March Madness on DbD

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Derailed by Darry (or Anime on My Mind to anyone who won't accept the name change) has always been one of my top favourite anime blogs to visit (honestly, I think I love it more than my own! lol). Put simply, Jason's mix of obvious hilarity and insight in his posts is one of a kind (even especially his gimmick posts are pure win), though admittedly all the sports references fly past my head faster than anything on Oofuri did. Basically when Jason blogs a series, a huge part of the show's entertainment value, I swear, really comes from his postings on it. Cases in point: Minami-ke, Gundam 00 (which I don't even watch!), Code Geass, Kanon, Muteki Kanban Musume and the first season of Higurashi (which was probably when I started following DbD AoMM as it was called back then).

Okay, better stop the blog stalker-ish rant there and come to the actual content of this post... March Madness 2008 on Derailed by Darry! (so much for not sounding like a total blog stalker...)


Since I only started following Derailed way after the last time Jason held March Madness on his blog, the details are still rather sketchy to me but in essence it looks like yet another anime popularity contest driven by DbD's readership which undoubtedly must be bloated enough to support the venture. Hopefully it doesn't collapse on itself like the late SaiGar *touches wood* and will make for yet another interesting excuse to return to Derailed throughout this one month(not like one is needed really =P). Anyways, I'm jumping on the bandwagon this time around, so here's a rundown on where I cast my votes in Round 1:

• Philosophical Division: No contest here, my vote went instantly to Mushishi, a series I find so good on the 'philosophic' front that if it were up to me it would take a mere one episode of this show to conquer this entire division (of course the whole point of it is that if it did come down to one person, it'd be Jason himself -_-")! I'm sure the guys over at Epic Win should agree... if they ever come back from that terrible inconvenience that is 'real life'...

• Shoujo Division: Sigh, the torned-ness... Nostalgia dictates that Full Moon, one of the earliest fansubbed anime series I watched independently (not via TV or *ahem* commercial sources), but of all series Jason lists in this category, the one true shoujo show on the list for me is definitely NANA, which contained all the right elements I look for in a good shoujo anime - solid drama and a good dose of humour that always cut into the tension caused by a good many unpredicted romances that sprouted throughout the series. Too bad I wasn't objective enough in the end to deny my loyal bias towards Ouran in the end >.<

• Comedy: Probably the most difficult category since it's incredibly subjective what makes one laugh. Trying to be objective here proved near impossible with contenders such as Minami-ke and Azumanga Daioh in the mix, even Fumoffu and Keroro Gunsou throws a difficult wrench in the mix (as funny as I found parts of Haruhi and NHK to be, those shows had much more than just humour to go by and weren't supposed to be comedy orientated anyways). But I just couldn't resist supporting emo-ramen since it's the one comedy series featured on DbD which cracked me up as much it was meant to (so Code Geass doesn't count) even before reading Jason's posts on it.

• Action: Black Lagoon 4tw! As much as people tell you about how the series is really a serious attempt at human study disguised under much explosions and gunfights, to me this series has always been about the over the top action (superhuman meido of doom/killer vampire trap lolis WTF???) and total bad-ass attitude it exudes (cheesy Engrish, I'll take it!).

Looking at the polls currently, there seem to be clearly predicted winners in each category already. Those who are still interested have till 11PST on March 3rd to vote for these 4 divisions before Jason posts the next 4 divisions. Since the top 2 series in each division will advance to the next stage together with the next 8 series with the highest total votes as wild cards, there seems a pretty good chance for all the series I've voted for to make it, with the sad exception of Muteki Kanban Musume T.T (Where is the emo-ramen love???)

No image this post since I think the one on the current March Madness post is just totally awesome by itself (can you spot 'me' in it? =P) Will probably report back on March Madness during the voting for the next 4 divisions come along, and probably up until the juggernaut series like Haruhi and er... Haruhi steamrolls the competition later on :P