper Flower has a pretty nice design itself.  I said this in the review for the first round, but the only thing that I think they could do is have 5 posts instead of 3 per page, but it’s not a major issue.  I think overall the design category is a push. Winner: Push

Posting Rate/Style: Baka-Raptor only has 5 posts since the start of April, and hasn’t had more than 6 posts per month in…quite a while.  The style is all over the place (though, again, intentionally I think).  Meanwhile, Paper Flower has 6 posts already in May, and had 12 in April (so about 1 every 3 days), so Paper Flower certainly wins when it comes to posting rate, and Baka-Raptor doesn’t have the excuse of pointing to the type of blog it is, since Paper Flower is mostly an editorial blog as well. I also like the general posting style at Paper Flower, so I think they rout Baka-Raptor in this category.  Winner: Paper Flower

Content: Again, you have to look at Baka-Raptor’s content through the lens that pretty much everything they write is satire or trolling of some flavor.  I guess Baka-Raptor is OK if you want a good laugh, and you’re into that sort of humor. I found Paper Flower’s content a lot more interesting and informative, and there is more of it.  I’m sorry anime blog world, but I gotta go with Paper Flower here too. Winner: Paper Flower

Overall: So with winning two categories, and one draw, it seems the winner of this match is pretty clear.

Winner: Paper Flower

So, voting for Round 1 of the AniBlog Tourney is finally complete (full HTML bracket here).  About halfway through the first round, I started collecting stats for each of the match-ups in the tournament to see what some of the numbers are, so this is where I’ll show what I’ve collected so far.  I present these numbers as they are, without making any judgments about what they mean.

The first round had 32 matches.  Over these matches, there were a grand total of 6,485 votes cast, resulting in an average of 202.7 votes cast per match.  The most voted upon match was Match #11 between Canne’s Anime Review and Colony Drop, with 480 total votes cast.  The least voted on match was Match #23, between Cross Channel and Gelotaku9, which had a total of 101 votes cast.

Perhaps not unexpectedly, the number of votes per match declined as the first round went on.  The first 8 matches averaged 259.9 votes per match, matches 9 – 16 averaged 228.5 votes, matches 17 – 24 averaged 186.5 votes, while matches 25 – 32 averaged 135.8 votes.

The average vote per match was 124.4 for the winner and 78.2 for the loser, with an average margin of 46.2 votes.  The top 5 winning vote getting blogs in the first round were Canne’s Anime Review (254), Hanner’s Anime Blog (231), AstroNerdBoy (209), Cart Driver (201), and Calamitous Intent (173).  Colony Drop also garnered 226 votes in a losing effort.

The top 5 closest matches in vote margin were Caraniel’s Ramblings over 見ないで! ひとり言 (2 votes), Just as Planned over Moe Check (4 votes), Cross Channel over Gelotaku9 (5 votes), Anime Princess over Chikorita157’s Anime Blog (6 votes), and Oishii Anime over Metanorn (7 votes).  The largest absolute vote margin was by Hanner’s Anime Blog over wat you say (144 votes).

The average percentage per match was 62.1% for the winner and 37.9% for the loser, with an average margin of 24.2%.  The top 5 percentage getters were eye sedso (81%), Memories of Eternity (80%), Astrobunny (76%), and 2-D Teleidoscope and Hanner’s Anime Blog (73% each).

The top 5 closest matches based on percentage of the vote were Caraniel’s Ramblings over 見ないで! ひとり言 (0.9%), Just as Planned over Moe Check (2%), Oishii Anime over Metanorn (3.7%), Anime Princess over Chikorita157’s Anime Blog (3.8%), and Cross Channel over Gelotaku9 (5%).  The largest percent margin was 62% by eye sed so over Densetsu no Shounen A.

Now, onto how I did in picking blogs in the first round, and I will be a little bit more free with editorial comments here (standard disclaimers apply).  I made picks for each of the 32 matches, and out of those 32 matches, the blog I voted for went 23 – 9, which I guess is decent, though that was who I thought should win, not who I thought will win.  Two of the matches in which I voted against the majority I really thought the majority just plain got wrong.

The first match was Blue Blue Wave against Fuzakenna!.  The reason for this is that I really didn’t think that Fuzakenna! had better content than Blue Blue Wave (I didn’t think it was worse either. They were comparable), but Blue Blue Wave was pretty much superior in almost every other way (design, layout, etc.).  Fuzakenna! seemed to win largely from the fact that more people know of their blog, which I guess isn’t a bad reason to vote for them.  But I thought on a straight up, unbiased review between the two, Blue Blue Wave was pretty easily the better blog out of the two.

The other match up isn’t really one that I would have considered an upset by their merely losing, but the margin shocked me, and that was Astrobunny’s Blog winning over Anime Void 76% to 24% (the 3rd largest margin of the first round).  When I inquired in the comments section why Astrobunny’s Blog was winning by such a margin, someone responded by saying its content.  Well, my response to that is this: what about its content makes it in any way superior (much less that much more superior) than Anime Void?  They’ve started posting more frequently now, but as of the time of voting, they had 12 posts total since the start of March (8 in March, 3 in April, 1 in May).  They do look like they had a good February, but even beyond number of posts, the actual amount of written content on posts was minimal, maybe two paragraphs all told average per post, and often not even that much.  I have no problem that they won.  It was a close choice for me. But winning by 52%? Really? And because of clearly superior content? Give me a break.  Unfortunately I won’t be surprised if we see more of this in the 2nd round now that we have some of the bigger blogs coming up, with people reflexively voting for them just because of who they are.  I hope I’m wrong, but we’ll see.

Otherwise, I thought the first round went pretty well.  The other 7 matches that I disagreed with the majority were ones that, while I did disagree, they were generally close choices for me as well so I don’t have any real problem with the results.

Even though this blog wasn’t up in the first round, there were still some suggestions I saw given to other blogs which looked like could be applied to mine as well.  Many of those suggestions came from Chikorita157 who did their own similar writeup two days ago.

Many of the things they talked about I also agreed with, and even discussed on this blog when talking about the AniBlog Tournament:

• Keep your Blog up to date
• Have a decent and relatively unique design
• Don’t use large banners
• Have sufficient navigation, such as categories, tags, etc. (and have them actually be usefully labeled.  Having an “anime” category where 80% of your posts go with no further breakdown doesn’t count)

I can kind of add to that some of my further thoughts:

• I’ve found a trend among some blogs to have a posting style of a sentence or maybe a full paragraph of text, then an image, then a sentence or a paragraph, then a sentence, and so on. While I guess this would be an OK format if the entire post was about commenting on the images, if you’re actually writing about the episode, I found it to be rather disruptive, with it needlessly breaking up the text.
• Tag clouds: They are the bane of  humanity. I have a tag cloud too…on it’s own page.  Generally most tag clouds are so big and bulky they probably should be on their own page too instead of stuck on the sidebar.  If you feel compelled to have a tag cloud, try to make sure you only have a limited number of tags, or you at least limit it to the most used tags on your site.  And try not to make it too big or stand out too much. You don’t want it overpowering the rest of your page.

Things That Apply To This Site

However, just because I was passing judgment this round doesn’t mean I wasn’t also paying attention.  I largely took advantage of  Chikorita157’s advice and installed a plugin to create a mobile version of the site (hopefully it works since I don’t actually have a mobile device to test it with); do the page numbers at the bottom of the page, which I find much nicer than just the previous and next episode links; and I tried to cut down on the recap part of my review for upcoming episode reviews (I’ve always had a bad habit of writing excessively long recaps).

One additional thing I’ve added, since I noticed that my blogroll was starting to get really long, was install a plugin that shows 10 random links instead of the whole long thing.  That had been on my mind for a while, so I figured I just as well do it now.

In any case, as the 2nd round goes on, perhaps I’ll pick up other ideas on how to tweak this blog, hopefully for the better.