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Most Clever/Intelligent Character Tourney Post-Mortem

The winner, with an incredible 205 points (out of a possible 258) is velocet. Holding on to second place with 200 is marie-antoinette, who lead the game for 17 out of 20 weeks, 8 of those weeks not being tied with anyone else. And rounding out the top 3 with 190 points is olliff. Quite an improvement from the duos mini-game, no?

1. Is there anything about the way the tournament is run that you think needs to be tweaked for next time? (The format for the next tournament will remain essentially the same unless I get good recommendations on possible changes.)

2. Did the discussions encourage you to try out any titles you have not previously watched?

3. Is there any character you think was overlooked, or any case where anime you have seen since the tournament started might have led you to vote differently?

4. Some have expressed dissatisfaction with the entire Final Four. Amongst those who were initially in the tournament, who do you think should have composed the Final Four?

1) Do away with the 'seeding' thing. I understand it's done to postpone contests between favorites, but I don't think that's necessary at all. More importantly, quite a few times I saw people vote for a character 'because they're a seed', which basically means you're following Key's opinion. I'd hope for a little more justification than that. How about randomizing the whole thing after each round? The mini-game could still be played by predicting which characters continue after each round, but we would have more variety and freshness.

At the start of the character nominations period, people just threw out names of characters they thought of, but later, due to the unexpectedly large number of nominated characters, it was required that a nomination have a short description stating why a character was worthy of the tournament. I think a few early characters (Werner Locksmith) might not have made it in had people been forced to consider what qualities were necessary to qualify and not been able to produce any.

1)

Kimiko_0 wrote:

1) Do away with the 'seeding' thing. I understand it's done to postpone contests between favorites, but I don't think that's necessary at all. More importantly, quite a few times I saw people vote for a character 'because they're a seed', which basically means you're following Key's opinion. I'd hope for a little more justification than that. How about randomizing the whole thing after each round? The mini-game could still be played by predicting which characters continue after each round, but we would have more variety and freshness.

I respectfully disagree, and this falls in line with the only suggestion I had to change the tournament. I think the seeds should be kept secret. That would prevent the mindless voting, which I admittedly did some times too. If you take a look here, you'll notice that a seed can be placed in any of the circles and they wouldn't end up matched up with each other until the fourth round anyway. Placing seeds at the top and bottom of each bracket (like in sports) only matters if each contestant is seeded.

Concerning the seeding: A seeding system will remain in place, as it exists to minimize the frequency of horribly strong face-offs occasionally seen in the early rounds of the earlier tournaments. (Anyone else remember Excel vs. Dokuro-chan in Round 3 of the Craziest Character Tournament?) I think this has been largely successful in the last couple of tournaments.

However, I do like the idea of "blind" seeding (i.e. seeds are set but randomly mixed into their respective halves of their bracket, and thus not automatically at the top or bottom), as it wouldn't require any extra work on my part and might help reduce bias. That will be implemented for the next tournament.

Key wrote:

Concerning the seeding: A seeding system will remain in place, as it exists to minimize the frequency of horribly strong face-offs occasionally seen in the early rounds of the earlier tournaments. (Anyone else remember Excel vs. Dokuro-chan in Round 3 of the Craziest Character Tournament?) I think this has been largely successful in the last couple of tournaments. However, I do like the idea of "blind" seeding (i.e. seeds are set but randomly mixed into their respective halves of their bracket, and thus not automatically at the top or bottom), as it wouldn't require any extra work on my part and might help reduce bias. That will be implemented for the next tournament.

Thinking a little more on it, having the seeds known prior to the tournament probably boosted the mini-game scores. Not that it's a good or bad thing, just something I noticed.

In the duos tournament, 6 of the 8 seeds made it to the final eight, but only three of the pairings (Kei&Bell, Ed&Al and Kurau&Xmas; and Kei&Bell didn't make it to the final four) were guessed to make it so far by more than a few (ironically, Haruhi&Kyon were the most popular in the minigame but were stopped early I like to think due at least partly to my arguments for Yukino&Souchiro). In the clever tournament, the mini-game quarter and semifinal picks were full of seeded characters.
For the duos tourament mini-game, except in group C (Elric's and K&C's group), after the second round, accuracy rapidly declined from about 25% to 10%, while the cleverest tournament minigame generally maintained a steady decline from 75% to 40% from start to finish (excluding a spike in D4).

So, yeah, seeding the characters works even when it's not obvious.

Kurau and Christmas. I always felt as long as they won I didn't care how I did at all in the mini game. I thought it was futile though as many people had not seen any of the show going into that tournament. I that particular title, above all others in any of the tournaments, gained the most notice and new fans. Just an opinion but it sure seemed as the tournament progressed to gain more and more new fans and people who planned to see the show.

My one real recommendation I suppose is make the topics for the next tournament easier to vote on. I avoided this one for a reason. I mean how do you decide who's the most intelligent? Were we basing this on IQ? Were supposed to base it on accomplishments? The amount of accomplishments or the grand nature of the accomplishments? How about the ability to get away with your accomplishments or hunt those down who perpetrate them? I just saw too many loop holes and uncertainties for the basis of the votes. I mean simply saying vote for the most intelligent or most clever really left the door too open I felt. One could say the same for the Best Duo tournament but even there you had an underlining thought they all had to achieve. That being their ability to progress as a duo. I mean if they just screw around or break up, or kill each other obviously that's a weak duo. So even while it was personal opinion on how the duos progressed in their respective series and who was stronger then the other all the duos had to at least prove they grew stronger as a duo to advance. So whatever the next tournament topic is I would suggest make it a simpler one, or make it very specific on what exactly participants are supposed to consider with their votes. Not just "vote for who's smarter" without any real specific guideline all are to follow. Just my suggestion.

That one and Banner/Crest of the Stars (whose wrap-up Banner III OVA series I just managed to track down and watch, BTW - and that entire two episode OVA justifies more strongly than anything else why Jinto and Lafiel deserved to make it to the Finals). I know a lot of people made comments about the wonder of discovering that franchise because of the tourney.

Anyway, more back on thread topic. . .

I dunno, I kinda like leaving interpretations of the topic at least a little vague, as it promotes discussion. Making the qualifications too specific reduces people to just voting in a more mechanical sense, and that's no fun.

We'll see what we come up with in the nominations process. You can always vote for a more narrow, clearly-defined subject, after all.

With all due respect to those that spoke out and said that the PMs they got were not biased, I still feel that a 9-2 margin in favour of a single character is abnormal and suspect. I feel that Light was cheated out of making the semi-finals.
[snip]
I know I sound like I have a case of sour grapes, but I believe that I have a legitimate gripe. I also believe the best character won in the end. Its just that the process in getting there was not all squeaky clean.

Oh, and one more thing I didn't like; the most boneheaded arguments made for or against characters. One voter actually tried to tell us that L was not intelligent because he didn't wear shoes. Another claimed that Light shouldn't advance because he was a sociopath, and therefore morally unfit to be the most intelligent.