If you can believe it, Anime March Madness is just around the corner! For those uninitiated, Anime March Madness is our anime vs. anime tournament to determine the best anime in all the land! Voting begins on Monday here on the blog and through our various social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. As a blog reader, you can see the entire bracket below before the rest of our subscribers—but if you want to join in on the fun, I suggest you check out our Twitter account, where we’ll be presenting the competitors match by match all day long!
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Entrants were chosen based on past performance and by strength within their region. Unlike NCAA March Madness, where teams are selected and then bracketed into regions, we look at the best performing anime within a topical region and slot them in. Our four regions are Popular / Shounen, Critical Darlings, 2019 Anime, and Staff Favorites. Potential competitors in the first and third categories were so filled that last week, we conducted play-in games to cut a group of 48 total anime to 32 that will be participating this year. We’re excited to see how they perform because it’s a picture to our staff about your preferences, which change as we grow in size (and we’ve increased our following by almost 70% this past year!) and add new subscribers, including our brand new Instagram account, which is very shoujo and female-heavy. It’s also exciting to have the newcomers in the 2019 category participate—we’re curious to see if uber-popular Demon Slayer will prove popular enough to win in its first year of competition!
One series that isn’t returning, though, is Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. It has won all three times we’ve had the tourney, and quite handily each time. So we’ve decided to retire the undisputed champ, at least for the time being. But fear not, there are plenty of great series for you to choose from. Check out the entire list below, and get your fingers ready to click and vote all through the month of March!
