Saimoe 09: Final Round

[nebs66]

Today's the big day! It's the final round of Saimoe 2009, & our final two girls wound up being Yui from "K-On" & Taiga from "ToraDora." Both worked really hard to get here, beating out hundreds of other girls to get here. I even correctly predicted last year that Taiga would make it to the finals in 2009. Actually I predicted she would win it all, but back then most people weren't familiar with the then-obscure manga known as "K-On." & living in the now, Yui is who I want to see win the Saimoe crown this year. Luckily even if Taiga does win, I can't really feel bad about that either, since I like Taiga so much as well. So yes I'll be rooting for Yui, but since both finalists are great it wont be the end of the world if Taiga wins instead. It's interesting that our two finalists this year kind of mirror our finalists from last year- one's a tsundere, the other's an airhead. Only difference this time around is I'll be rooting for the tsundere.

As far as who I think will actually win this, Yui has been in the lead with the most votes ever since the end of Round 2 & hasn't lost that lead once. Not counting the poor turnout for her & all the other "K-On" girls in Round 1, & Yui's pretty much dominated this whole tournament. Sure, "Saki" has been the dominating series, but Yui has been the dominating character. So it'd be a true shame for her to lose now after all that. That being said, Taiga has overall faced a higher number of tougher opponents than Yui has. The only truly strong person Yui defeated was Hinagiku, & while that is one major tough opponent to beat, Taiga had to beat several tough gals to get this far.

Each character has their pluses & minuses on winning or losing tomorrow. Tsunderes have pretty much the most popular character type in Japan for the past few years, & that still holds true today. & Taiga is voiced by the queen of tsunderes, Rie Kugimiya, to boot. Kugimiya has had several of her characters come far in past Saimoe tournaments, but she has yet to ever actually win. Tsundere fans might push hard for Taiga to win for that reason, & the fact that this will be Taiga's ONLY chance to compete in Saimoe. She wont be eligible to compete next year, but since a K-On OVA is coming out soon, Yui will be eligible. Since she has another chance to compete again next year & Taiga doesn't, that might be reason enough to let Taiga win. But then again, Saimoe had a tsundere winner last year. Would they really want to have the same thing again? On the other hand, the top 3 placers last year were all KyoAni characters, which Yui is as well. Would voters really want a second KyoAni winner in a row? Either way, this year we'll either have a repeating tsundere winner or a repeating KyoAni winner.

Despite the popularity of tsunderes & Kugimiya, Yui is perceived as the more popular of the two in Japan. Yui also has the advantage of being from a very popular series full of very popular girls, each of which have their own strong fan following. Fans of Azunyan, Ritsu, & Mugi are likely to support their costar Yui, so she'll have a lot of support from them. Taiga on the other hand is pretty much the lone star in her series. Her costars don't have nearly as many fans as she does, & thus she's pretty much on her own here. It's the difference of being popular series & just being a popular character. Though it's hard to say if Mio's fans will really vote for Yui or not. If not for losing in the first round due to low turnout, who knows how far Mio would've made it this year? She might've even made it to the finals instead of Yui. But Mio does have a chance to compete again next year. However, if Yui does win tomorrow, it'll become very unlikely a character from the same series will win again next year. So Mio fans might be looking at the big picture instead of just Yui winning.

Here's the overall vote count for the tournament thus far. Unsurprisingly, Yui is still in the lead:

1. 5237 Yui Hirasawa @ K-On!
2. 5076 Taiga Aisaka @ Toradora!
3. 4896 Nodoka Haramura @ Saki
4. 4537 Mihoko Fukuji @ Saki

But Taiga has been catching up to her, & actually got more votes than Yui in the Semifinals:

1. 1077 Taiga Aisaka @ Toradora!
2. 1019 Yui Hirasawa @ K-On!
3. 998 Nodoka Haramura @ Saki
4. 988 Mihoko Fukuji @ Saki

Taiga also won by voting percentage as well:

1. 51.90% Taiga Aisaka @ Toradora!
2. 50.77% Yui Hirasawa @ K-On!
3. 49.23% Mihoko Fukuji @ Saki
4. 48.10% Nodoka Haramura @ Saki

So yeah, this is definitely going to be a tough one, with votes likely to be pretty darn close. Who will win, Yui or Taiga? We'll find out soon enough!

Source: http://www.animesaimoe.org