Fun

Forging a Community: 4 Lessons from the Crunchyroll 2014 Midyear Best Girl Contest Thread

iblessall 5 Comments

As some of you may or may not know, I have been running an ongoing Best Girl tournament for the first half of 2014 over on the Crunchyroll forums. The contest ended about two weeks ago, with Stephanie “Steph” Dola from No Game No Life defeating Noragami‘s Hiyori Iki (I voted for Hiyori) by a single vote.

Now, while the final winner of the contest was a bit of a disappointment for me (can you hear the hype train coming ’round the mountain?), there were a lot of cool things I saw and learned during my time acting as the admin of the contest. I was fortunate to have two other Crunchyroll users, sonic720 and LoomyTheBrew (who made most of the graphics for the tournament), assist me with the massive task of running a tournament that recorded almost 1400 votes through all rounds across over 2500 pages, nearly 40,000 thread replies and never left the front page of the forums until just yesterday. I have no stats to back up this theory, but I’m fairy sure the thread was also the fastest growing thread in Crunchyroll forum history, at least in the time that I have been active on the forums there. And it’s ongoing.

Crunchyroll Best Girl Tournament 2014

The Final Four

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The Top 5 Most Fun Anime

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We all watch anime for different purposes, but probably the most prominent reason is for entertainment. Not every anime is a 10/10 or even a 9/10. But if we tried to watch only anime in the 8/10 to 10/10 range, we’d miss out on a whole host of other wonderful shows and we’d miss out on a lot of fun.

I’ve been wanting to a post on this subject for a while. The title may say “The Top 10 Most Fun Anime,” but it could maybe also say “Lower Tier Anime with High Entertainment Value” or even “Guilty Pleasure Anime.” Guilty pleasure isn’t the right name for all the anime on this list, but it certainly appropriate for at least a few. Probably the most appropriate title would be, “Anime I Really Like That Aren’t Substantial Enough to Really Be Considered Excellent,” but that’s a mouthful. So, without further audieu: the top 5 most fun anime.

1. Medaka Box & Medaka Box Abnormal

Boasting one of the most overpowered heroines ever, Medaka Kurokami,Medaka Kurokami Medaka Box takes the high school fantasy genre and inflates it with absurd characters and even stranger powers. Medaka, the newly elected freshman student council president, sets up a suggestion box for students of the school. None of this should be unfamiliar, but when Medaka decides to tackle a request, it’s go big or go home. And Medaka doesn’t go home. She just goes big. While the supporting characters, even the male tsundere Zenkichi, are fun to watch as a cast, Medaka is the undisputed star of this show. She’s pretty clearly a Mary Sue type, but it’s completely intentional and it works. Like another strong female character in different show on this list, Medaka dominates the show when she’s on screen. At the end of the day, Medaka Box is just fun shounen action with an incredibly earnest and idealistic protagonist. Sure, there’s a lot of ecchi stuff going on, but Medaka Box is fun enough that it’s (sometimes) not totally in your face.

Read on to see the other 4 shows on the list! Continue reading →