From the Diet 3 Daily –
January 1st, 2008. Deep with in the heart of Akiba, also known as the Akiba@Very_Deep, a secret betting club has been predicting the champion of the AnimeBowl since the late 1980s.
Members often disguise themselves as nerds with thick glasses, greasy hair, smelly breath, and often wearing stained t-shirts (with unknown substance) that often features anime characters – surprisingly, male or female.
The AnimeBowl is an underground gambling game much like fantasy football/baseball/soccer/horseracing/curling/bowling/AV making/whatever-you-couldn’t-imagine, in which different people pick a team filled with their favorite anime, and based on the popularity indicator commonly used at the time (in today’s world, the Japanese edition features the 2ch, while the western edition features the blogsphere), and a winning team is picked at the end of the season. A special “VIP” award is presented to the member with all of his selections winning the entire year.
There are special matches, or as the club lingo goes, “Fight for the Holey Grail”, in which anime that received special attentions are pitted against each other for the entire year, and at the end of the year, the members (they’re so really NOT Otakus) with the most games won would receive the latest technological breakthrough created and constructed in Basement level-62 of the Akiba Station (AKA. “The Secret Underground Lab”). Prizes have been rumored to be many things such as ideas for the latest anime, nearly-life sized Gundam models with Minovsky drives, potion to make a King Nerd into Dr. Love, 7 potions that make goth-loving princesses into nadeshico, a real Holey Grail that’s said to grant wishes of sleeping with different blond tsundere that use legendary swords, and so on.
Our agent reported that one of the most fiercely watched match is the Claymore VS Gurren Lagann match. The predicted odds are 20 to 1, in favor of Claymore, because most of the members favor women with big swords.
Some lady members, however, have firmly stayed with their pick of Gurren Lagann. They cited their “admiration” for men’s friendship as “hot and amazing.”
Our agency also predicts Claymore winning over Gurren Lagann. But our odds are only 5 to 1.
More details are forth coming.
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Mike Huang also contributed to this report while recovering from the aftermath of the Touch and Feel Football at the Academy.
