2011 Saimoe Final Champion:

Mami Tomoe wins the 2011 Saimoe contest, which covers the 2nd half of 2010 and the first half of 2011's anime season girls. Madoka Magica was an unbeatable brand in the end that made popularity trump quality from start to finish. Madoka Magica's art style is creepy and expressive, not 'ultra cute,' so how is a side character who dies in episode 3 of said series the cutest girl in anime? Oh well. It's time to put these results aside and look forward to Saimoe 2012. K-On will be back for that contest due to the upcoming K-On movie, as will Shana due to the present Shana fall season anime. Then there's the girls from Idolm@ster, Working, Hayate, Negima, and who knows who else. Most importantly, Madoka Magica won't be able to compete in 2012 because their anime is done and won't be airing any new content in the years to come. Ho ho ho!

On the same day, LSU squeezed out a 9-6 overtime victory over Alabama and Oklahoma State made a goal line stand to win 52-45 vs. Kansas State. The college football season is getting heated up now, with all the conference championships and BCS bowl spots still up for grabs.

I also wanted to add a new 'great voice' to my list: Yoshino Yusuke from Clannad, Okizaki's coworker and mentor, whose real name is Hikaru Midorikawa. He also plays as Tenshinhan from Dragonball Kai, Tokia Mikagami from Flame of Recca, Yukito Kunisaki from Air, Li Xingke from Code Geass, Dune from Heartcatch Precure, Sabi Hakuhei from Katanagatari, Heero Yuy (Hiro Yui), the main character of Gundam Wing, Lancer from Fate/Zero, and a million other roles, all of them fitting the role of 'absolute badass.' His voice is so heroic that the moment he starts talking you want to swoon. It saddens me a little that he largely plays side characters, maybe because he is simply too badass and perfect to play a main character (which is generally someone average people can sympathize and identify with.) But he enriches every single series he's in and his voice is so distinctively wonderful it would be foolish to leave him unmentioned any longer.

If we add in Hikaru Midorikawa, the great voices list now looks like this:

7 Men:

Hikaru Midorikawa, Yuuichi Nakamura, Norio Wakamoto, Jun Fukuyama, Showtaro Morikubi, Noriaki Sugiyama, and Tetsuya Kakihara.

13 Women:

Satsuki Yukino, Yukari Tamara, Mai Nakahara, Mariya Ise, Nana Mizuki, Ami Koshimizu, Eri Kitamura, Mayumi Tanaka, Aki Toyosaki, Ayana Taketatsu, Aya Hirano, Rie Kugimiya, and Kana Hanazawa.

For a grand total of 20 great voices so far.

Many series can't be completed as anime because their source isn't yet complete, for instance One Piece or Fairy Tail. I don't blame the anime industry for situations like that. But there are some series whose sources are complete or at least extremely advanced beyond the anime, but are being painfully ignored. These series desperately need to be remade or restarted, depending on whether the series was either not followed faithfully or not followed to the proper ending, or both:

Rurouni Kenshin, Ranma 1/2, Sailor Moon, Dragonball Kai, Index, Full Metal Panic, Haruhi Suzumiya, Negima, Berserk, Claymore, Soul Eater, The World God Only Knows, 12 Kingdoms, Spice and Wolf, Card Captor Sakura, Akane-iro, Guyver, Sora no Manimani, Valkyria Chronicles and Flame of Recca.

This forms a grand total of 20 'lost series' that could have been done much better even though they already rank in the top 110. In some cases you could just edit already drawn footage, like in Card Captor Sakura or Dragonball Kai, but in every case the series needs to be restored to a source-faithful original intent, and all of them need to follow through to their proper endings.

These 20 'lost series' are my biggest complaints with the anime industry. While they're busy making nonsense like Maken-ki these 20 series are being ignored, despite how famously good and popular they were. It's sheer nonsense. I can't fathom what's going on in the heads of anime producers. Do they just roll dice to determine what project they'll animate next? And what kind of sick joke are they playing on us by remaking Kenshin and Berserk in a way that covers already covered portions of the series while ignoring the portions that have never yet been covered by any animated work? Is that just to add insult to injury? Or what??? Heads should roll.