Even though this blog wasn’t up in the first round, there were still some suggestions I saw given to other blogs which looked like could be applied to mine as well.  Many of those suggestions came from Chikorita157 who did their own similar writeup two days ago.

Many of the things they talked about I also agreed with, and even discussed on this blog when talking about the AniBlog Tournament:

• Keep your Blog up to date
• Have a decent and relatively unique design
• Don’t use large banners
• Have sufficient navigation, such as categories, tags, etc. (and have them actually be usefully labeled.  Having an “anime” category where 80% of your posts go with no further breakdown doesn’t count)

I can kind of add to that some of my further thoughts:

• I’ve found a trend among some blogs to have a posting style of a sentence or maybe a full paragraph of text, then an image, then a sentence or a paragraph, then a sentence, and so on. While I guess this would be an OK format if the entire post was about commenting on the images, if you’re actually writing about the episode, I found it to be rather disruptive, with it needlessly breaking up the text.
• Tag clouds: They are the bane of  humanity. I have a tag cloud too…on it’s own page.  Generally most tag clouds are so big and bulky they probably should be on their own page too instead of stuck on the sidebar.  If you feel compelled to have a tag cloud, try to make sure you only have a limited number of tags, or you at least limit it to the most used tags on your site.  And try not to make it too big or stand out too much. You don’t want it overpowering the rest of your page.

Things That Apply To This Site

However, just because I was passing judgment this round doesn’t mean I wasn’t also paying attention.  I largely took advantage of  Chikorita157′s advice and installed a plugin to create a mobile version of the site (hopefully it works since I don’t actually have a mobile device to test it with); do the page numbers at the bottom of the page, which I find much nicer than just the previous and next episode links; and I tried to cut down on the recap part of my review for upcoming episode reviews (I’ve always had a bad habit of writing excessively long recaps).

One additional thing I’ve added, since I noticed that my blogroll was starting to get really long, was install a plugin that shows 10 random links instead of the whole long thing.  That had been on my mind for a while, so I figured I just as well do it now.

In any case, as the 2nd round goes on, perhaps I’ll pick up other ideas on how to tweak this blog, hopefully for the better.

Once again, if you see me criticizing something about your blog, it’s nothing personal.  I tend to tear apart people’s websites when I do comparisons such as this, so just keep that in mind.

Aniblog Tournament | HTML Bracket

Round 1, Day 13

Vote Here

Match 25: ______ism

_____ism has some interesting content, but I’m concerned about the rate of posting – only 4 posts since the start of April.  Also, I know that the design is probably meant to be quirky, but still…  Shit Storm uses a pretty common wordpress theme, so they don’t get any real points on design either, they haven’t posted but 4 times since the start of April, and I’m not sure they have quite as good content.  I think because of all that, I’m going with ______ism.

Match 26: Anime Void

I’m not sure what it is about infrequently posting blogs in this group, but Astrobunny’s blog is yet another which only has 4 posts since the start of April, and what is there seems somewhat minimal, except for maybe the figurine posts, since you’d expect a lot of pictures there anyway.  They do get some points for the design, though.  And we round it up with Anime Void, a blog with only three updates since the start of April.  I don’t like the design as well, but I think they have better content in the posts they do have, so I’m going with Anime Void.

Round 1, Day 14

Vote Here

Match 27: Memories of Eternity

The string of rarely updating sites continues with Memories of Eternity, as they only have 4 posts since the start of April.  Having said that, what they do have looks quite excellent, so that is definitely a plus.  I also think the blog does quite a good job at a minimalist blog design.  For Oballer, well, I don’t like the design that much, and as a designer, when I see a pixilated banner and a poll that is too wide for the sidebar it’s on, I go crazy (maybe mere mortal visitors don’t care, but it bugs the heck out of me).  Also, they post quite a bit about non-anime subjects.  That hasn’t been much of a problem for most of the blogs up until now, but I think it does cause a problem here considering this is the AniBlog Tournament.  About the only thing I could rate Oballer above MoE on is that they post about anime more often (despite his posts about other stuff as well).  However, I think the other factors weigh to much against it, so I’m going with Memories of Eternity.

Match 28: eye sedso

I think eye sedso automatically wins the entire tournament for having a picture of Chewbacca throwing out the opening pitch of some baseball game, even though it has nothing to do with anime.  But anyway…

eye sedso looks like a combo of some episode blogging and other commentary.  I don’t particularly like the style of episode posts (have I mentioned how I don’t like the alternating image then paragraph of text style?) but some of the stuff he wrote had be giggling pretty good.  Densetsu no Shounen A, well, hasn’t posted anything in 3 weeks, and while I’m not really one to talk about going on a hiatus, I’d probably vote against myself if I was still on one while this tournament was going on.  Having said that, I do like DnSA’s design and the layout of their episode review posts, though I think the blog generally suffers from a lack of variety.  As a result, I’m going with eye sedso on this one.

Round 1, Day 15

Vote Here

Match 29: Unmei Kaihen

Unmei Kaihen is another hybrid episode blogger/other stuff blog and I liked how the blog did both episodic and non-episodic posts.  Maybe the only thing I have to diss on the site about is the design.  It’s not necessarily all too bad, but it’s still really really..dark. everywhere, and while light gray text on black is still readable, I think it gets a little tiring after a while.  Continuing World also has some pretty good content as well, and while their design is white, there are some issues with it as well (I think I’ve already stated my dislike of tag clouds, especially big ones, and I almost missed the search box, since it’s mostly white on white).  I think in the end, the designs are a wash between the two sites.  Unfortunately (or I guess fortunately, as they’re both good), I think the content is also pretty close as well.  I just think Unmei Kaihen writes a bit more about things that I would enjoy reading, so I’ll go with it.

Match 30: The null set

The null set just came back on hiatus and has since posted 5 posts in a hair over 2 weeks, which I guess isn’t too bad, and their posting before the hiatus seems to be pretty regular, so I don’t think I’ll count it against them.  Null set does win brownie points for pointing me to that website creating all the anime charts (even for past years – I’ve thought about doing a top anime of the past 10 years post, but part of what was holding me back was just not know what all aired in that time.  That might help…and I probably need to watch some of the more well known shows in the meantime. but enough about me).  I liked a lot of the lists and stuff they do, though I think sometimes they try to make up for lack of content in some posts  by throwing in lots of large pictures.  Also…the green background…the green!  They go up against bad luck party and…the yellow background…the yellow!    They seemed to post pretty regularly until they stopped a couple weeks ago.  Also, while some of the posts have some good content, a lot are just a picture and a sentence.  I think overall, on content and design, I’ll go with The Null Set.

Round 1, Day 16

It’s finally here…the last two match ups of the first round, where we’ll finally reduce the field from 96 to 64.  After this, the real fun begins (not that it hasn’t already been fun).

Vote Here

Match 31: Desu ex Machina

We love maid looks like they took a hiatus in September and came back in April, but they’ve been posting good since then, so again, I won’t really count it against them.  I’m really liking WLM’s design though.  Maybe if they made the nav in the sidebar stand out a big (medium purple on dark purple = kind of hard to read) it would be even better.  I think my main worry about WLM is that it’s posts are all somewhat short.  Desu ex Machina (aside from getting the name of his blog wrong on the bracket) has a pretty good design themselves (except for the tag cloud! ahh! tag clouds!).  I also think that the amount of content they have is a lot better than WLM.  While I really want to vote for WLM for their design, I think I have to go with Desu ex Machina for their content.

Match 32: Chikorita157′s Anime Blog

Chikorita157′s blog is another one of those rare things: a site that blogs about anime music (at least in part), with some other stuff, including episode reviews, thrown in.  I like the content that they have on their post (and I like the fact that they are a fellow blog reviewer during this AniBlog Tournament).  Maybe the only complaint I might have is that the design is a little…blah.  Nothing is particularly bad about it, it’s just nothing really stands out about it.  Anime Princess is one of the first blogs in this tournament which can be included in the “your banner is way too big” category.  [entering blog rant: I realize that people like having artsy stuff and nice pictures on their blog.  But really, it's a blog. It's about the content. People don't want to scroll just to get past your banner. /end rant].  Also, only five posts since the start of April is pushing it for me, especially since Chikorita157 is pretty active.  The blog has an OK amount of content, but I think, overall, I’m going with Chikorita157 on this one.

Second round voting will begin May 11th, and will be in pairs again, so new polls should open between May 11th and May 26th while actual voting won’t close until June 1st.

Also, I’ll update these numbers (and add more) when we start Round 2 voting, and this is only through the votes ending today (Match 20), and some of these polls looked like they stayed open past the official close time and had some additional votes so I might not be using the super-duper official final results, but…

I’ve gathered some stats on this tournament so far, and after 20 matches, 4,753 total votes have been cast, with blogs winning by an average vote of 144-94 (well, 93.5).  The average margin of victory is 50.7 votes, or 21.8% (60.9% to 39.1%).

Once again, if you see me criticizing something about your blog, it’s nothing personal.  I tend to tear apart people’s websites when I do comparisons such as this, so just keep that in mind.  Sorry for being a tad late with this one.  I might be catching up of a few other things later tonight too.

Aniblog Tournament | HTML Bracket

Round 1, Day 9

Vote Link

Match 17: Behind the Nihon Review

Behind the Nihon Review appears to be an exceptionally well written editorial blog, and some of the articles I actually read all the way through (instead of just scanning over them).  The design is kind of average, but has some cool aspects to it (like the swirling tag cloud, despite the fact that I typically don’t like tag clouds).  Maybe the one minus is that there have only been 6 posts in the month of April.  Chocolate Syrupy Waffles certainly has a lot of content, and it looks like they have several authors adding content.  However, one thing started to really bug me after a while: there appeared to be absolutely no rhyme or reason as to the formatting of people’s posts or anything.  Now, I realize that different authors are going to have different writing styles, but it really got to the point of being distracting, at least to me. I think if CSW was more consistent, I may consider them, but I think this round is going to Behind the Nihon Review.

Match 18: Listless Ink

Listless Ink seemed to stand out right away to me.  The blog design is pretty good (and I had to laugh at the chibi RSS and Twitter characters).  On top of that, the content on the blog, which looked like was mostly editorial in nature, appeared to be pretty well written and thought out from what I read.  Again, perhaps the main minus is posting rate, with only 3 posts in the month. Super Noisy Rice Shower Goes Boom!! is yet another highly specialized type of blogs: in this case, a blog about Japanese seiyuu, specifically.  They post reasonably often (9 posts in the month) and while a blog about seiyuu isn’t something I would necessarily personally follow, it’s hard to discount the blog as it is covering something pretty unique.  That makes this choice pretty difficult for me, as I really hate to vote against either of these blogs.  Going back to one of the original tournament posts, Scamp wrote that “the criteria on which you should decide the winner is which would you prefer to read.”  In that case, I would prefer to read Listless Ink, just because I’m personally not really into a blog about seiyuu, so that’s who I’ll go with.

Round 1, Day 10

Vote Link

Match 19: AstroNerdBoy

AstroNerdBoy is mainly an anime episodic review and manga chapter review blog.  However, he also blogs some older series, which gives some attention to series that people might have forgotten about.  The content of the blog is very good, and he posts, on average, about daily, so you always have something new to read.  Perhaps my biggest complaint is the design of the blog.  Maybe it’s just me, but the green is almost overpowering.  I’m also not quite sure about the episode review format, which the paragraphs wrapping around the images.  I think normally it might be fine, but the content area is so narrow that I’m not sure how it works.  Maybe flipping the images to the right of the text from the left would help with that some.  ek-sen’trik certainly has a better design than ANB, and also does episode reviews, as well as something called SoMT.  ek-sen’trik has their own problem with the formatting of their episode posts, as I’ve never really been a fan of the “post an image, post a sentence, post an image, etc” style of posting because I think it breaks things up too much (but maybe that’s just me), and a lot of times, like in this case, you will have to had watched the episode to even know half of what they’re talking about.  Meanwhile, the SoMT (or shoujo-only moe tournament) certainly is something creating to give ek-sen’trik points, but I’m not sure how much I’d be into it.  I think this one is a close one, but I think AstroNerdBoy will get it because, even though they have flaws, I still like how he does his posts better.

Match 20: GAR GAR Stegosaurus

GAR GAR Stegosaurus is mostly an editorial blog with some pretty good content on it, and they most moderately-frequently (7 posts in April).  Once again, maybe my biggest complaint is the design of the site, where the black is almost too overwhelming, but other than that, there isn’t much to complain about.  Project Saber certainly has the better design.  It appears that they have some posts about first and final impression of series, with posts about figures and things they bought in between.  I’m not really sure how to evaluate figure blogging, but it looked like many of the posts were a picture and not much else.  I think Project Saber had some good content, I just think GAR GAR has better content.

Round 1, Day 11

Vote Link

Match 21: Blue Blue Wave

Blue Blue Wave has a variety of different post subjects, which I always find to be nice, with at least a plurality of the blogging centered on episode reviews.  There really isn’t much to dislike about this blog.  A pretty good design, a good category hierarchy which is up front, good content on their posts.  Pretty good all around.  Maybe the only complaint would be that they don’t really mark when the “recap” portion of their episode reviews stop and when the “review” begins, but it isn’t that big of a deal.  My first thought, I’m sad to say, when visiting Fuzakenna! was “what a mess!” when looking at the design, meaning that it pretty much failed my 5-second-test.  There doesn’t seem to be very much rhyme or reason where things are placed on the page.  Moving to content, it has a lot of interesting content, some of it editorial, some of it more…unique.  However, I don’t really think it’s content is better than Blue Blue Wave’s, which it would really need to be to overcome it’s design flaws, for me.

Match 22: Metanorn

This is a match up which has direct implications for this blog, as, well, the winner of this one will be facing off against me.  So go vote for whoever you think will do the worst against me.  No, no, just kidding.

My initial thought on Metanorn was that it’s design was a little busy, but I guess it’s not too terribly bad.  Content wise, it looks like they mostly do episode blogging, with some OST reviews on the side, which is a little different.    However, he uses the “pictures, a couple sentences, pictures, a couple sentences, etc.) format as well which I’m not really a big fan of.  The fact that they seem to have the same tastes as me helps though, haha.  I also like their collapsing category list.  A good way of doing it if you have a lot of categories like both of us do.  Oishii Anime is set up kind of like a news blog.  They have their 365 days of anime characters, which gives them an excuse to have a new post every day, but even despite that, they keep up with blogging about other things reasonably well.  Some of it is just first impressions of the season, with some omnibus episode reviews mixed in, though, again, they do the same type format that Metanorn does (though I think Metanorn does write more indepth about the episodes).  This one is a close one, but I think on content, I’m giving it to Metanorn.

Round 1, Day 12

Vote Here

Match 23: Cross Channel

I don’t have much time to write something up so I’ll try to be quick.  In this one, I think Cross Channel just has overall better content, and they post more frequently, and I don’t see anything on their blow that would make me want to just automatically discount them, so I’m voting for it.

Match 24: Baden Baden Lily

∑Xce7ion has been pretty spotty on posting recently, and their content seemed to be kind of so-so.  I’m not really a fan of Baden Baden Lily’s design, and I don’t really like their posting style, but they have more content and actually post regularly, so I’m going with BBL.

Once again, if you see me criticizing something about your blog, it’s nothing personal.  I tend to tear apart people’s websites when I do comparisons such as this, so just keep that in mind.

Aniblog Tournament | HTML Bracket

Round 1, Day 5

Vote Link

Match 9: Just as Planned

Just as planned has a pretty straight forward design.  Easy to get around, even if it’s not anything flashy.  The one thing I didn’t like in that respect is that, while categories are right there, they’re pretty broad, with most posts about Anime merely piled under a category called, well, “Anime.”  The content is kind of in the mid-range of length I guess, but still seems OK.  Moe Check! looks a bit sharper, and has some posts which are more in-depth than most posts on JaP, but most of the posts just seem to be one or two liners commenting on a picture.  Not really much there.  Also, Moe Check! has 7 posts in the month of April.  Just as Planned has 7 posts in the last week.  I think I’ll go with Just as planned on content grounds in this one.

Match 10: JanaiBlog

Rainbowsphere: Very nice design, very good content, but haven’t posted a thing since March 8th (and sparsely updated even before then).  JanaiBlog: Not as good design as RBS, and perhaps not quite as good content level, but still a pretty good level of content.  And they’ve posted recently, so I’ll go with JanaiBlog.

Round 1, Day 6

Vote Link

Match 11: Colony Drop

This one is a big of a toughie for me.  Canne’s blog is more anime review (with some editorial thrown in) with some pretty good content and a good design. Despite only posting 6 times in the month of April, Canne’s blog still more than it’s competitor: Colony Drop.  However, CD has it’s own interesting design aspects, and I think an overall superior level of content – it’s just that posting is more infrequent.  So it seems like my choice is coming down to this: a little better content vs. getting more content.  I think if Canne had a significantly higher post rate, instead of just 6 posts in the month vs 3, I’d be inclined to take it, but since both are somewhat infrequent posters, I’ll go with the content winner, which is Colony Drop in this case.

Match 12: Beta-Waffle

If the last match was hard, this one is even more so.  How do you compare a predominantly comic blog against an episode blogger (all those who would vote against one or the other merely by what type of blog they are can skip that question).  Beta-Waffle consists of pretty consistently funny (if dubiously drawn) comics posted daily or every other day.  That’s a lot of work to keep it up like that, and Beta-Waffle certainly gets a lot of credit for that.

bananaMuffin, as you might have guessed, is the episode review blog.  bM certainly posts quite a bit, so it can keep up with B-W in that respect.  There is also a decent amount of content on the blog as well.  However, where I think bM stumbles is that it appears that, while postings are somewhat frequent, it’s posting episodes 1 and 2 of series when they’re pretty much airing episode 4.  If fan subs were slow, I could live with it, but I know for at least one of the series that’s not the case because I’m blogging it too.  Now, the caveat to that is it looks like they took a bit of a hiatus at the start of April, and they seemed to be keeping up with series before that.  Perhaps one plus in bM’s favor is that I do think it has the cleaner design.

I think in the end – and this is probably the longest rationale I’ve written so far – Beta-Waffle wins because, not only are they posting frequently, but it’s something that’s hard to keep up.  That combined with the immediate fact that bananaMuffin is behind and I think I’ll go with Beta-Waffle.  However, it would be an even tougher choice if bananaMuffin was keeping up with their series.

Round 1, Day 7

Vote Here

Match 13: Major Arcana

Black and Blue Socks appears to be pretty much an average, run of the mill episodic blog.  The content is pretty good and they appear to be posting pretty regularly (though they’re a little behind it looked like) and the design was OK.  There isn’t anything obvious I can really criticize them for, but there isn’t anything in particular that stands out about it either.  Major Arcana appears to be a mix of some episodic blogging along with editorial blogging with reviews thrown in.  Again, the content looks pretty good and they post at a pretty good pace.  This is a very difficult pick because these two blogs are very similar in how much they write, the quality of writing, and the rate of posting.  That means this one is probably going down to design and navigability.  I like the originality of Arcana’s blog better, but I think the navigability of BBS is a little better.  However, I think the navigability issues are a little closer than the design, so I think I’ll ultimately, by a sliver, go with Major Arcana.

Match 14: Mecha-Guignol

Daijoubu is another comic blog which posts (more dubiously drawn) comics. Occasionally anyway.  Mecha-Guignol appears to write mostly editorial pieces, which are nicely done, and appear to be pretty regular.  After a long string of some pretty long write-ups, I think this one will be short: quality posts + consistent posting…I think I’m giving this one to Mecha-Guignol.

Round 1, Day 8

Vote Here

Match 15: Ani-Gamers

Ani-Gamers, despite the blog’s name, appears to mostly do anime series reviews, as well as has an active, semi-regular podcast.  I know that keeping up a regular podcast is difficult – I put out 90 episodes of a podcast myself before finding that I just didn’t have the time for it in comparison to the number of people who were listening to it (which was basically no one).  I’ve had delusions of grandeur about restarting it again at time but…well, I guess I should move on since this isn’t about me.  The series reviews appear to be pretty informative, which is nice too.  The site design is a little unusual at first, but is still manageable.  Anime Full Circle has mainly, well, I guess you could all them editorials.  Kind of random scrawlings might be a better description for the type of posts that are on the blog.  Some of it is useful, but a lot of it is, well…random.  Perhaps it is someone’s cup of tea, but it really isn’t mine, so I’m going with Ani-Gamers.

Match 16: Anime Instrumentality Blog

This match involves something of a rarity: an anime music review blog.  That’s the role that Anime Instrumentality Blog fills.  It includes info like album title, show title, track list, music samples, and of course the review itself.  It’s really quite an interesting site to visit.  And being one that likes anime soundtracks myself, I’m rather sad that I hadn’t really run into this site before.  Maybe the only thing I could diss about the site right now is that the design may not be as clean as it could be, but it’s still not too bad.  Kita ze Inbou does beat up AIB when it comes to design. However, I have two major beefs with it. First, on their blog posts, the intro text on the home page is next to useless.  Second, I’m not much of a fan of taking so much space on headline and featured articles – all of which are, at the moment, at least six days old while the “new” content is buried toward the bottom of the page.  While the design of KzI is very tempting, I think I’ll go with Anime Instrumentality Blog