Anime Madness

[LumRanmaYasha]

Rightstuf is having it's first annual "Anime Madness" tournament, where essentially fans will be able to vote on which series moves on in the competition. If you predict how the competition will go down, you get to win prizes. Most of them aren't great, but hey, one of the prizes is Revolutionary Girl Utena and it's still free stuff you can at least pawn off if you don't want it, so I'm game.

Here are the rules:

Contest Rules

To be eligible to win, your bracket must be completely filled out and emailed to animeclubs@rightstuf.com before March 23, 11:59 pm Central. When sending in brackets title your email with ?Your Name ? Anime Madness.? Only one entry is allowed per person.

The top-scoring brackets will be determined via a point system. Each correctly predicted match-up is worth a certain number of points depending on the round, with up to 16 points available each round and 80 points possible in total.

Points are awarded as follows:

First round: 1 point per correct match-up
Second round: 2 points per correct match-up
Third round: 4 points per correct match-up
Fourth round: 8 points per correct match-up
Championship round: 16 points

When the tournament is over, the bracket with the top score will win! If more than one entry is tied for the top score, the winner will be selected randomly from the top-scoring brackets.

But the REAL reason I'm interested in the competition are the special prizes courtesy of Vertical...

Vertical Contest Rules

We also have a special set of prizes from Vertical. To be eligible for these prizes, your bracket MUST choose either Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin or Chi?s Sweet Home as the winner of the Anime Madness Championship. Prizes are then awarded randomly depending on how far a Vertical title goes in the tournament.

If no Vertical title advances past the first round, 4 random winners who selected a Vertical title for the Championship in their bracket will each receive a copy of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin and Chi?s Sweet Home.

If a Vertical title makes the Sweet Sixteen, 16 winners will each receive a set of the 2-volume Sickness Unto Death series.

If a Vertical title makes it to the Great Eight, 8 winners each receive a complete Buddha paperback manga set. (8 volumes!)

If a Vertical title makes it to the Final Four, 4 winners will each receive a 5-volume Gundam: The Origin set.

If a Vertical title becomes the runner-up, 2 winners will each receive a 16-book Vertical collection!

If a Vertical title is crowned Champion, 1 winner will receive a 32-book Vertical collection!!

While the chances of winning a competition like this are slim...a chance to win 32 free manga books is still a chance I want a part of, dammit!

So, here are my predictions:




A lot of these first matches were hard to figure, but I think I've made good guesses based on what I know of the tastes of the modern anime/manga fan community and rightstuf buyers' habits. I really do think that Madoka manga, while a spinoff, is going to charge it's way to the final round because it's still Madoka and too much of a phenomenon in the anime community to bet against. I know Titan is probably the obvious choice for winner of the competition, but I do think that Gundam: The Origin, which will get pushed by Vertical's incentives, has a good chance of winning nonetheless.

What do you guys think? Anyone else going to try this competition?

[Spark Of Spirit]

I'll be surprised if One Piece doesn't win. It seems popular with about every anime fan from every age and background.

[LumRanmaYasha]

One Piece isn't nearly as big in the U.S. anime/manga fandom as Attack on Titan or even Madoka Magica. And seriously, Attack on Titan is a fucking phenomenon. The manga is selling like crazy. Volume 1 has been on the NY Times top seller list for manga for 39 weeks straight at this point. I'll be surprised if it doesn't win. I'm betting against it solely because to qualify for the Vertical prizes I have to put Gundam: The Origin as the winner, though I do really hope that Vertical's incentives give it more than a fighting chance in that inevitable matchup.

Really, I just want a chance to win that 32 book set. Vertical just has so many great classic titles under their belt and I'm always looking to grow my collection as it is.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I'll be surprised if One Piece doesn't win. It seems popular with about every anime fan from every age and background.

In Japan. Here, nobody could care less about the show.

[LumRanmaYasha]

In Japan. Here, nobody could care less about the show.

Pfft, what is this nonsense you are you talking about?  Plenty of people clearly care about One Piece. That's why FUNimation still releases the anime, Viz still releases the manga, and Toonami put the show back on the air. If it wasn't selling for any of them it wouldn't have 70 manga volumes and 380+ episodes on dvd and simulcasts on various streaming sites.

It might not be as big as Naruto or Titan in the fan community, but it's still a successful property here.

[gunswordfist]

One Piece isn't nearly as big in the U.S. anime/manga fandom as Attack on Titan or even Madoka Magica. And seriously, Attack on Titan is a fucking phenomenon. The manga is selling like crazy. Volume 1 has been on the NY Times top seller list for manga for 39 weeks straight at this point. I'll be surprised if it doesn't win. I'm betting against it solely because to qualify for the Vertical prizes I have to put Gundam: The Origin as the winner, though I do really hope that Vertical's incentives give it more than a fighting chance in that inevitable matchup.

Really, I just want a chance to win that 32 book set. Vertical just has so many great classic titles under their belt and I'm always looking to grow my collection as it is.

Damn, I had no clue it was that big. Shows how much I ignored it.

[Lord Dalek]

I believe AoT #1 is now the highest selling volume of any manga ever released in the US, purely based on how long its been in the NYT top 10.

[LumRanmaYasha]

I don't think it's the highest selling yet, because there are plenty of people buying series like Death Note, Black Butler, etc. every year and those series have been out longer, but I do think eventually, maybe the end of this year at earliest, it will be.

[LumRanmaYasha]

WELL. It turned out Attack on Titan wasn't as popular as I thought it was. I got like zip predictions right in the first round (seriously, Hentai Prince beating Cobra? WTF?). That doesn't really matter, since Vertical's prizes will be given out randomly (and my chances of getting those are marginal at best), but the results of the first round are still kinda shocking to me.

One Piece moved on to round 2, by the way. 

[Spark Of Spirit]

 

[LumRanmaYasha]

Graphs for the voting in round 1:



I'm still laughing at this. Seeing Attack on Titan, the anime/manga phenomenon it is, lose in such a landslide to Mikucolor is just... 





Now this just makes me sad. More people really need to watch Space Adventure Cobra (and I need to finish it...).







Shit, that was a close one. I'm glad Gundam pulled through so I can get mah chance for dem Vertical prizes, but seriously, why is Monster Musume so popular? 









I really thought Ranma's re-releases this month would stir up more passion for it, but Magi is, of course, newer and extremely popular, so it's no surprise it lost out here. I am happy to see it was a fairly close match, though.





I really thought Berserk would do better than this. Guess that's just the power of Madoka in the fandom, though.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Fuck, Gundam: The Origin has lost already. Dammit, I at least wanted a chance to win a complete collection of Buddha. Now if I win anything it's going to be the two-volume Sickness Unto Death series...which is shit, apparently. 

But seriously, this competition is proving to me that the general U.S. anime fandom (or, at least, people who buy stuff from rightstuff) have shit taste, since the only series left at this point are moeshit stuff, plus Magi which, has survived because it is a newer good series that went up against older (and not moe!) good series in the first two rounds. It'll probably lose in this match to the crappy Madoka Magica spinoff manga, though.

[LumRanmaYasha]

So, in the end, Mikucolor won, beating the Madoka Magica manga spinoff 86% to 13%. Wow. What the hell even is Hatsune Miku? Why is it's artbook so popular? How come only crappy moe titles got to the final 8? So many questions I don't even wan't to know if I want answered...

Anyway, the winner of the competition (who only had 44 points out of a possible 80) got:



Which is a lot of cool stuff (especially the Ranma poster. Me want~...) that makes me jelly that I didn't win, but oh well, just have to guess better next year. 

Now to wait and see if I got a Vertical prize. If I get Sickness Unto Death I'll probably just pawn it off online, though.

[The Shadow Gentleman]

What the hell even is Hatsune Miku?

A singing moe synthesizer, apparently.

[Avaitor]

Anime fans, you can never predict them.