Maniac was sick for most of the week and didn’t feel like trying to power through a proper recap of the first two rounds, so do indulge the following

Gosh DARN, you guys, this has been the most action-packed Corenament yet! And with only the faintest whiff of controversy! Instead, I daresay that the 32 Switcheroo was the (accidentally) perfect intervention to heighten the stakes and create some unique matchups that we ordinarily might have never gotten to see. The results?

Don’t you just love the weird stuff that we do around Homicidols.com? Wouldn’t you like to support that and even be part of steering the ship? Become a patron today!

Wait! cry out a few voices who were paying particular attention, why is Yanakoto Sotto Mute still in the game, and ayumikurikamaki out? DIDN’T AYUKUMA WIN BY A LARGE MARGIN! And the answer is, they kind of did … on the strength of ~70 votes exclusively for them, which just so happened to correspond to a massive traffic spike on Saturday. I took the matter to The Committee, and the consensus was to not reward bots and remove those phantom votes, which gave the match to Yanamyu by an even wider margin. We did allow that the girls being restored to bear form would be a sign from Kuma-sama that we should let the result stand, but even that darkest of ursine gods has forsaken ayukuma, and their victory was reversed.

Wait wait! cry out most of those same voices, and also those of people who looked elsewhere first, what the heck happened to Candye Syrup? And what the heck is Kamen Joshi doing there? The answer is that Chris, while respecting the accomplishments of Candye Syrup, didn’t like their long-term chances for victory, and he recalled that Kamen Joshi won the whole thing back in 2016, and he chose to invoke his Resurrection Code. A hard choice! But the choice of a man bent on victory.

In terms of Bosses, we’re not quite even-stevens, but nobody’s really pulling away either. Daemon leads with five remaining entrants, Rain and Viz have four each, and Chris has three. If I were to handicap it, though, just based on who’s facing who and when … well, given that upsets have been pretty consistent and folks’ tastes are evolving, I think our Final Four is going to be really interesting.

Let’s fight! I decided that this was a good time to add the ol’ reliable video wrinkle —

Staged or live, who wins the video battle?