Forum - View topicNext Forum Tournament, Part XLVI:Voting
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Ggultra2764
 Subscriber Posts: 3889 Location: New York state. |
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The problem I see with running the tournament in this way is one of the same major complaints I have with the whole idea of a Best First Episode tourney: subjective fan perception. Some fans might think that the first episode of a title sticks out from the norm strongly to them while others could perceive it as okay yet not to the level that the other fans would think of it as and in some extreme cases, you would have folks thinking you would be nuts to think said first episode was the best thing to see.
Even if I were on the bandwagon for Best First Episode, lowering the participating titles in the tourney to 64 is too absurd of a request to ask for considering the many titles that folks would want involved. And I still plan on jumping ship from any tournament participation if Best First Episode is the big can of worms that folks want to dig into. |
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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@
 Posts: 3498 Location: IN your nightmares |
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I've been thinking about what my perception of "Best First Episode" means, because of the difficulties that this tournament may present due to the word "Best" being very vague and subjective. I think it would help if we generally came to a consensus on what "Best" referst to, i.e. best at what? So from my perspective on that, best means most inspiring to the extent that the first episode did not just inspire me in a way that it impacted how I thought of the rest of the series, it impacted me in a way that changed my perception of the world in general.
It inspired me to do greater, reminded me of the important things in life and gave me a positive outlook that things could always be worse, hard work really does pay off. Anime is not just something I enjoy for entertainment, the best anime (i.e. most inspiring) gain that recognition because they have inspired me in a way that is life changing and enlightening. Therefore in choosing what first episode truly deserves that recognition, ponder how that 1st episode in particular was impressive to you in a way that watching the rest of the series may or may not impress you in the same way, yet remain relevant to the rest of the series. |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Well, what's the role of a first episode? To get you to watch the second. I would say that a good first episode needs to have a 'hook' to lure viewers back. It also needs to properly set up the world that the characters will be inhabiting, a world that looks like it has been well-thought out. It also needs to introduce the characters, of course, and make those characters seem like people with layered and complex personalities, even if we can't see and don't know all everything about them. A good first episode must also be strong in the technical merits. Good voice acting, nice art, few animation shortcuts, background music that fits and supports the various scenes and catchy OPs and EDs that may or may not foreshadow future events. Now that I think about it I would rather have had Best First Impression, because then I could have nominated Initial D, whose opening four episodes are nigh-on perfect. Ah well. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18219 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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If Best First Episode does win, I favor a set of base evaluation criteria very similar to this - i.e., with an emphasis on "well-constructed" and "compelling." How good the rest of the series is (or isn't) would not, of course, be allowed as a consideration, which would permit series that start strong but tank later on to be considered fairly. |
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Spastic Minnow
 Bargain HunterExempt from Grammar Rules  Posts: 4614 Location: Gainesville, FL |
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I'm actually of a different mind. I've suggested this before, I say the first round should be a pool of around 162-192 made up of three-slot brackets. If less than 192 nominations are made then the best scoring wildcard shows get added to the next shuffled round of 64. It may be bothersome to shuffle the second round but I like the idea of strong wildcards being able to move to the round of 64. I also think it would more effectively trim the truly weaker conteders. And if nominating criteria is as general as is being suggested, a Best First Episode might be the right category to try such a bracket, rather than limiting and cutting off the pool at 128. |
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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@
Posts: 3498 Location: IN your nightmares |
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Gewürtztraminer
 Posts: 1028 Location: Texas - Its like whole other country. |
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4 Best First episode
2 Best Leader |
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Errinundra
Moderator
 Posts: 6534 Location: Melbourne, Oz |
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Sounds good. Going by my two examples I gave earlier, Sasameki Koto is exquisitely constructed while Elfen Lied is extremely compelling. That aside, if Best First Episode gets up we have a unique opportunity to watch every nomination (legal constraints excepted, of course). If, as has been suggested, we go with 64 nominations I'd like to request that each group in Round 1 has no more than eight contestants, ie four matchups. This will give us a week to watch all eight half hour episodes. After the first round we've then seen them all and can have more matchups per round. The rounds could look like this: Round 1: 8 groups of 8 Round 2: 2 groups of 16 Round 3: 2 groups of 8 Quarter Finals: 2 groups of 4 Semi Finals: 1 group of 4 Final That's 16 weeks, compared with the 18 required in the last few tournaments. |
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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@
Posts: 3498 Location: IN your nightmares |
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Isn't it time for voting to adjourn?
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Tris8
 Posts: 2114 Location: Where the rain is. |
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So it has been a good 3 days since our last vote, and it looks like Best First Episode has won. Before we start the nominations phase, we need to hammer down the definition of a best first episode. I've liked what Key and dtm42 have come up with:
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18219 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Yeah, I've been messing around all weekend getting little accomplished (beyond arguing in a couple of other threads and getting to see the newer FMA movie in a theater - that was cool), and that includes getting around to taking care of this.
Yes, Best First Episode is the clear winner. Its high score of 41 gave it a seven point edge over its nearest competitor (Biggest Otaku) and it was tied for the lead on both most votes (with Best Leader) and most first place votes (with Biggest Otaku), so it was a pretty decisive win. I will set the nominations phase up (which I'm kind of dreading, because I expect it to be messy) once I see some more feedback about the evaluating criteria and whether or not we should consider an alternate tournament structure. And on that issue, I don't think it's feasible to do four-series groups in the first round since we don't have a high enough participation level for that. (If we were more in the mid-to-high double-digit count for participation, that would be different.) I'm not convinced that doing it they way we've been doing it in the past is feasible either, however, as 32-participant fields are just too big when we're talking about reviewing entire episodes. My current thought on this is to run a two-stage Nominations phase where the first stage will be run as we've done it in the past and the second stage will whittle the field down to 64 entries. Any first episode which gets above a certain vote cut-off will automatically advance - with the cutoff set so that this will apply to the top 32 or so series - while the remaining series participate in run-off nomination voting for the remaining slots. That would make the Nominations phase take about a week longer than normal but would effectively eliminate the first round. Then we could run things in the manner errinundra suggested, above; I do agree that the early rounds should be smaller groups since that's when people are most likely to want to review the first episodes in question. The other catch here is going to be video access to the first episodes. In cases where the episodes are legally available in streaming form, it's a simple matter of just posting a link to that source (although that could be problematic for people who often run into region locks on such things). In cases where they aren't, people will be left to their own devices to track the episode down, as I can't and won't engage in linking to unauthorized streams. I'm going to ask people to be extra-thoughtful about what they nominate, so think about this carefully over the next day or two until the Nominations thread starts. Be sure that what you're nominating isn't just something that you like but something that could impress others with its quality. For purposes of this exercise, I am going to use the following rulings on what constitutes a "first episode:" *First installments of movie series like Broken Blade and Garden of Sinners count. *First installments in anthology titles or series, like Memories or Robot Carnival, do not count. Something like Human Crossing should not be used, either. *In cases where one series is merely a direct continuation of another, even if it has a different subtitle (for instance, Code Geass), only the first series' first episode can be considered. In cases where the later series is/are complete remakes and/or alternate versions, though (such as in the Tenchi Muyo!, FMA, and El-Hazard franchises), each individual series' first episode can be considered separately. *OVA/ONA series may be considered if they consist of more than one episode, feature a continuous story, and carry their own separate name if they are extensions of a TV series. Roberta's Blood Trail, for instance, could be considered as a separate series, but the OVAs for Baccano or the only loosely-organized Urusei Yatsura OVAs could not. *Specific rulings may have to be made in certain cases, such as the Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki OVAs, but we'll deal with those on a case-by-case basis at they come up. |
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Dorcas_Aurelia
 Posts: 5344 Location: Philly |
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I'll host the mini-game again, as usual. I'll post rules and entry information when we're closer to the start of the tournament.
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mow123
 Posts: 339 |
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Any update? It's been about a week. We should at least finalize the nomination process and the number of participants. I think we should still aim for the standard 128, and we can use additional nomination phases based on how many nominations we get. Like everyone else, I also expect way too many nominations due to the nature of the topic, and that literally any show out of thousands is eligible.
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18219 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Oh, I've just been dragging my heels on getting the new thread posted for the past week. I've got the initial post basically ready to go, so it should go up sometime later today.
Because initial groups of 32 are too big for the first episode concept to be practical, I'm currently looking at a field of 64 with an extra layer of eliminations in the nominations phase essentially replacing the first round. (Basically, when time's up the top 32 vote-getters automatically advance while the rest go into a closed run-off phase.) But we'll see how things go during nominations. |
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