User blog comment:Ceras SanMarina/Season three!? Seriously?/@comment-1616397-20091211181820

You should do longer comments more often, Lil. You're quite eloquent and have good powers of reasoning. Just not auf Deutsch.

Here's something strange, reading through the threads on the LJ mothership about Season 3: I'm not seeing a lot of clamoring for Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, or Thailand in the English-speaking fandom. And that made me think more about them. I'm now wondering if Korea's ban is affecting them showing up. Using those four is virtually the only way that China gets any more airtime. I also wonder if the situation is flipped in the Japanese fandom, where they want the East Asians as much as the English-speaking fandom wants the Nordics.

(All elements of the following assume, of course, that the relevant strips are adapted and/or appropriate new material is created. Just wanted to make that clear.)

The MKCs have become a giant jigsaw puzzle with one tall, blond, bespectacled missing piece. If Sweden was around, we'd have natural pairings with Sweden/Finland, Sealand/Latvia, and Estonia/Hungary (Group Urals). Without Sweden, there's Latvia/Estonia and a bunch of shafted nations.

I don't see Cuba getting a backlash if he got an MKC. The only ones who might kick up a fuss would be the American fans, and I don't think the Japanese TPTB care what we think. Even if there was a fuss, it'd be very small; Cuba's a pretty popular character among American fans. If he and Canada are paired up for an MKC, I think any kind of indignation will be covered up by the orgasmic squeeing of Canada fangirls.

We can't really judge what MKCs will actually happen until the episodes are announced, but given the material remaining and the characters remaining, I'm willing to say right now that the most probable MKCs are Romano/Spain, Belarus/Ukraine, and Canada/Finland, paired up on the "cold countries" basis. It'd make for a cute special cover with Kumajiro and Hanatamago, wouldn't it?