Saimoe

Moe is serious business.

May the flames of moe burn in your favor!

 There is an entire world of anime most fans are unaware of: the realms of 2chan and Nico Nico Douga. NND deserves it’s own post but it’s basically an anime centered version of Youtube. 2chan is the japanese forum that inspired the infamous 4chan (and if you don’t know what that is then you aren’t missing out on anything). Most of the memes, such as the carmelldansen, danjo, etc, originated from NND or 2chan. And every year 2chan hosts a massive tournament: Saimoe. Saimoe is an elimination tournament that pits hundreds of characters against each other. There are very few rules to qualify a contestant: basically they must be a girl from an OVA, ONA, or anime that was produced from the end of last year’s Saimoe to the beginning of the current year’s tournament. These contestants are put into progressively smaller blocks where characters win by getting the most votes. It’s fairly simple.

What isn’t simple is keeping up with all the voting. Saimoe spans from the beginning of August to the middle of October so faithfully recording each match up is a huge pain. I usually only pay attention to the finals and the winner (random fact: Taiga [Toradora] won last year’s Saimoe) but this year I’ve decided to attempt to follow the entire tournament. Since Saimoe is almost an entirely brand new concept to a host of anime fans I’ll start by explaining the elimination process.

When all of the contestants are collected, through a process I’m not too clear on, someone makes a chart. This chart contains all of the challengers of that year’s Saimoe. Since there are so many people the characters are divided into blocks: this year there are eight blocks, A-H. These blocks are still too big to use for voting so they are then divided into samller groups of four characters. There is then a massive voting campaign in that group. Two groups from different blocks (i.e block A and B) are run at the same time. When all of the smaller groups have been finished the winners advance directly to the first round of the tournaments. Every character that placed between 13th and 39th go to the second preliminaries. The whole process is again repeated for the second pre-lims with the winners advancing to the main tournament. At the end of this about 288 characters will be in the main tournament.

Okay, the pre-lims are messy and annoying to keep up with. Thankfully it gets much easier to keep track of from here. In the main tournament characters are placed randomly in eight different groups consisting of thirty-six people. The groups then are thrown into a series of three rounds that knock out one character. The group winners are then pitted against each other in mano y mano matches. This continues and eventually the winner is crowned Saimoe Queen (not really but I think it fits). Hooray!

Looking at this you may be thinking ‘this is awfully serious for an anime tournament why go through all that trouble?’ And that, my friends, is the beauty of Saimoe. The tournament is entirely made and run by pure fan devotion. Saimoe, like scanulations, is a labor of love. It amazes me that a few otaku (actual shut-ins, probably) can put together this amazing tournament. There’s no justification for Saimoe’s existence other than ‘I wanted to do it’ so people are free to scoff and critisize it. And the best thing about the people that participate in Saimoe is that they don’t care what other people think. Saimoe is and always will be made for nerds. It seems like an exclusive group but it’s not all that hard to join.

For those interested in participating in the glorious nerdom that is Saimoe here are some helpful links. First, a guide that explains the rules in a simple, non-paragraph format. Second, if you are actually interested in voting in the tournament then here is a guide to voting. For the codes to today’s matches (explained in the voting guide) go here. Keep in mind the site where you actually vote (2chan) is entirely in Japanese but no one cares if you write in English. Also, here is the english guide to Saimoe. Use it, learn it, love it. And if you’re not interested in voting but would still like to check out the tournament, Moetron provides up to date information in english on the tournament.

Characters of Saimoe 2010 courtesy of Saimoe.org

Click to view the full chart. Now, if anyone’s curious as to my picks for blocks A and B (posts will updated once a new block is set up) here they are:

Group A: *Miki Noda (G.A), *Yuno (Hidamari Sketch), *Nagi (Hayate the Combat Butler)

Group B: ~Yin (Darker than Black), ~Togame (Katanagatari)

(It’s amazing that all my characters for A passed and the ones for B failed. I know Togame has a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the tournament but I still want to see her in the finals)

* means that they’ve passed their group match

~ Means they’ve lost group match and are going into second prelims

So go, my fellow anime fans! Revel in the nerdiness that is Saimoe! And you might just enjoy it.

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