Quick, show of hands - who participated in the last Touhou Seimoe?
...
Quick, another show of hands - who was even
aware Touhou Seimoe was a thing?
---
Making its first appearance since the fall of 2007 (man, I feed old),
Touhou Seimoe has returned!Okay. What the hell is Seimoe and why do I care?Touhou Seimoe is the Western Touhou-exclusive equivalent of Saimoe, the annual anime character popularity contest held on 2ch. It is a scientifically-sound* way to definitively* determine the best* Touhou character through a series of rigorous trials that span a couple of months.
*not really
So how does this work?It's a 128-character single elimination tournament. Each match lasts a day, and is decided by YOU, the Touhou fan! For each match, you can go to this year's official Touhou Seimoe website and vote, just like in Saimoe! (Except Seimoe doesn't ban non-Japanese IPs, because it would be silly to ban Western IPs from a Western popularity contest.)
A chance for my clearly-superior opinions on which Touhou characters are better to be given their proper spotlight! Intriguing. Where is this "official web sight?"I'm glad you asked! You can find the main site
here, which will have links to where you can get your vote code, the tournament progress so far, and where you can actually cast your vote. Right now, the tournament is still undergoing some final testing (mostly related to checking anti-votespam detectors), so it's not quite prepared yet, but you can at least see the testing in action.
Hold up, I have to wait an hour for my vote code? What the hell is this? Nobody makes Glenn Unger wait for his ballot!That is one of the many anti-votespam measures in place. It's no big deal - you can request your code, go off and do something else, and when you come back later in the day you'll be all set!
All right, all right. So now all I have to do is gather some friends and have a large block of us vote strategically to make sure Remilia and Flandre have easy paths to the finals...Not so fast, Kaiba! Unlike Saimoe, which waits until the quarterfinals to reshuffle, the bracket will reshuffle at the end of EVERY round. You never know which round winners will square off against each other next! No strategic voting to be had here!
Can the Japanese cast votes?If they find the tournament and decide it worth their while, then more power to them! We've had Japanese participation in the past, and we've never had a problem with it, just as they don't have a problem with Westerners voting in their yearly survey. Surprisingly enough, in our experience, they do take some interest in seeing which characters the Western fanbase prefers!
Can I vote for yukkuris?Get out.
So when will this be live?Whenever Suzuran decides it's ready. (Su-sans are preparing...) He's hoping to have it ready in the next week or so, but don't take that as set in stone. Whenever the tournament starts, however, we'll be sure to provide some notice. The posted start time is now
Wedneday, November 16th at 9 AM Suzuran time!That's it from us for the time being! If you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask. Otherwise, I hope you all enjoy Touhou Seimoe 2011!
