Ogiue Maniax wins its first round in the Aniblog Tourney (technically the second, due to a higher seed allowing me to bypass Round 1), and I am happy to be the victor in this instance. I want to thank Caraniel of course, who was not only respectful and courteous during the week of competition but also is a good blogger in her own right.
Ogiue Maniax goes on to face Chaostangent in Round 3.
Now one thing about the Aniblog Tourney is that for those who are actively participating in it, either as voters or contestants or both, the whole endeavor has allowed people to discover new blogs, to get an idea of the range of styles available from just these 96 examples, let alone branching out to ones that haven’t been included in the tournament. But it’s very clear that there’s a lot of blog readers out there who simply are not participating in this fully and are not bothering to read the majority of the blogs available, or at least are not voting.
The first big piece of explicit evidence that the tournament is not reaching as far as it could is the matchup between Colony Drop and Canne, which got by far the most total votes in Round 1. This had very much to do with both the Pro and Anti-Colony Drop campaigns conducted when Colony Drop was poised to lose and then to win, but it’s clear that here was an audience of readers (if only for the one blog) that could have voted in or even looked at other parts of the tournament but didn’t. The second piece of evidence is the matchup between Star Crossed Anime Blog and Just as planned, where, to put it mildly, Star Crossed is dominating like Godzilla mixed with Guts from Berserk. 568 votes, just for Star Crossed! And I don’t think it’s a big leap to say that the crowd that voted so much for Colony Drop is not the same as the one that was so eager to show their support for Star Crossed Anime Blog.
I understand that not even the people who are actively participating in the Aniblog Tourney are voting in every single matchup. I’ve missed a few opportunities myself, but there’s a whole bunch out there who just vote for their favorites without looking at the other.
While Star Crossed garnered plenty of comments on its own blog in regarding the tournament, there were comparatively few on the Aniblog Tourney page itself. Then an equally titanic blog came up, but Random Curiosity’s situation has been far different. Unlike Star Crossed, Random Curiosity is not crushing its opponent and its fanbase is much more vocal (though still obviously just a small fraction of the actual readership Random Curiosity garners). And in those comments is a classic accusation among fans of competing or opposing sides, the foul cry of elitism.
Amidst the complaints that the people running the tournament (and by extension the primary audience of the tournament) are biased against popular episodic blogs, I left a response basically saying that instead of throwing out accusations of elitism or using overall popularity as a metric of superiority, that those who disagree should state just why they read the blogs they do, why they are fans of certain blogs and what keeps them coming back for more. Rather than just naysaying the other side, we can express our own opinions on why we read anime blogs at all and come to understand each other, even if it’s just agreeing to disagree.
Just to give you an idea, I’ll talk about a blog I enjoy that’s not in the tournament at all: Subatomic Brainfreeze (though actually he writes for Colony Drop so he wasn’t completely removed from it).
While I am friends with Sub and even engage in mahjong camaraderie with him on occasion, the reason I really enjoy his blog is his informative yet accessible writing style. Now I know that I am credited as having an accessible writing style as well, but Sub’s is on another level. When I read his posts, I feel like an arm is reaching out from the computer to grab my shoulder and occasionally high five me. Even his stuff on Colony Drop which makes fun of other fans still has the same basic feeling.
I know that not everyone who enjoys something is willing to comment about it, let alone write lengthy posts discussing the nature of preference itself, but I encourage everyone to think about why they enjoy the blogs they do.
OGIUE MANIAX 
I will definitely write a post regarding that. ^^
To me, I usually read blogs that are well-written because they give me inspiration and ideas to write better. They include blogs like the slightly inactive Hop Step Jump! (life-influenced posts), Psgels (for his great insights, I always try to reference him in my own episodic posts) and Baka-raptor (for being absolutely random and silly).
I am not that much of a keen anime blog reader to be honest, but I do read the blogs I mention weekly. ^_^
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yarr, thanks for that post! I discovered chaostangent through that post, and love it, but I can’t subscribe by email which means I forget about it.
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I agree, well said.
I’m not familiar with many of the blogs in the tournament, so I make sure to visit each before voting. And if I simply can’t choose between them, I won’t vote. The couple of times I’ve commented on the Tourney blog is just to say why I voted for certain blogs.
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The popularity angle was always going to be an issue in a competition/tournament set up despite the best intentions of the organisers (for which I have the utmost respect). It has certainly changed how I view a lot of other blogs (yours included) and increased the number I read (Google Reader never looked so busy…). I wholly agree that having a mature and measured discussion on the reasons we read blogs, what we’d like to see and ancillary topics around that would be absolutely invaluable, but unfortunately the number of people willing to do that (and – in a cogent fashion – is minuscule in comparison to the ones with Facebook-fever and want to vote, like or just blindly comment rather than open up a dialogue.
I’d hate for this to be the last tournament as I think iterating this every x months (six to twelve) would gradually build up its notoriety and iron out some of the kinks that scuppered the opening salvoes of round 1.
On a different note: best of luck with the third round, I doubt you will need it considering your convincing victories so far and general standing but it is a genuine pleasure to be facing off against you.
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With Sub, I came for the Badass Manly Anime Reviews, stayed for his badass manly writing. \o
As for the topic itself, I’m very, very much in agreement with your thoughts regarding both the goal of the tourney to open a window into blogs that other people have not considered before. And I do hope that people do focus more on why they vote for the blog they like, and not on why other people vote for the blogs that they don’t like. This was very much a sore point for me when I was involved with running the Anime Blog Awards back when it was initially starting. It was too easy to use a knejerk reaction with “popular blogs will win always” or “this is just a circlejerk between anime blogs” and the like. And it pissed me off partly because it was easy, and also partly because those weren’t the motivations for the event at all. And of course, the propagation of the idea even though it was wrong just because it made people feel better. :/
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Ah, I think this is definitely something that needed to be said by someone. By of course, if we tourney managers did so, we’d be whiners on top of elitists, wouldn’t we? ;)
The very idea of it (for myself, at least) amuses me still.
While the main purpose of the competition has always been to introduce new blogs to people and satisfy our curiosity as to what would happen from certain match-ups, the constructive criticism and explanations for why people read are certainly much more worthwhile for the bloggers themselves. Or at least, I feel this way.
Would definitely be nice to see some more.
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First off congrats on your win, twas a pleasure to do battle with you, best of luck in the 3rd round!
Now for the main issue – I completely agree with what you’ve said here and what others have brought up in the comments. For me at least, the tourney has been a very positive experience – I’ve discovered so many new blogs and really benefited from the comments made by readers/other bloggers on where I could improve my writing/layout. Plus its just been fun, which was the main point of the tourney anyway.
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IN MAHJONG, EVEN THE CLOSEST FRIENDS BECOME SINGLE-WAITING ENEMIES
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I haven’t been reading or voting in a lot of cases, but it’s not for no reason – I don’t care about most of the blogs in question. There’s a good reason that I read only a few anime blogs, and it’s not because I haven’t heard of other ones, but because I don’t like other ones. I’ve been giving some of the stuff in ABT a shot, and it has yet to effect my vote. None of the blogs I wanted to vote for went up a against another blog that I wanted to vote for. I’ve abstained a lot because, well, why vote for either if I dont’ care about them?
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and five God hand.
Personally, I’ve always thought that better established blog wouldn’t pay much attention to the tourney unless it was the big finals. Let’s take Tenka Seiha for example which unsurprisingly didn’t get that many votes (around 113) despite his great number of followers, reason being that he isn’t much involved in the tourney. A similar case is RC which I’m sure it’d have gotten a very large number of votes if it wouldn’t have decided to pay no attention to the tourney. This makes us wonder if everything can really come down to which blog is more established, who is more eager to win, years of experience and who has the largest readership at the very end. To some this is already the answer, to other it isn’t. Only the final result will tell.
I think there’s definitely some positive things to the tourney (even if I may poke some fun at it in the future) but there’s also some generated negative side to it as a result as well, as it is really unavoidable. It really depends on how one chooses to see it and how much one focus on it. Now, I can sit back and continue to enjoy the rest of the tourney as it was originally intended. Things are getting interesting once again.
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I think it’s easy to make a judgement of the writing style on a blog that you’ve read for a long time. A lot harder to make a judgement on a blog you’ve only just stumbled on. Also for some maddening reason I enjoy reading blogs that actively contradict my opinions to the extent of sometimes pissing me off.
#1. Digitalboy – whenever he gets especially forceful with his point all sorts of alarms go off in my head. Thankfully reading him a long time I’ve learned that’s just his style. I’ve learned to appreciate it a little better but it can still rile me on some posts. I think most recently was the comparison of Index and Bakemonogatari.
#2 Omo – I feel like sometimes Omo omits words or skips over a step in his thought process and then what comes out just makes no sense to me. Sometimes it makes too much sense and riles me up. Omo especially is so matter of fact in his language and tone. Often his commenting is nonsensical to me as well. I responded to his Qwaser post recently and had a breakdown of Sphere’s vocal synergy compared to Qwasers cast among other comments. The response back I got: “Balls to the walls for the lols!” I swear sometimes he’s speaking in code.
I completely forgot what point I was trying to make. Curiously enough those 2 are going against each other in the current round. Not sure when. That’s going to be a tough one for me.
I think I was going to go on and name some other blogs that I have no real judgement on their writing style. Shinmaru, Scamp, Psgels, RabbitPoets, and such I’ve all read for a long time but I couldn’t even begin to tell you what I thought of each of their writing styles. Maybe it’s easier to interpret the writing style for editorial than episodics?
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“I encourage everyone to think about why they enjoy the blogs they do.” YES! THIS!
I think it’s so very, very important to think critically about the things you like and the things you don’t like, and it seems that this component is sadly lacking in the anime blogging community (with a few notable exceptions, of course).
I get the feeling that a lot of people voting and commenting are expressing themselves via knee-jerk reactions, emotional responses and habit, rather than taking the time to think about what they are reading. Sadly, I think this is a symptom of the Internet-obsessed age we live in. If you can’t express why you like something or agree with a statement, you will not get very far. People who can argue and defend their thoughts are going to be respected over those who can’t, it’s just the way things are.
That said, I haven’t participated much in the Tourney, so color me a hypocrite. I simply don’t have time to read back entries of 90-odd blogs, a majority of which I’m not going to like. I read and vote for the blogs that I like and respect, that’s it. I have reasons for liking blog writers, and a huge part of it is the ability to think outside the box when it comes to the media one views. I look forward to reading the bloggers thoughts, even if I don’t agree with them or even know the series they write about.
*steps down off of high horse* :) I enjoy OguieManiax and hope that other people have come to read it because of the Tourney, and I hope that the Tourney has caused people to think about the blogs they read, instead of treating blogs like a popularity contest.
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