osu!taiko Mascot Community Vote Results

Public voting for the new Taiko mascot has finished, and the votes are in. Come see the community's favorite picks while the staff deliberates over their choice!

With the voting finally closed, we've got a solid winner on our hands. We originally planned to only keep voting open for a few weeks, but after noticing the relatively small number of votes overall for something so important, we opted to advertise the voting more heavily in-game to entice people to vote.

The choice was a clear one for the community, with a definite winner several thousand votes ahead of all the others. However, the staff continues to agonize over their choice internally, split between several designs. The debate is fierce, and it may be a week or more before the arguments settle and a pick emerges from the ashes.

Please note that the winner of the community vote is not the chosen mascot. The staff vote will ultimately determine who becomes the new official mascot.

Check out the results for yourself here!

In the meanwhile, we're delighted to present to you, the most popular osu!taiko mascot by community vote:

Aiko (愛子), designed by JMC! With a whopping 11684 votes (over 4000 more than the closest competitor), Aiko was clearly a favorite right from the very start.

Hailing from Japan, Aiko is an energetic 17 year old girl with a passion for Taiko, even if she isn't the best at it! Sporting a pair of stylish "Tabi" shoes and a retinue of pippidon accessories, the mascot of yore lives on in this spunky girl. She's fairly short at only 154cm, and was born on the 6th of April, 1999.

It yet remains to be seen if she will take the staff vote and rise to become the official osu!taiko mascot, but she's definitely won the hearts and minds of the community, that's for sure!

Honorable mentions also go out to the second and third place entries as follows:

Alisa, designed by [ Glitch ]. Sporting 7164 votes, Alisa came closer than anyone else to snatching the spotlight from Aiko with her more mature charms.

A cheerful and social 17 year old girl, Alisa has been playing Taiko ever since her early childhood. Fond of playing songs for others, she is very musically oriented, and when she's not sleeping or eating, she's playing Taiko, or playing retro video games for kicks!

Tama, designed by long-time Taiko player crystalsuicine. Stealing the hearts of 4164 voters, Tama snuck barely into third place with her mischeavous grin.

One of the younger participants in the contest at only age 15 (or is she?), Tama has a huge passion for taiko drumming. And thunderstorms. And especially festivals, where she snatches up any takoyaki she can find. Always up for the challenge, Tama hides a particularly mysterious past behind her youthful demeanor. Are her horns real, or just for show?

We'd like to personally thank every entrant in the contest for their efforts - putting your work out for public scrutiny is no small feat indeed, and we had an excellent showing from so many people this time around.

If you've not seen the entries yourself yet, be sure to check them out over at the community contest page. Voting is closed, but you can still gander at all the submissions in their natural glory!

Keep your eyes peeled for the results of the staff vote in the coming weeks, as the fate of osu!'s future Taiko mascot hangs in the balance!

See you soon!

—Ephemeral