EOFF Summer 2011 Census!

[TrollHunter]

Vivi is the clear winner since like you said, his design is iconic of the whole franchise.

Don't forget he's named after Final Fantasy

...what?

[MJN SEIFER]

"'F' is the sixth letter in the English alphabet. Write out Vivi's name as VI-VI, substitute 'F' for VI, and you get FF - the acronym for our favorite RPG series."

Admitidly they say it's probably a coincidence, and I doubt it would be something did deliberate, but I always found it fun, so I often make joking refferences to it.

[VeloZer0]

Especially coincidental when you factor in English wordplay usually doesn't correlate as well into Japanese.

[MJN SEIFER]

Especially coincidental when you factor in English wordplay usually doesn't correlate as well into Japanese.

That is the distinct possiblity.

[Jiro]

I didn't vote for Vivi because there are too many black mages and they all deserved to win, right. Or I was out of it, or something. I am not even sure why I voted for Auron. He's pretty sweet though.

[Jessweeee♪]

Where did our Auron smiley go? :<

[Slothy]

*YAWN*

tit, those were some good drugs guys. You should shoot me up with some tranquilizers more often so I'm not burdened with presenting the crap you call your opinions.

So where were we? I suppose I should accept the award for best character design, but I don't believe in intelligent design, so as sexy as I am, there's really no need to award me for it. Unless the award comes with strippers, blow, and pictures of Shlups tits (I assume they're nice since there's no other explanation for making someone who can't read an Admin) then smurf yeah, give me an award!

I guess we'll move things along to:

Favourite Cast Design
That was a nifty thing Wolf did with torturing you guys by holding out on the first place finisher for a while. Since I don't like the lot of you all that much, I think I'll pilfer that idea from him. So where to begin? Well, how about with the three way tie for third place? Or more like the competition to see who can give the dumbest smurfing answer I've ever seen.

So the first third place finisher was FFVII with 3 votes:

ff7cast.jpg

Could be worse I guess. There's some interesting looking characters like Cait Sith riding his giant mog doll, Red XIII, and the chain smoking, skewer loving Cid. And this was Nomura pre-belt obsession so we don't have to look at anything half as visually confusing as the mess that is the lower half of Lulu:

Lulu.jpg

And each character in FFVII has a fairly striking and instantly recognizable silhouette so even if you just blacked them out you could still tell easily who was who. So not so bad so far. Next up was FFVIII with 3 votes, proving that I really can't expect that much from you, even when I see a glimmer of hope:

final-fantasy-viii-8-cast.jpg

I'm really not sure how much I can really say about how bad this is. Sure, I realize that that isn't a picture of the whole cast, but I'm lazy and that's what google gave me so suck it up buttercup. But could you really get much more bland? The strong silhouettes of FFVII? Gone. Clothes? More colourful than most characters in the game, but that's because most of the characters are either completely bland themselves, or Galbadia soldier number 15,876. It's sad when the only way to make the main cast stand out is to make everyone else look even less visually interesting than them, but I shouldn't be surprised by things being pretty bland in FFVIII since it's easily the most appropriate descriptor for just about the entire game. But even with as bad as voting FFVIII best in anything is it could have been worse. The three of you could have instead been the three that voted for this crap:

cast.jpg

Yep, FFXIII. Really? I have to say guys, you need your eyes checked. No, really, go see an optometrist because I think you have cataracts, or eyeball cancer or something. How else do we explain it? Clothing so visually busy and at times nonsensical that it's hard to look at? Check. Stereotypical hero in a trenchcoat? Check. Token black guy with a choco-fro? Double check. Skirts so short you can almost see if the curtains match the rug? Well, you get the picture.

The only upside? I get to move on from this terrible disappointment of a third place finish to present you with second place:

Final_Fantasy_6_cast_by_Stargazer103.jpg

FFVI with five votes. Congratulations to the five who voted for it. I'm fairly certain that your eyes work. There isn't exactly any pictures I know of where Amano drew the entire cast, so you all get to make do with some awesome bead art. That aside, what's not to like? Each character is colourful, simple enough visually that your brain doesn't start hurting trying to figure out what the hell you're looking at, and easily distinguishable from one another. No small feat when every sprite in the game was made from the same base sprite model, and considering the low resolution.

As for the number one pick, you'll have to wait until later for that, though you can probably guess it from what's missing in the rest of the results below:

Favourite Cast Design
VI (5 votes)
VII (3 votes)
VIII (3 Votes)
XIII (3 Votes)
X (2 Votes)
IV
XII
X-2

PS: If you guess Mystic Quest, you'll probably be wrong, but I'll like you more than the people who voted for third place. I'm not even going to mention the single FFX-2 vote though.

[Remon]

I voted for X-2

[MJN SEIFER]

I'm really disapointed in the fact that I didn't say anything other than my votes - I'll do better next census.

[TrollHunter]

I voted for X-2

Thou shalt never be forgiven.

[Jiro]

X-2 had a lot of costumes though.

[Jessweeee♪]

FFX-2 didn't occur to me, but now I genuinely think that maybe it should have gotten my vote for this category.

[Slothy]

X-2 had a lot of costumes though.

More is not necessarily better. Especially when so many of them are so damn hard on the eyes.

So who did come in first? None other than:

ffix-main.jpg

Is it any surprise really? If we're going to talk about strong character design it's hard to top this game. Each character is visually distinct, the designs are simple enough to not look like a cluttered mess, and each even conveys much of their personality simply in how they look dress, and carry themselves. I'm still pretty concerned by Eiko though given that she looks like a pedophiles dream while giving new meaning to the term easy access, but what more would we expect from the land of the rising sun?

So what did you guys have to say for yourselves this time around?

- Favourite overall cast design
FFX-2 - The wide variety of costumes is what makes this game. I have some NPC favourites too. Like Gippal and LeBlanc xD

Bad Remon, no cookie for you!

Favourite overall cast design: VII (Not too big, not too small, something everybody and then some. They were all pretty unique and that group shot of them all standing together is a powerful image.)

I'd normally agree, but I'm not sure how much faith to put in the opinion of anyone who voted Squall for favourite character design. It just calls into question your ability to see. In fact, I'm not sure how you managed to type an entry without being able to see the monitor properly.

So what's next? You'll have to wait and see. But in the meantime, some recent evidence has come to light which explains why Shlup couldn't get an entry in:

TypingMonkeyLarge.jpg

You're doing it wrong.

[Jiro]

As much as I love FFIX to pieces, Quina always looks out of place in those group shots. It's not even me disliking him/her, it's just smurfing what even in the hell is s/he meant to be?! Still, I guess that adds more charm, right?

[Slothy]

I think if you consider that it's supposed to be a confusing god knows what, it kind of comes across perfectly visually. When you have someone like Red XIII or Freya it's kind of like, oh a talking dog/rat, what's up with that? But with Quina the characters surprise and the question of what the smurf is that thing really comes through the first time you see it.