It’s that time of quarter again! We’ve got a very interesting Fall season that’s coming out swinging this week, and there’s no better way to pay our respects to a season with potential deep sleepers like Tokyo Ravens and Gingitsune than to cavalierly turn them into race horses. We’re making mad bets on the Fall 2013 Season, Vegas-style!

(Note: Technically, Will won the Summer bets on ridiculously generous Fantasista Doll home video license odds, but he’s been extremely busy recently and is temporarily out of the game.)

The Actual Rules:

1. Each show has a multiplier associated with it for each category, with a lower multiplier corresponding to higher odds of success. Betting on Fate/zero to be a popular show should not be given equal value with a surprise long-shot hit like, say, Koutoura-san.
2. There are 8 total categories, representing various different things which could happen to a show. Odds for each can be found here.
3. Sam gets 100 Woolongs to bet on each category, 800 Woolongs total.
4. All of his funds must be wagered. Ya gotta go all-in! But you can spread it out however you like within the category.
5. Any net profit means the bettor wins. 801 Woolongs or more means victory, 799 or less means defeat, and 800 means you’re a witch/pillar man and must be burned.
6. “Winner” gets bragging rights and the unenviable position of making odds come winter.
7. The last 3 categories aren’t multipliers, but over/unders. The bettor picks whether he thinks the actual total for a given show in a given category will be above or below the value set (for example, if Kill La Kill gets 100,000 youtube views, under wins, but if it gets 1,000,000, over wins). All over/under bets are valued at a 2x multiplier.

You didn’t actually read that, did you? It’s cool, I barely read it myself, and I was the one doing the typing. On to the fun!

Category 1: Will be one the top 5 rated shows of the season on MAL

Drew’s Top 5 Handicaps:

1. Hajime no Ippo: The Rising (1.5)
2. Magi Season 2 (1.5)
3. Kuroko’s Basketball (1.5)
-All series that originally ranked in the mal top 500, getting a healthy sequel-inflation boost in ranking. Pretty much no brainers. The next couple of spots are slightly more interesting.
4. Kill La Kill (2)
-I would just as soon not be betting against the popularity of Trigger’s first TV anime with Western audiences, thank you very much.
5. Kyokai no Kanata (2)
-Kyoto Animation has been a pretty reliable bet for acclaim, and though this being their first foray into dark fantasy raises some question marks, I’m fairly confident I don’t want these odds any higher.

Sam: 50 on Kill La Kill and 50 on Kyokai no Kanata, because those two I honestly hope do well and are good.

Category 2: Will be one the top 5 most popular shows of the season on MAL

Drew’s Top 5 Handicaps

1. Kill La Kill (1.5)
2. Kyokai no Kanata (1.5)
-As above, betting against the popularity of Kyoto Animation and Trigger right now is a fool’s errand.
3. Coppelion (1.5)
-Due to extremely unfortunate real life circumstances, the anime’s been basically done and in polishing for years, and they just now are seeing a climate favorable enough for airing. Expect it to appeal to fans of both gritty action and girls wandering verdant countryside.
4. Log Horizon (1.5)
-Once people get over their lame jokes about this stealing the premise from Sword Art Online that it stole from .hack, the trapped-inside-a-game genre is still really popular, and LH looks to offer a more comedic take on the situation. I’m sure people will have fun with it and like it, but less sure if it will be actually good.
5. Magi Season 2 (2)
-Season 1 was popular enough that I think we’ll see enough carry over and it’ll snag the #5 spot on the season.

Sam: 100 on Kill La Kill, I’m going to use this as an anchor for some of my more outrageous bets

Category 3: One or more singles in the oricon charts

Drew’s Top 5 Handicaps:

1.Valvrave the Liberator Season 2 (1.5)
-TM Revolution and Nana Mizuki. Or really just Nana Mizuki.
2. Golden Time (2.5)
-Yui Horie’s popping out some original tracks to bookend the show, but she’s less of a record-setter than Mizuki is.
3. Arpeggio of Blue Steel (2.5)
-My research seemed to indicate Nano (the OP singer) has a sizable following.
4. Kyokai no Kanata (3)
-Even when Kyoto Animation doesn’t top the DVD charts, their character song albums can still register on the richter scale.
5. Tokyo Ravens (3)
-Pure intuition, plus the fact that the major sleepers in Japan seem to be this and Gingitsune.

Sam: 50 on Kyoukai no Kanata and 50 on Golden Time. They both seem like they would be ones that might be close

Category 4: At least one explosion in episode 1

Drew’s Top 5 Handicaps:

1. Valvrave the Liberator (1.5)
2. Arpeggio of Blue Steel (1.5)
3. Infinite Stratos Season 2
-Mechanized battles, especially those done in affordable 3D, lend themselves to the boom boom.
4. Kill La Kill (1.5)
-Hiroyuki Imaishi loves to blow crap up.
5. Samurai Flamenco (2)
-The hints that the show will be Tokusatsu-themed double as hints that there will be flashy fistfights that might get beyond standard CQC.

Sam: 50 on Kill La Kill and 50 on Samurai Flamenco. Gotta love some handdrawn booms.

Category 5: Licensed for Home Video Release in English

Drew’s Top 5 Handicaps:

1.Kill La Kill (1.5)
-Aniplex is already streaming it. A HV release announcement is really just a matter of time at this point.
2. Freezing Vibration (1.5)
-Season 1 was a bunch of profitable fanservice for Funimation. No reason why they wouldn’t want to add to their margins.
3. Log Horizon (1.5)
-People in the US like their game-based anime.
4. Magi Season 2 (1.5)
-No reason for aniplex not to release a popular title when they’ve already succeeded with one season.
5. Galilei Donna (2)
-NoitaminA titles seem to fly off the shelf less than a month after they air. Most of the time, anyway.

Sam: 100 on Kyoukai no Kanata. KyoAni has a fairly large following.

Over/Under 1: BD/DVD Volume 1 Sales (or, failing that, amazon stalker points)

Drew’s Top 5 Lines:

1. Infinite Stratos 2 (30,000)
-Want to bet against a franchise that logged a 37k average for season one with fans chomping at the bit to get more? Be my guest.
2. Kuroko’s Basketball (18,000)
-This is basically a bet on whether you think the s1->s2 dropoff for Kuroko will be more or less than the typical 25%.
3. Kyokai no Kanata (15,000)
-I’m splitting the difference here between the 20% odds that it bombs like Nichijou, the 70% odds that it winds up between 10k and 20k, and the 10% odds that it winds up doing explosively well.
4. Magi Season 2 (8000)
-The third in the epic ongoing series of “how much will the sequel dropoff be” bets.
5. Nagi no Asukara (7000)
-PA Works may not be as commercially haymaker-packing as Kyoto Animation, but they’ve been very steady in recent years (prior to Uchoten Kazoku, at least).

Sam: 50 on Kuroko and Kyokai no Kanata going over. Nichijou didn’t deserve those sales ;_; (though they did release a box set that sold 2900)

Over/Under 2: Total Related Articles on ANN

Drew’s Top 5 Lines:

1. Kill La Kill (35)
-Another betting line to the effect of “how all over KLK will western audiences be?”
2. Kuroko’s Basketball (25)
-Season 1 has been in the news a lot, for any number of reasons.
3. Kyokai no Kanata (23)
-Between the hefty amount of promotional material and the eminence of KyoAni, I see this one popping up in the news a lot.
4. Arpeggio of Blue Steel (20)
-It only needs 10 more stories at this point to break that mark, and I have no idea whether it will get that.
5. Coppelion (20)
-Controversy bait? Definitely.

Sam: 50 on the overs for Kuroko and Arpeggio. Kuroko’s Bomber might strike again, and Arpeggio has got its fair bit of promotion.

Over/Under 3: Youtube Video with Highest Viewcount

Drew’s Top 5 Lines:

1. Kill La Kill (700,000)
-We’ve seen multiple anime videos hit 1 million views overnight this year. If anything else is reaching that mark this year, Trigger is it.
2. Kuroko’s Basketball Season 2 (600,000)
-One of the more popular shows both inside and outside of Japan, and the s1 opening already has a million views.
3. BlazBlue (300,000)
-Not sure where BlazBlue falls on the ranks of fighting game popularity, but 300k sounds about right if it’s in the middle of that pack.
4. Magi Season 2 (300,000)
-I’m going by the numbers once again for a fairly popular season 1.
5. Coppelion (250,000)
-Those 2 years in limbo are gonna make this one look really pretty, if nothing else.

Sam: 50 on Kill La Kill being over and 50 on BlazBlue being over. Both are popular, though Kill La Kill might be a little high.

The battle lines are drawn. Bring on the broadcasts!