#ace attorney poll experiment

[arcaneranger]

Final Thoughts - 2019 Long Shows

Dear Lord. This is where all the good shows went.

2019 was absolutely awful on a season-by-season basis (except for Summer, anyway), but that’s mostly because most of the best shows ran longer than what has become the industry norm of a single season. And indeed, heading into the new decade, we seem to be seeing a major renaissance for two- or split-cour shows, given the massive success seen by shows like My Hero Academia, Food Wars, and Haikyuu!!..particularly in comparison to the new perpetual-runners Black Clover (which, despite running for over two straight years now, is still not the most popular show of Fall 2017 by viewer count on MAL, and sits at a ‘meh’ 7.2), and even worse, Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, which is faring even worse on both counts even though it premiered two whole seasons earlier and the fact that it is the sequel to Naruto.

As a reminder of my rules, the shows on this list may or may not have premiered in 2019, but they finished airing this year. The split-cour rule (stating that I judge any show that “finishes” and then premieres a “new season” within six months) didn’t come into play for any 2018 shows, but it will for Ascendance of a Bookworm and Food Wars this year, at the very least.

With that being said! 25 shows running longer than thirteen episodes finished airing this year after being simulcast, and of those…

I skipped 6:

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Part V: Golden Wind, Fairy Tail Final Series, A Certain Magical Index III, Ace Attorney Season 2 and Cardfight Vanguard (2018) because I either dropped or have not finished their previous (also long-running) seasons.

Yu-Gi-Oh VRAINS because the simulcast started late and also it was bad.

I Dropped 8:

Worst Long Show of 2019: The Rising of the Shield Hero

It’s always fun to see that a show you hated from its first episode only gets more and more distasteful afterwards, but it’s less fun when a service you have to promote because they’re the legal option is forced to shove it down your throat because they had a hand in making it and it became a massive hit that your friends don’t see any issue with because the author wrote a story that justifies its hero’s patronage of the slave industry. This is my punishment for watching the whole first season of The Asterisk War before I knew better.

YU-NO: A girl who chants love at the bound of this world

A confusing mess from the word go, this ill-fated adaptation of a visual novel from the nineties seems like it was mostly made to cash in on the popularity of the Science Adventure series, but failed to present itself in a way that made an ounce of sense or looked remotely interesting.

Fairy Gone

Am I really the only one that saw potential here? I mean yes, it ended up a boring slog that didn’t care to move its plot in a meaningful direction, but the first episode was at least cool. I guess Izetta: The Last Witch should have taught me better.

We Never Learn

I know that I’m in the minority in terms of the male demographic for shows like this, but honestly, how are bland harem shows still this easy to market? A copy-pasted protagonist with copy-pasted waifus drag down what could be an interesting setup for a story. 

Karakuri Circus

The first episode of this one had me excited, the second and third left me bored to tears and wondering if it would continue to look uglier by the minute. I haven’t seen a three-cour show look this janky since Knight in the Area.

Radiant

Having heard good things about this show from my cohorts, I do feel bad for saying I’ll probably never return to Radiant, but when you have a show that’s notably written by a European author...and it turns out to be a frustratingly standard shounen affair with middling production values, well, you can see my earlier annoyance with Cannon Busters.

Ensemble Stars

This one still gets to me. It almost looked like a male-idol show I would finally be able to get behind, what with its rebellious attitude and oddball setting...that is, until the setting got to be too unbelievable and the show began drowning its audience in side-characters because they had to squeeze every husbando from the mobile game into the story, and it all began to resemble UtaPri a little too much...but without the production value.

Boogiepop and Others

This was a hard drop, honestly. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I felt four episodes in, before concluding that I was bored and not particularly invested, two things that should never describe the experience of watching a Madhouse show. The fact that this was the project responsible for ruining One Punch Man only made it worse. There’s a slow burn, and then there’s walking away without turning the stove on.

And I Finished 11 (holy crap that’s like three hundred episodes just on their own).

That Time I Was Reincarnated as a Slime (5/10 & 1/10)

I’ll be honest, I had forgotten just how livid I was with the ending (and especially the sad excuse of a recap episode) of Slimesekai, and reading back through my write-up of it, it’s certainly coming back to me. While this year had bigger demons to fight (Shield Hero), the bad taste that Slime left me with hasn’t really faded, and the wasted premise bugs me to this day.

Hinomaru Sumo (7/10)

What Hinomaru lacked in production value, it happily made up for in good execution and earnest heart. I can’t believe this came from the same studio as Conception, Try Knights and 7Seeds, but if they can only get out one good show a year, I’m glad that we got one bringing attention to a sport that many will joke about but few understand, respect and appreciate.

Kono Oto Tomare (7/10)

Speaking of giving love to traditional Japanese culture, here’s a decent-if-unoriginal show about a local high school koto club down on their luck, and the troubled teens coming together under a scrappy protagonist to bring it back to life. Kono Oto Tomare doesn’t have much that you haven’t seen before, but a decently-executed club drama with Your Lie In April-inspired musical performances is more than enough to keep me interested, and since Forest of Piano kinda crashed and burned under the weight of its own self-importance this year, it was nice to have an alternative.

MIX: Meisei Story (8/10)

It’s hard to judge MIX next to the other shows on this list because it’s almost too old-school for its own good, revelling in an eighties storytelling style that didn’t end up jiving with a wide audience this year. But at the same time, its fun character dynamics (and a very good dub from Funimation, despite them saying they’d never touch sports anime again) were very entertaining to watch, even if it didn’t focus as much on the sport it was supposedly about as much as I’d have liked.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (8/10)

I fully admit that I’m very salty about the fact that this won Show of the Decade in Funimation’s poll while it was still on and I thought there were hundreds of more deserving shows, but I can’t deny that Demon Slayer was a very enjoyable experience, albeit one that I had notable problems with. That’s not gonna stop me from getting mad when it sweeps the Anime Awards in a few weeks, though.

Fire Force (8/10)

I was very afraid that David Productions wouldn’t be able to match the energy of Studio Bones’ adaptation of Ohkubo’s previous work, Soul Eater, but I was happy to be proven wrong. Even if the last few episodes contained a bit too much infodumping, it was all sandwiched between jaw-dropping fight scenes that proved that the people who make Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure can still handle the reins of a more traditional action show.

Fruits Basket 1st Season (8/10)

I know that my score for this one is a bit lower than others, but I think that Fruits Basket did pretty well in its first season, considering that it was largely spent setting up future storylines and adapting the part of the manga we’d all seen before, but with much higher production value. I’ve been familiar with this part of the story for over a decade, and the scene with Tohru and Kyo (you know the one) still made me cry. Now, we get the real plot going.

Dr Stone (9/10)

A great start to a totally new spin on shounen, Dr Stone gives me hope for survival in the post-Shokugeki world in which we’ll soon live, as a show that wears its research on its sleeve. A complex plot weaving interesting characters in and out of a narrative surrounding a philosophical battle where both sides actually do have fair points (even if one of them is going about it in a pretty cruel manner). More please.

Vinland Saga (9/10)

Once again, a great start to what will hopefully be years of quality storytelling, Vinland Saga made it seem like it was dragging in the middle only to reveal just what its slow burn had been leading up to, with twist-heavy storytelling and a fantastic cast to match the high visual quality of its brutal battles.

Run With the Wind (9/10)

It’s not often that Production I.G. gets to make a complete, fully-realized show anymore, and this one was a glorious reminder of the potential of the studio in the TV space, and a great rebound for the director of Joker Game. It’s gorgeous to look at, the cast is wonderful, and the story is both realistic and idealistic in a satisfying balance. It’s a miserable process to get to the finish line in real life, but sitting back and watching this was nothing but a treat. At least, until a minor fumble at the end.

Best Long Show of 2019: Dororo (9/10)

Speaking of complete stories, Tezuka Productions and MAPPA teamed up for a breathtaking adaptation of an underappreciated Tezuka classic that expands upon the story in exactly the right way to create a thrilling, savage, beautiful masterpiece that focuses a laser-sharp eye into the relationship between two characters in their journey to, literally and figuratively, become complete people. Also, that opening was killer.

And that’s it! That’s the fun list. Next comes the painful one. Stay tuned for the trash heap.

[jelloapocalypse]

Just finished the Basically Ace Attorney video and near-burst my gut. How much research goes into these videos? Do you only use your experience playing the games/watching the shows and with the fandom, or do you research some of the behind-the-scenes stuff too? Are there any shows/games that you ever thought about doing a STIB video on but decided not to put on the Patreon poll?

Thanks!

I generally try to experience as much of a series as I reasonably can, and I try REALLY hard not to put anything on the Poll unless I’ve already familiarized myself with at least half of it.

For cartoons and anime it’s easy, you just watch every episode (unless it’s Adventure Time, then you watch 100 episodes and give up because you hate it).

For video game franchises I try to play as much as I can. I played every mainline AA game before putting it on the poll. Same with Zelda and Pokemon for the most part. The only exception to the rule is Kingdom Hearts, where I watched through the cutscenes of every game (aside from 2 and BBS, which I played myself). I figured that one would be okay because the series has the exact same positives and flaws every single time, so it didn’t really matter if I’d only played one or two games. And I was right!

I don’t usually do extra research outside of one or two general questions I field to friends and random internet groups for clarification. Like for this video I asked “Why do people actually dislike Athena?” To which the answer was “I actually don’t have a reason, she just isn’t Maya.”

As for what am I interested in that isn’t on the poll/“what makes a good StiB candidate” you can check out the answer to that question in this post!

[thisdaynews]

Inside Kamala's campaign-changing strike on Biden

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/inside-kamalas-campaign-changing-strike-on-biden/

Inside Kamala's campaign-changing strike on Biden

poster=”http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201906/2048/1155968404_6053294016001_6053279540001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404″

true

2020 democratic debates

She and her advisers assiduously plotted the attack — and how to capitalize on it afterward.

Kamala Harris’ campaign is spending the next three days trying to extend the best two hours of her political career.

Harris’ surprise cross-examination of frontrunner Joe Biden produced the third-biggest fundraising bonanza since her launch. The Democratic senator is working to capitalize ahead of a crucial second quarter fundraising deadline: She blanketed news shows with nearly a dozen TV appearances, and her digital team is pumping out clips and other reminders of her interrogating Biden, hoping that Democratic voters will envision her doing the same thing to Donald Trump.

Story Continued Below

“It’s a great springboard,” said Bakari Sellers, the former state lawmaker and top Harris surrogate in South Carolina, saying it would add rocket fuel to her end-of-quarter fundraising push. Sellers said he’s taken a just-you-wait approach with people who’ve questioned Harris’ stock. “Last night, everyone said ‘there it is right there.’ No one can describe what ‘it’ is. But now they know she has it.”

Inside Harris’ campaign, the first debate was viewed as the unofficial start of the contest, the first big opportunity when primary voters start paying attention to the presidential race. The debate coincided with a new level of comfort she’s described feeling in recent weeks with opening up about her upbringing and personal life, more than a half-dozen aides and allies told POLITICO, something they’ve been gently urging her to do as a way to forge a connection with many voters who don’t know her.

Harris was seen as having an enviable debate night draw because she avoided a confrontation with a surging Elizabeth Warren in exchange for being among all three of the other top-polling candidates. With Cory Booker appearing on the first night, Harris, whose father immigrated from Jamaica and late mother from India, was also the only black candidate in her Thursday grouping.

Harris’ objective was not to fade into the background of an ideological slugfest between Biden and Bernie Sanders, the advisers said. Her campaign had spent months fixated on Biden, whose support from black voters has kept him atop all of the early polls. They gamed out several scenarios in which she could use her personal story as a point of contrast with his decades-long record, including over his opposition to busing.

In the debate, Harris willed her way into the conversation about race and policing, calmly noting that as the only black person on the stage, she’d like to be heard.

But her opening first came last week when Biden offered nostalgic memories of a time when he worked with segregationist colleagues like Sens. James Eastland and Herman Talmadge, proponents of using states’ rights to slow walk civil rights legislation. Harris, whose sole experience with a full stage of competitors came during her Senate primary in 2016, prepped with a small team of aides in Washington and then in Miami. A senior strategist, Averell “Ace” Smith, imitated Sanders, while Biden was played by Harris’ national press secretary, Ian Sams.

While walking through her planned exchange with Biden over busing, Harris’ campaign planned for a variety of answers from him, from contrition to a more measured approach to the more forceful denial of the position that he ended up giving — a stance that was called out by fact-checkers as untrue given his past quotes rejecting the wisdom of busing.

Harris herself ended up settling on a line that within minutes would appear in social media memes and just a few hours later would be screen printed on t-shirts selling for $29 on her website: “That little girl was me,” she said, of her desegregated class.

“You replay the thing and it seems like she was having a conversation with him,” a Harris campaign official said in playing back the encounter. The point she drove home, the aide added, was “this was something that meant something to me.”

Under no scenario did they consider Biden offering her such a gift to conclude the exchange: “My time is up,” Biden said. “I’m sorry.”

Harris’ aides in the early states said they’ve been inundated with calls since the debate ended, including from activists and officials they’d reached out to weeks ago but hadn’t heard back from. Harris travels next to California where she’ll headline five fundraisers over 30 hours in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, and appear at three events for San Francisco’s Pride celebration.

Harris had been in search of a breakout moment to match her tough questioning of Attorney General William Barr in May, and her pummeling of Trump cabinet officials since she arrived in the Senate in 2017. She proved she can translate that same type of performance to a campaign setting, said Brian Fallon, a former aide to Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer.

“That goes a long way to helping voters envision her prosecuting the case against Trump on a debate stage next fall,” he said, “which is exactly the impression she wants to leave with Democrats who are prioritizing vague notions of electability.”

Harris moved immediately to capture the momentum, which became clear even before the debate ended: The size of her average online contribution shot up 67% in real time. She appeared in four separate on-camera hits with MSNBC and two with CNN late Thursday and early Friday, caught about two hours of sleep and then went live on CBS’ “This Morning,” “Morning Joe” and taped an interview for Sunday with MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt. She visited the for-profit detention center for unaccompanied migrant children, in Homestead, Fla., with other presidential candidates and then raced back to Washington to cast votes in the Senate.

After decamping from California, Harris’ campaign expects her to spend considerable time in Iowa, where she’s been busy hiring more staff and securing caucus commitments. On Friday, Des Moines activist Tom Fisher offered his endorsement, pointing to her firm presence on the debate stage. Fisher’s term for Harris was one she’s used occasionally to describe herself: “joyful warrior.”

Read More

[nyaagolor]

Bad Polls and the Art of Engagement Bait

So as anyone who follows this blog probably noticed, I posted a poll yesterday. Sorry ace attorney tumblr, it was bait. That was part of a little social experiment to test some theories I had about engagement bait and the tumblr "algorithm"-- and it was a resounding success!! I even made a replicate, that being a similar poll only hours later, which had basically the same result. Somehow. Now that the cat is officially out of the bag, I thought it would be fun to talk about it!

The entire point of this little social experiment was to combine some observations I had about what posts do well, the general attitude of tumblr users, and how to maximize engagement with minimal effort within fandom spaces. Thus, I'm combining all my thoughts into a little guide: how to make the lowest effort, highest engagement post possible:

Recognize that negative engagement on tumblr travels father than positive engagement Tumblr may not have an algorithm, but the system is still set up in a way where negative engagement rewards the poster more than positive engagement. A simple "like" is enough to show agreement or approval, but dissent or shock requires replies or reblogs (the latter of which are significantly more common). More reblogs = more people seeing the post, and thus posts that elicit a negative reaction tend to travel further than positive ones

Capitalize on the fact that people love to bitch about things when given the opportunity Generally speaking, going onto a random post you hate and exclaiming how much you hate it is a bit of a tumblr faux pas. Same thing with venting about how much you dislike something. While bringing up the topic yourself and being snippy to specific people are frowned upon, however, places like polls that provide an opportunity to bitch about things are a great outlet, and a LOT of people will take it

Take advantage of the poll's inherent anonymity This may seem counterintuitive-- the person posting the poll and everyone reblogging it aren't anonymous at all! This doesn't matter though, only the votes do. The anonymity of the votes on a tumblr poll turn the opinions of others, no matter their relative size, into a nebulous opinion of the indeterminate masses. THIS is the most important part of the engagement bait, because tumblr users love to complain but aren't likely to do so to someone directly for fear of hurting their feelings or getting called out for being rude. If you can take a dissenting opinion and remove the actual user from the equation, people are far more likely to share exactly what they think about it-- this is when the "no reading comprehension" and "you people seriously think (X)" and "ugh I hate fandom" takes come out en masse. Tumblr users may be mean, but more importantly we are also cowards. In the case of the poll I posted above, even extremely small minority opinions were being commented on in almost every single reblog, despite the fact that these opinions made up less than 10% of the votes for a majority of the poll's run.

More buzzwords, less nuance Buzzwords and a lack of nuance work together to make engagement more likely-- buzzwords are often both overused and misused, while a lack of nuance (typically in the form of a yes or no question) eggs people into explaining themselves. Combine these two and you add people justifying themselves, arguing with others, and complaining about the buzzword in general into your reblogs, boosting your numbers even more. In my case, I chose the lowest of the low when it comes to poll topics: "Is (recognizable character) (buzzword)?". How people fell for this twice I'm not sure, but it works!

If things are getting boring, stir the pot yourself You can use alt accounts or just make up tags yourself, but I was too lazy to do this. However, there's always the option of cherrypicking-- screenshot outlandish or dissenting tags, even if it's just one in a sea of hundreds, and post that in a reblog with an incredulous caption. Bringing tags to the attention of the majority invites new focus on those tags AND your poll, giving people another outlet to add their takes. Some people will likely even reblog it Again.

Now that the bait is set, watch people in your notes talk over themselves like a flock of seagulls

Congrats! You've now made a successful bait poll. Fortunately or unfortunately, mine worked so well that people fell for it twice, both of them got thousands of votes each within the day, my notifications are overflowing, and popular blogs have made posts referencing it. Point proven, hypothesis verified. As they say: easy website.