Aura being second is certainly not what people expected.
Summary:
- The results of the second Frieren popularity poll are completely unexpected.
- The poll allowed voting multiple times.
- If you remove the duplicate votes, the results become much more sensible.
If you look at the results of the second Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End (Sousou no Frieren) manga popularity poll, you’d be extremely confused. Apparently, the second most liked character is Aura the Guillotine — she’s a demon who was an antagonist for one arc only.
The rest of the results are just as weird, with Frieren herself being only fifth, and the mimic — a monster that is essentially a gag and not a proper character — getting into Top10.
That said, these results are very much misleading, as the polling method wasn’t what you might have expected. They shouldn’t be taken seriously, and if you look at the results past the first 10 positions, this becomes even more obvious.
The Poll Allowed Voting Multiple Times
The second Frieren poll was actually done online back in March, and there was no protection against duplicate votes. As such, the poll results should be treated with a grain of salt, if not outright dismissed.
Fans who were obsessed with certain characters were more inclined to vote multiple times. Well, this explains how a relatively unimportant character like Aura got so high.
Still, the decision to keep duplicate votes was probably intentional — and actually good from a marketing perspective. Unusual results generate more discussion, and these are certainly not results people expected — though Himmel winning the poll was somewhat expected.
The nature of the poll can be deduced when you look at the other results. For example, the 18th place in the poll is taken by the “Stupidly large steak,” which is clearly a joke entry — and that’s not the only one. There are other inanimate objects and nameless characters.
What Happens If You Remove Duplicate Votes?
Although some argue that the results are not that far from the actual truth. The same poll, with duplicate votes removed, will give results that are somewhat similar.
While Himmel doesn’t win it — Frieren, as expected, does — he still is in second place. Aura drops to the 7th place, which is still pretty high for a character with so little screen time.
Macht, who is one of the most beloved manga-only characters, drops from 8th place to outside of Top 10 when you remove duplicate votes — indicating that many anime-only watchers participated in the poll.
And, interestingly enough, the mimic goes up to the 4th position. It seems that the mimic memes are really popular within the Japanese fandom, too.