Angel Beats’ Tachibana Kanade and To Aru Kagaku no Railgun’s Misaka Mikoto rolled to their second straight Main Draw victories to set up the first two matches of Anime Saimoe Tournament 2011 Block Semifinals.
Kanade cruised to another victory where she has garnered at least more than 170 votes than her closest competitor, this time, at the expense of Amagami’s Ayatsuji Tsukasa and Yumekui Merry’s Merry Nightmare. With the victory, she will battle Strike Witches’ Gertrud Barkhorn for a place in the Block Final.
Misaka Mikoto followed up her impressive win over Akemi Homura by dismantling both Hide Yoshino (Sengoku Otome) and Chaos (Sora no Otoshimono). The “Electromaster” faces Victorique de Blois the following round.
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A2-2
1 450 Misaka Mikoto @ To Aru Majutsu no Index [62.94%]
2 181 Toyotomi Hideyoshi (Hide Yoshino) @ Sengoku Otome: Momoiro Paradox [25.31%]
3 84 Chaos @ Sora no Otoshimono series [11.75%]
B2-2
1 393 Tachibana Kanade (Tenshi) @ Angel Beats! [54.36%]
2 217 Ayatsuji Tsukasa @ Amagami SS [30.01%]
3 113 Merry Nightmare @ Yumekui Merry [15.63%]
So there was a whole bunch of fakes from over-enthusiastic Biri Biri fans, but even after discounting them, the Electromaster was able to seize 62.94% of the votes, the highest in a match this year thus far.
The fakes, however, did blanket Tenshi’s lead over Ayatsuji, which turned out to be a rather large one. A similarly fantastic performance by the Angel Beats ace.
So two good performances in a row for Mikoto and Kanade – the former now takes on Victorique in Round 3, while the latter will square up against Trude. On this run of form, it’ll be difficult to stop both of them.
Moving on to today’s match-ups. Both are intriguing, one more so, so let’s go through them.
First up, Miya vs Kurisu vs Itsuwa. Za Zombie returned from the dead by summoning up a final rush that was enough to edge Ai out, but she now faces yet another Amagami girl. Miya appears to be a stronger opponent than Ai, so Kurisu will definitely have to improve on her Round 1 performance. However, Kurisu did perform very well in the prelims (2nd only to Kirino and finishing ahead of Saten), so the potential is undoubtedly there.
How about series strength? When we compare the average vote and average percentage by each series in R1:
Winners only: Steins;Gate 301.5 (49.43%) vs 293.25 (50.74%) Amagami
Overall: Steins;Gate 247.2 (41.30%) vs 225.125 (39.34%) Amagami
Well, they’re quite close, isn’t it? Steins;Gate has a slight advantage, but it’s not a decisive one.
If you’re wondering why I’m not factoring Itsuwa into the discussion, her numbers in Round 1 were definitely inflated thanks to Biri Biri’s performance. On her own, well, just take a look at her prelim results. While she’s not the weakest Raildex character around, she’s not one of the strongest either, and the lack of screen-time in the anime would also count against her.
So, how will it all pan out? Will the end-of-the-season syndrome give Kurisu a slight push? Or will the imouto factor prevail for Miya? Difficult to say, but I’m going with Kurisu.
So next up, Erica of Strike Witches vs Rin of IS. Stats-wise, it’s all looking good for Rin. As I have mentioned before though, Erica’s one of the Witches best prospect of making it as far as possible, so they might fancy their chances of snatching a win here. While Rin isn’t the strongest of the IS girls, I still think that she has enough fuel in the tank to propel her way to the next round.
Picks: Kurisu, Rin
Prediction: Kurisu, Rin
frustra’s…
Picks: Kurisu, Hartmann
Prediction: Miya, Rin
saimoe update blog 
The tracker made that match look much closer than it actually was.
I was a little worried that Kanade was going to lose, but Tsukasa was padded with fakes, so all is well.
It was easy to tell that there were a lot of fake votes though. There was that almost hilarious dropoff in votes after 3 hours on the vote tracker.
Yes, for a match of that caliber, 800+ votes for Biri Biri herself was beyond overkill lol.