By some bizarre fluke I have managed to squeeze through the second round of the AniBlog tournament with a win despite my expectations otherwise. Much respect to hontou ni for a close-run tussle, there were times when there were less then five votes between us which made for some frantic checking. I am up against Ogiue Maniax in the next round which is a daunting prospect but I wish him all the best for the next round, hopefully it will be a interesting match up. Musing on the tournament though has brought to the fore a lot of ideas that stem from it - primarily why participants are voting and commenting like they are.

Many people who watch anime, one can imagine, do only that - whether that's on TV (either American, Japanese, European, Malaysian or any other location) or anything they find to download or stream, it's probably fair to say that the majority don't interact or otherwise think about anime beyond that. Apart from them however there is a gumbo of different ways of passing information around about anime whether that's forums, instant messaging, Twitter, blogs, IRC, conventions, podcasts, conversations, university clubs or myriad other possibilities. The problem those mediums and the nature of fan communities suffer from though is that they naturally foster insularity. It is, as a fan, very easy to become entirely engrossed in a select few avenues of communication to the knowing or indirect exclusion of others. But being aware of those other groups and paying them respect is something I feel a lot of anime fans don't do and the AniBlog tournament has, among many other things, exposed.

My future competitor has brought up the point that there has been no mature discussion around the tournament; many of the comments for each bracket have descended into petty backbiting on an author's predilections towards a certain series, or past grievances suffered, or writing style. From this it's not surprising to see why readers have turned away from the tournament: it stopped being about anime. The core tenet of the tournament was to introduce people to new blogs, be they authors, readers or casual watchers - inferring from that was the desire to spread the word about the growing body of content constantly being written about anime, to spread the excitement and enthusiasm felt when watching a great show or just being able to talk passionately about a topic. Somewhere though both the authors and perhaps the tournament lost that.

If you are familiar with Malcolm Gladwell's work then you'll likely be familiar with the concept that what a person consciously says and what they unconsciously think rarely match up, be that sip tests of soda or spaghetti sauce. The same goes for the AniBlog tournament: voters are asked to visit potentially two new sites and then tasked with making a decision between them. The visitor could spend time reading through posts and getting a feel for the author, their opinions, deciding whether they match their own or expose concepts they perhaps hadn't though about and then make a balanced and measured opinion. Or they could base it on how it looks. The latter is quicker and, lamentably, colours all kinds of perceptions while the former is lengthy and time consuming and not always worthwhile. Now imagine the situation augmented and one of the two sites is one that you visit regularly, now pitched against another you're unfamiliar with, already the unknown is at a disadvantage. Change this further by being oblivious to the tournament and having a blog you read and enjoy recommend you vote for them - you're a busy person, you've got things to do and you enjoy what you're reading and would love to help them so why bother checking out the competitor? Why take the time to visit a competition site with no history to find out the justification for the tournament and objectively measure up the opposition?

This may seem to be saying that the AniBlog tournament is fundamentally flawed; while true, this is only the case at the moment. The origin of the tournament was beset by bickering and, although petty, there were nuggets of truth within the noise and if there is another tournament, there are elements that will obviously be rectified and tweaked. At the moment the outcome of the tournament is an unknown quantity and it possibly won't be until the second or even third iteration that it begins to gain recognition from people outside of a small community. Of course, what the tournament can do in the future is enticing, but what it is doing right now is immeasurably useful: it's getting people talking and it's putting people together. Rarely has there been such a collective of anime authors and interested parties unified by one event, thrown them into a melting pot together. Sure there's arguing and politicking at the moment, but it's a power struggle and social bedlam that will with perseverance obtain a balance. Similarly because the tournament is unknown, there is no baggage to go with the recommendations, it is purely done by public vote which lends a different weight than a specific site recommending others, either directly with a post or indirectly with a list of links in a sidebar.

It's easy to sit on the sidelines and snipe at the proceedings, the risk being that this is seen as undermining how far this blog has come in the tournament or priming for an expected defeat in the future: it is neither of those things. This is a celebration of the tournament and what it has achieved because Scamp, mefloraine and RP actually went out and did something rather than navel gazing. It is painful and there have been issues along the way, but it has changed for the better how I write and how I view and interact with other anime sites so for that alone, for me, it has been worthwhile.