First off, I want to thank ALL of our loyal readers who made this win possible; we couldn’t have done it without your tireless support. This round was extremely intense, and Baka-Raptor and SS!AB combined for over 1,000 votes. I’d tell you exactly how many, except the polls never seem to close correctly so I have no idea.
Campaign:
When the contest first started, I quickly saw that Baka-Raptors loyal readers would make this a tough round, so I adjusted our strategy to move away from humor and a call for reader support towards a strategy based on superior volume of posts and anime content. I felt that this would give us our best chance of winning, and the embeddable PollDaddy polls (the only good part about those crappy polls) made it simple for our lazier readers to read a post and then vote for us.
Still, there was no predicting the fierce and persistent fighting spirit of Baka-Raptor’s readers who apparently prefer reading about Baka-Raptor to reading about anime, and were willing to vote a lot of times on various computers. In the end, however, I think our steady approach and diversified audience won out because Baka-Raptor’s readers eventually went to sleep. I want to commend Baka-Raptor on making the match-up extremely exciting and I am in awe of his charisma and ability to get his readers to vote. Leveraging our audience was harder than I expected, and we only pulled out the win at the very end. Furthermore, we campaigned very hard, and every single one of our writers contributed during the 5-day period. Thanks for a memorable match, Baka-Raptor!
Supportive Feedback:
I was happy to see more non-blogger feedback in this round. It warmed the heart to see some really die-hard fans like Clinton supporting our blog on various fronts. The only one that really gave me pause was the guy who accused Baka-Raptor of being Al Queda, which was so ridiculous that I wasn’t quite sure if he was making a Harold and Kumar joke (the comment was deleted anyway).
- ZanZan: Epi!!! i love ur worrrrrrks keep up da good works
- ZanZan: Just took a look at the blog for once and there is like 10 pages of things trying to denounce Nama-ko & Epi which is unforgivable. Trying to denounce the cutest mascot ever? screw u. Trying to deny me of my great FMA Brotherhood blogger? FCK u. Trying to deny Sea Slugs of their greatnest? SMD.
- Touya[EnchantedARM]: One thing I like about seaslugs is that the background is very light, making it easy to pretend I’m actually reading something at work.Baka Raptor made me chuckle with it’s cheap nonsense such as the “Golden Boy vs. Candy Boy” comparison –but sorely lacks anything of any real substance. But what drew my attention to SSAB was Kabitzin’s incredibly logical interpretation of what was going on in the ridiculous ‘White Album’. If I want to see something hilarious, I’ll push my roommate down some stairs. If I want to know what’s going on in my anime, I’ll stick to Seaslugs.
- Mystlord: Voted for SS!AB. Reliable, consistent, an overall solid blog. Plus I like their authors. All so fun ^_^
- kirimaru: Sea Slugs! wins by design.
- Dandos: I can’t stand Baka-Raptor. Just not my style. SS!AB has a better idea of how to be snarky without being annoying.
- Fai D Fluorite: And I cant help being awestruck by Epi’s analysis
I like SSAB for many reasons… The contents are presented in a very clear manner… while its not so as I have observed in others…
Not Quite As Supportive Feedback:
Sometimes those that don’t support you can give you insight on how to make your site better. For instance, I just picked any ole mobile plugin, but a few people mentioned that the mobile version of SS!AB either didn’t show up or could be improved. I did notice that we had very little support from other anime bloggers, which made me a little sad.
- kluxorious: That hair was made from the sea slug? What a retard. And if it’s an anime blog, shouldn’t the most popular tag be something that is related to anime, and not just some random stuff?
- OBALLER: Sea Slugs are dumb, and thats a dumb mascot.
- Zantetsu: If you have to pay someone to have fan art you’re missing the point of what fan art is, true.
- fathomlessblue: Love SS!AB, particulary the FMA coverage and Jesus159′s episodic blogging/butchering of K-on!! Great dedication and output all round. Still voted for Baka-Raptor though; his tourney plea had a picture of a dog with bees coming from its mouth… just can’t fight that kind of argument.
- Heinsia: Boring moe mascot never gets my vote. I probably would have read your blog more if you used a real sea slug for a mascot (even though I don’t know what it is).
- Zwein: I don’t understand how loli sea cucumber could possibly win. They took the ugliest creature of the sea and mixed it with pedophilia. This shit can’t be right.
- chikorita157: My only suggestion to Sea Slugs is to get a mobile theme plugin such as WPTouch. As smartphones and mobile devices getting more popular, people want a mobile formatted site, especially with small data caps from cellphone carriers.
This post was written by...
Kabitzin – who has written 1971 posts on Sea Slugs! Anime Blog.
One of the founders of Sea Slugs, I handle most of the blog admin tasks while wearing my I AM BOSS shirt. I like my action series well choreographed, and my romance series extra trashy. I also have a soft spot for puns.
{ 46 comments… read them below or add one }
Since you knocked off Baka-Raptor, I get to vote for you now. I just have to say that this isn’t a bad site and maybe I’ll end up back here again;)
Glad to hear it!
Now thats out of the way, I get to vote for you again in the next round.
Besides from the mobile site, I have nothing else to say because the content and desktop design is very good.
Regarding Mobile Site: What are you currently using? When I load the main site on the iPod Touch, it loads the default site. If the mobile site isn’t working, I suggest ditching it and use the WPTouch 1.9.x plugin (this can be found in the Wordpress Repo). If you decide to go this route and you use WP Super Cache, I have instructions on my sideblog to configure it so it would work with WPTouch.
MoFuse something or other, but I never use a cell phone to view the site so I don’t know how good it is. I’ll have to play around with plugins like WPTouch and see if I can round up people for testing. Thanks for the tip!
I’ll check it out on my iPhone/iPod Touch when you have it set up.
Congrats on the win Kabitzin! I hope there’s more Nama-ko on the way… um, it’s not an addiction, I can quit her anytime. :love:
Nice suggestion chikorita! I’d been playing around with mobile plugins recently, and I have to say WPTouch is the best of the bunch. There’s a few features that I wish they had like more control over image resizing and home page excerpts, but otherwise it’s quite good!
Well, it takes a while to get each Nama-ko commission and you want to ration them out so that you don’t unload them all prematurely. Will definitely have to try out WPTouch when I get some free time.
What, commissioned art is not fanart. Or even meant to be? What a strange thought process.
And Nama-ko is <3 despite whatever, so~
Seriously, god forbid you have to pay for something good. Kinda weird coming from someone with a DA account…
Congrats for the win Kabitzin!
Your efforts finally paid off….
Good luck for the rounds ahead!
Btw what happens when someone clears all rounds and win the tournament?
You get some sort of prize or something?
And I saw Namako pics in deviantart…they were so less
You better make more Namako
Hmm… prize… prize. Dangit, I knew we forgot something!
I use a Blackberry Storm and I’ve never been able to get your site to load on it, regular or mobile version. Not sure what’s up with that, but I just wanted to second the mobile phone concern.
And I still want to see a giant isopod magical pet for Nama-ko.
Isopod haunts my dreams…
Thanks for the heads up about how n00b we are at mobile site jutsu.
Woot Seaslugs prevails! Woot Epi prevails! Woot Nama-ko prevails! VICTORY!
You know, I bet if I commissioned Nama-ko wearing a Ran Fan mask, Epi would just die.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!JASLDFJAOSTJOEAJMGAODFSJG ARJAOJAKNabar gEADAF asdVASOI O AOIJHGOA AS 1!
Check this out, haha!
Heheh cool. I do prefer her without the mask though! Mask hides Ran Fan’s goodness.
Hm, I use an iPhone and your site works perfectly on it. But you could still use some optimization to make it more mobile friendly. Anyway, I’m glad you guys won so congratulations!
Al-Qaeda guy came here too? He tried commenting twice on my blog and once on the Tourney page. He must be really proud of himself for coming up with such a well-executed, totally unpredictable joke.
Now that the match is over I can give you some real feedback:
Props to your human resources department. Your recent acquisitions all seem dedicated and complement each other well.
Any plans for team posts?
Good move to get a mascot. Mascots do so much to give a website personality. As for the mascot itself…it’s a bit pedophilic for my tastes, but nobody else seems to mind.
Wish I could comment more on the content of your blog, but I pretty much stopped reading episodic posts altogether when my eyes started to go bad. I typically don’t care for the summary-thoughts format (I skip straight to the thoughts), but you guys at least try to get creative with the summary part. I think you guys would do well to pump even more creativity into the summary.
Is it really necessary for the page navigation buttons to go: «12345»102030…Last »? I’m the last person in the universe to care about web design, and even I find it annoying that the » is somewhere in the middle and indistinguishable from the other buttons.
I have no idea what triggers ads to show up on this page. I was going to attack you for having irrelevant ads, but they never showed up when I wanted them to.
Tell Jesus159159159 to stop rapping at me, or at least to cut his raps to a two-verse maximum. My eyes can’t take it.
I saw the one on the tournament page, and I noticed he gave it a little twist on his comment here by also saying you were black.
Thanks! They definitely have been great to work with, and I am proud of the consistent quality and quantity of posts that have appeared since I started recruiting.
Nama-ko has really helped with the branding of the site, I think. This is very important to me, especially since it’s hard for episodic blogs to stand out from each other. I’m surprised others have stated that Nama-ko is really loli, because usually she looks of legal age. Obviously different artists have different takes, but Nama-ko doesn’t usually look that young (other than perhaps the chibi pics).
I know we all try for this, but it is dependent (somewhat) on the series being blogged. Some episodes are easy to poke fun at and some are not.
I know what you mean, but I’m not sure what the solution should be. We have hundreds of pages, so we have to offer a way to move through them quickly.
Mwahaha! Actually it triggers based on how often you visit the site. Regular visitors do not see the ads.
And thanks for taking the time to leave this very helpful feedback =3.
Haha wtf?? Bit unfair my joke comment was added to the negative pile, oh well I thought it was funny at least but I guess we can’t be our own critic
I think the amount of times i’ve posted here compared to BR’s site (i.e. never) is a good indication of who i’d vote for. The match did go a bit silly toward the end in an effort for votes but the best site won so thats something.
Oh and i’d like to personally thank Jesus159 for his hilarious Baka-Raptor Rap. Was one of the funniest things i’ve read in ages. Hats off to you sir ;P
Hey we still love you, but I had to poke you a little
That Baka-Raptor rap was just out of control. Words fail me.
Good job you guys!! =)
Gratz
Oh… wut? My comment I made on BR made it here? That really made my day!
And really, I have nothing against you (didn’t know this blog before, and it looks quite interesting in fact) but war is war and in those moment unfairness is fair.
But still…
A sea slug?
I guess this can be at least considered original (as in uncommon.)
As we say in French, sans rancune. (I really don’t know how to translate this expression in english, and I wanted to say it, so… anyway…)
I thought for sure “sans rancune” would mean “without raccoon” aka Zyl, but apparently it means “It’s cool” or “No hard feelings”.
Thanks for taking the time to visit our site, and I have nothing against you for being loyal to Baka-Raptor.
Actually Stripey isn’t a raccoon but a raccoon dog…
Vampire raccoon werewolf
so you kicked baka-raptor’s ass?
You never did gave up…
Congratulations!HAHAHAHAH!
Congratulations on the win and having a very smart campaign strategy.
I like reading posts for series I follow here for the snarky commentary.
Congratz…voted for SS but a bit depressed that Baka-Raptor’s gone since whenever BR was up against another blog, there was always lolzy slander posts going around which was fun to read.
Your victory was not an easy one and is something to be proud of. I voted for Baka-raptor but now I’m looking forward to SS’s match against Star Crossed. That will be epic!
We gotta get there first! Taking it one round at a time!
“It doesn’t matter whether you win by an inch or a mile…winning is winning.”
I remember coming here for the first time. I had no idea your mascot was original. I assumed it was from Azumanga Daioh. I also thought Kabitzin was female.
Both mortifying errors on my behalf. Anyway, let’s win this!
Originally we used Osaka from Azumanga Daioh as a pseudo-mascot, but yeah Nama-ko was designed from scratch for maximum sea-slug-iness. Quite a few people seem to mistake me for a female online, but I’m not sure why (aside from my handwriting).
Wait, you’re not a girl? Joined this blog for nothing…
Congrats for the winning !
You had a hard time campaigning against baka-raptor, as he said himself, it is the ‘worst anime blog’ who has to put effort in defeating him, not the opossite, logical and coherent
You guys are a real prove that effort and determination can change the table, as it is shown in animes so many times already, and you guys admitted you didn’t even sleep to get this victory in the very least and final hours of the tournment which not only further increases the proven value of your campaign but also gives you my total respect as a loyal and dedicated fan/reader of Baka-Raptor.
It was Clinton who made the difference for you guys, having a playmaker in your team is as essential as having the the right posts/strategies/staff.
I will be campaigning against you guys from now one, but please don’t take it personal, as it is a way to get my revenge and many others, but also a way to test if you guys really deserves to be the champions of this tourney.
Well, as long as you keep visiting and reading, I guess this is ok.
See ? Every competition may contain some rivalry but in the end it bring people together. (otherwise i wouldn’t have the opportunity to have know your blog and your work)
That is why i love sports so much. Nevertheless, i’ve been saying this for years…
When i read your and Kabitzen’s comments I nearly hyperventilated (i am that pathetic
) any way thank you for giving me credit
Oh wow! I wasn’t expecting to be quoted. Thank you/you’re welcome, Kabitzin, and congratulations on SS!AB’s victory! My heart filled with joy when I saw it.
Hehe, I really do take all the feedback seriously.
Um your comment about me Kabitzin made me so happy really really happy
consider Me Clinton Graham Hoffos your Little helper monkey for this tourney
You better do your best from now on, because we are planning to put a real good fight into it >:)
*shake hands firmly*
You got Obama endorsing your blog. No wonder you win >_>
*is referring to your irrelevant annoying advert*
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