The polls opened roughly 2 hours ago, which gives you about 21 hours to vote from the time of this post (10 AM PST). I’m sure you’ll find someone to vote for in the group; Saki features strongly, Kyou of Clannad is set to steamroll, and there’s also Churuya-san and … Krauser-tan? It’s a make-or-break round for Mission-E as well, that one show that I was busy paying some respect to last night in my epic 2000-word paean last night.

So in that respect, I’m hoping you can help out with a little vote for Chinami in this round. Or at least, if you can’t muster up the time to vote, grab a code at least and pass it on to someone who can. It’s fairly easy to get a code, after all: Click on this link now, then click on it again in 2 hours. It’s up to you to decide what to do with your code…

But if you do vote, please add Chinami to your ballot – her Japanese name is found here, formatted for Saimoe voting, because Wordpress isn’t cooperating with Japanese at the moment. If you’ve felt moved at all by my passion from last night … thank you.

Voting tutorial and relevant links to follow.

Saimoe synchroom:
http://synchroom.wikispaces.com/SaiMoe2009

List of characters in group 9:
http://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?p=2498513#post2498513

Voting thread (current as of 19:40 PST):
http://changi.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/vote/1247420127/

===

How to vote:
1a) Go to the vote code generator to reserve your code. The fourth bullet should tell you what time it currently is in JST, and the very last line on the page should tell you when to come back to receive your code.

Visit the page again at that time (do the math between the two times to determine how many minutes you need to wait) to recieve your voting code, which will look something like this: [[VT23-ACUeRQsS-AZ]]

1b) Alternatively, a little Java application I wrote should be able to parse the vote code generator page and automatically remind you when it’s time to get your code. Do give that a shot if you wish.

2) Once you have your code, find the voting thread, which I usually do by perusing the Saimoe 2009 synchroom; it should be located under “2Channel Voting Information”. Go ahead and open that thread up.

3) Now to make your post! Your post should be in the format
[[code]]
<<character@series>>
<<character@series>>
…
<<character@series>>
some flavor text here to convince people you are not a bot

Naturally, the character and series name must be in Japanese; to help make the jump between languages, the AS people will also tend to translate the list of characters eligible for voting in each round, so check the AS thread to find who to vote for. For the fourth preliminary (July 8th in JST), the character list is here in the spoiler box labeled “group 4″.

For preliminaries, you get to pick up to 10 girls, so pick your favorite 10 using whatever criteria you select girls to vote for, and put those in your post.

4) And … uh … now you vote.

Put your vote in that white box at the bottom of the thread, click the one button that’s there, and ta-da! Posted. Now just time to sit and pray for the results…

(If you’re still confused, check out Komari’s excellent tutorial from the AS thread, or just ask questions there as well. It’s a good place to hang out for Saimoe 2009. I’ll also answer questions here if you have them, or on IRC at #dasaku on Rizon, because, y’know, #dasaku is cool.)

-CCY