/slash technically Award/Closing Ceremony xD

As with all prestigious (lol) sporting events, once the games are done, all that’s left to do is give due recognition to the winners and (if time permits) a moment of reflection for all the players before moving on to each and everyone’s respective ventures — and us four will be doing just that at this time.

First and foremost, massive thanks to The Pantless Anime Blogger for both coming up with this collaboration project and for inviting me to participate. I’m undoubtedly the most sporadic writer out of all of us (I mean, I could barely keep up with my own writing let alone everyone else’s really), so if anything my surprise of being asked to join comes from how much the guy apparently trusts ‘ol laid-back Leap to keep to a schedule. Of course, another way of looking at it is that TPAB is just trying to keep me alive by having me write weekly for a change. Whatever his motivations are, I’m thankful for the opportunity of getting to work with these great great people.

I’d also like to extend my gratitude to both Astral Gemini and Irina, both of whom I only really got to talk with not that long before the start of The Games. It was a pleasure making your acquaintance, and I sincerely hope that it was the same for you guys. I also do hope that our interactions were as much fun for you as it had been for me. You guys are great, your writing more so, and I look forward to seeing you guys around the aniblogosphere in the times ahead (and althemore if we end up working on something together again some day :D)

As for myself, well, for the most part I’m glad I agreed to TPAB’s proposition of doing block episodic reviews. Episodic reviews were something I’d only dabbled in once or twice before (so I wouldn’t say it was something I excelled at), and doing it as a group (at least in the aniblog circuit) was a new experience for me overall. It was… different, that’s for sure, and given the opportunity I’d probably do it again. That’s not to say the collab didn’t have it’s fair share of problems and challenges (both for us all and for myself individually), but it was for sure a good and fun learning experience, and that to me is as good a takeaway as any.

I’ll get back to that a bit more later.

Again, technically this would be our awarding ceremony, and while The Games was more about the… not-winner than it was about the winner — it wouldn’t do me well to not even acknowledge Irina’s stellar performance these twelve or so weeks, not only by DOMINATING the predictions side but by being entertaining as she did so (those episodic reinterpretations were an absolute blast weren’t they?)

Actually, let me bring this up here now; as a parting gift of sorts to my fellow seasonalists, I made a graph of our prediction distributions. As you can see here, Irina had (obviously) the most correct predictions, not only overall but for a single show as well: going 16 out of a possible 22 correct predictions (that’s a 72% chance of being right!).

The interesting thing to look at here is that Astral actually trails Irina by a mere one correct prediction at a total of 36 to Irina’s 37. But looking at the score equivalence, while Astral edged Irina out on total Grancrest predictions, Irina absolutely stomped everyone by also getting the highest point gain for a single show at 30 points for Sanrio Boys. Due credit goes to Astral however, for being the most consistent seasonalist in The Games by holding the median score almost all throughout — which is an amazing feat when you consider the randomness of the point gains.

Myself and TPAB were at a constant foot race for third as luck would have it, but Laid-Back Camp just wasn’t doing it for the guy sadly (xD). It was actually worrying at one point when you see how insane his predictions skew towards Sanrio Boys, easily overtaking both me and Astral by a good margin. But alas, his pants tripped him up, and TPAB has found himself in last place, which means he’s gonna do something special for us. I’ll let him have the honors of filling you in on the details so hop on over his wrap-up post to find out more.

But while I still have ya, lemme ramble for a bit more. As some of you may have known in the previous weeks, I took on the role of scorekeeper for The Games (hence why I have this data to play with), and I’d be lying if I said that it was an easy task (lol). Like I said earlier this collab was not without its fair share of bumps along the road, and we actually immediate hit one right at the start as we were deciding on what shows to watch (see TPAB’s account on the matter here).

After we ironed out the logistics the rest of our troubles came with our scoring “system”, which didn’t have much of a system at the start as were just grasping at straws at first hoping to catch even the slightest occurrence in a show to match our predictions. Eventually, we decided that that just won’t do, and after much deliberation we ended up employing tier-based scoring that hinged on how accurate our predictions were — with the more accurate prediction getting more points than a less accurate one, and an off-the-wall crazy prediction getting the most. Here’s a look at our Gdoc for the whole thing (xD)

Irina nominated me to keep our scores (she was doing it for the first couple of weeks), because reasons, but I didn’t not like doing it. I like stats, for one; and doing this also provided me an outlet of sorts for whenever I did my writing.

It’s no secret that I struggled quite a bit towards the end of The Games, and most of that I attribute to me not really being used to having to write about something irregardless of whether or not I actually had something to say. The end result of course was I fell a bit flat in my delivery, and on the whole I’m not all that crazed about how I did (there was a point where I treated it like how I used to do Reaction Papers in uni, lol). At the very least, there’s room for improvement, and I’ll take what I can from the experience and try to be better next time.

All in all, ’twas good fun collab’ing with these fine fine people, and to formally close us off I’ll be answering some questions we threw at each other. Thank you three for your time, and doubly thanks to those who followed our posts for this season even if only in passing. Cheers! (cue subtle reminder that Irina still owes us a drink)

Has the experience taught you anything? (Irina)
> It has taught me to be diligent with my watching of on-going shows. Usually when I pick shows up for a season I end up sub-categorizing them to “Must-watch right away”, “Watch on the weekends”, and “Watch after the season’s done” down the stretch (usually about four-five weeks in) to sort-of allocate my time doing other things that I planned to get to. With The Games, I didn’t have that luxury, so I had to dutifully watch each episode as soon as I can when I can. So overall, I guess, better time management would be my takeaway from the whole thing.

How did you train in preparation for the games? (Irina)
> I don’t know if this counts as having been trained, but when I was watching the second season of Love Live! Sunshine!! I got real used to grabbing screenshots (lol) as a way of helping me recap what happened in the episode (which I then discussed with a friend). Though what I did with my episodic reviews weren’t so much recaps as they were more of me rambling about what I can remember along with impressions of it, the method I devised for screencapping helped a good deal for when I made my posts (almost too good really, ’cause I end up with upwards of 100+ screenshots per episode).

Who is your fave character during the winter games? (TPAB)
> It’s a tie between Nadeshiko’s sister from Yuru Camp and Yuri from Sanrio Danshi

What moment in the winter games completely caught you off guard, good or bad? (TPAB)
> Grancrest Episode 09. Oh, and Yuu almost smacking Yuri in Sanrio Episode 03.

Did the thought of having to make predictions influence your watching of the show? (Leap)
> I asked this to my fellow seasonalists because I think it kinda did for me; influence my watching I mean. I only ever speculate and fire up the ol’ theory machine in my head when a show is intriguing enough to warrant it, which normally wouldn’t apply to any of the anime we watched — so it kinda made me “think” more about shows that I normally wouldn’t.. if that makes sense xD.

How do you come up with your predictions? (Leap)
> On my end I just try to follow the flow of the narrative, relying on my grasp of it, while banking on conventional anime tropes and cliches. I never did try to go for any sort of wild and crazy prediction (that, based on our scoring system would net 3points if gotten right), but more than me refusing to do so, it was more like I was incapable of it. I’m not that creative, lol

Do you believe that the prediction games helped ot hindered your viewing experience? (Astral)
> Oh for sure it was a hindrance (xD). But it was fun one.
BUT, I will say that it did help me to get through Sanrio Boys every week.

Which show was your favorite/least favorite/most surprising of our picks? (Astral)
> Favorite AND Most surprising was Yuru Camp; it was the best show in our lineup (which doesn’t say much, lol), and I wasn’t really expecting to like it as much as I did, sp thanks to AG for nominating this title. Least favorite was Sanrio. No question. It was a slog of a viewing experience, and I wouldn’t wish anyone the ill fate of having to watch this.

ー ー

And with that, I wrap up my end of The Winter Games; Spring is on the horizon, and from what I hear, another collab is brewing…… (hype? xD)

Also, don’t forget to drop by Irina’s, TPAB’s, and AG’s wrap-ups is you haven’t yet!