Event Information

[What Happens?]

1)       You apply as a participant of this wonderful event. There are four main categories to choose to blog about, namely shounen, shoujo, seinen and josei.

2)       You will receive a confirmation e-mail and whatnot; applications will close at a TBC date. On this date, you will be informed about the format of your category (the format will only be decided after we know the number of people participating). It will contain information about the first match, and you will be given all the time until deadline day to prepare a post about whatever topic.

3)      You’re allowed to post as soon as you know the topic or whenever, but voting will only be open on deadline day. The post will be on your own blog; the host blog shall provide the voting box as well as the links to all participating blogs. We have some sort of opening ceremony. In the case that you miss the deadline, you are not excluded from the event but netizens will only be able to vote for you starting from the day of your post. Voting closes varying on the events.

4)      People vote and stuff. The event pretty much lasts about a month(we might anticipate 2), voting will go on until mid of the last week and since we can’t count that well it’ll take pretty much the rest of the last week to tally and count stuff up. Winners get their banners, and we have some sort of closing ceremony.

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[Categories?]

Like any Olympics people are in it for the win, but what the hell can you win from a manga blog competition? There are categories for;

Tell me tell me tell me

1) Best Manga Blog Award
2) Best Newcomer Manga Blog Award
3) Best Shoujo Manga Blog Award (Registered category)
4) Best Shounen Manga Blog Award (Registered category)
5) Best Josei Manga Blog Award (Registered category)
6) Best Seinen Manga Blog Award (Registered category)
7) MOB Best Blogger
8) MOB Best Review Post Award (Legit Reviews)
9) MOB Best Discussion Post Award (Rants go here)

Miscellaneous titles awarded by host:
10) Host’s Choice Award for Comments – we will award this to the most enthusiastic/reflective/substantial commenter (enthusiastic  ≠ OMG OMG OMG TYPING IN CAPITALS LIKE THIS SO HAWTTT)

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[How’re we gonna get down with the action then?]

So about the posts themselves, shortly after the application deadline you’ll receive an e-mail from us with details of your competition. If there’s less than 5 participants, your category will be over in pretty much a single round. If there’s more than that, we’ll have more of a tourney format.

If it’s a single round, you can choose to write about your own stuff, or you could choose from a range of question we will be providing based on your category. If it’s more of a tourney-styled/knockout round, you’d be divided into groups and have to work on the range of questions we provide. Participants with the highest votes in each groups will then advance to the next round.

An example of a question we provide for the shounen bracket;
It is mainly Shounen manga that dominates the top lists for longest running manga, such as Kochikame and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. Why do you think this is the case, as compared to other genres?

As for the shoujo bracket;
What is it about shoujo manga that captures its audience so much?

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[How do I win!?]

Each category will undergo a voting process. Voters should vote for the blog post that they think best represents the category, NOT THE BLOG. This means that each blog nominates their representatives to each event so your blog can send multiple bloggers to a single category. The voting poll will list the blogger name and blog represented. So for example, if two bloggers from the same blog participate in the event, they will be voted individually for the event(but they’re still representing their blog).

These blog posts that are submitted to a category will be freshly published posts during the week in which the event is held and voting polls will open once on the decided deadline, regardless of whether some blogs did not make it as mentioned previously. If you submitted a blog post late, we’ll add you onto the poll but you’ll just have the disadvantage of entering the poll later.

There will be three main medals for each category; Gold, Silver and Bronze. The way that Best Manga Blog and Best Blogger will be chosen by using a point system utilising the votes from the 4 registered categories. Using the same points system, blogs younger than a year will be eligible for the Newcomer Award.
Gold – 7 points
Silver – 5 points
Bronze – 3 points
Participating – 1 point

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[What’s your job then?]

Like the Olympics where a country regulates and runs the games, Manga Weekend are the hosts and will be playing dear old Athens. We will be conducting the opening ceremony and closing ceremony and will be moderating the entire event. It’ll be the responsibility of MW to create the atmosphere of a real Olympic manga blogging event, e.g. communicating and tweeting about the event. All voting processes will be carried out on MW.

There’s also the more media type of stuff such as interviews with winners and other news coverage of the events on the blog. We’ll also do stuff like putting in blurbs from blog posts for a specific event into one post which is linked back, and making up some official mini poster art dedicated to the event.

We’re also arranging for some pretty stuff for both winners and participants to keep;
1) A participating avatar/seal for all participating blogs to place on their blog.
2) A gold, silver, and bronze avatar/seal for respective winners of events, these can be used on winner’s blogs to show-off.

We will be revealing all these images in a separate post.

Hopefully, when this event is over, we can all look back at these banners and etc as memorabilia to the first Manga Olympics for Bloggers, Spring-Summer 2013. When the event is over, Manga Weekend(host) will be creating a page to commemorate the event.