Saimoe 2010

Anime Saimoe Tournament 2010 was the 9th edition of the annual Saimoe tournament organized by users of the Japanese textboard website 2channel, with voting and results held on its own website. It began with the nominations on 2010 June 26, and concluded with the final match on October 16. This edition is notable for having a main bracket that slightly differs from most Saimoe editions as it was reduced to six rounds, with Round 1 being increased to four girls per match, and Round 3 serving as the "group finals" with three girls per match (instead of 1v1 like most editions).

This year featured several returning popular anime series with a notable presence in the tournament which resulted in a quite diverse Elite Eight roster featuring seven different shows, with only Saki fielding two girls. Azusa Nakano ended up winning the championship after decisively beating Nagi Sanzenin in the final match; the latter becoming the first-ever girl to reach two finals in the process. Azusa's bracket run was highligted by her round 3 clash against bandmate Mio Akiyama and fan favourite Mikoto Misaka, which saw K-On fans deciding to avoid the "spoiler effect" by sacrificing Mio and putting all of their support to Azusa instead. Their efforts paid off as Azusa overtook Misaka at the final few hours, eventually winning the round by just 26 votes.

Taiga Aisaka, the previous edition's champion, was unable to defend her title because her series Toradora! ended in 2009 March 26 -- making the anime ineligible for tournament's date range of airing anime (2009 July 1 - 2010 June 30).

Rules
Fuck this shit i'm lazy, just gonna copy this straight from /a/non's website

Voting policy
Voting Rules and Etiquette


 * In all stages of the tournament, votes will only count if posted in an official 2ch thread with a code generated that day from the code generator.
 * Votes must take the format <> to count. In addition, the names and titles must be in an officially recognised format (in Japanese, for one), so it is recommended to copy/paste entries from an official or trusted source.
 * New to this year: Voting posts must contain some words of support to count. It is unclear as to how, exactly, this will be policed, but assume that in practice that posts consisting only of the code and votes will be discounted and that any post that makes any sort of effort to accompany these will be fine.
 * Votes must be posted between 01:00:00 and 23:00:59 JST to count. Please note that this is strict and that even 23:01:00 is invalid.
 * Multiple votes are forbidden (if two votes come from the same 2ch ID code then neither will count), and all care and attention will be paid to minimise the impact of proxies.
 * Votes made with anonymous IDs will be invalid.
 * As votes cannot be changed once made, please vote carefully.
 * If a code is used multiple times with different IDs, then the first instance and only the first instance will count.
 * If a vote is made for too many characters allowed in any stage then the vote will not count for any of the characters.
 * If a match is interrupted (e.g. by downtime) for more than 11 hours then it will be reheld in full. If a match is interrupted but for less than 11 hours then the results will be upheld, even if the interrupted period includes the end of the match.
 * Objections to match results should be made to the operators within an hour of the match ending. All disputed votes will be resolved before the result becomes irreversible.
 * Negative promotion (e.g. "[someone/something] sucks") against characters, series, fanbases or fellow voters is strictly forbidden.
 * Feel free to campaign for participating characters in the voting threads as you see fit, so long as it doesn't violate the above.
 * Please do not post interim or final vote counts. If you see an interim vote count do not assume it to reflect the true count as it could well be misleading. Please wait for official results, which will be posted shortly after the end of any given contest.

Tournament
Qualification Rules


 * For a character to qualify for Saimoe 2010, she must a) be female b) and have appeared in new animated material between the dates of 07/01/2009 and 06/30/2010.


 * Case a) is usually straightforward, but extends to cover non-humans (most commonly androids and animals) that are portrayed as female.


 * Case b) includes all TV broadcasts, internet broadcasts, OAVs / OADs and theatrical releases of movies by premiere date. It does not include fan-made productions.


 * Additionally, characters from productions rated 18+ do not qualify. This does not disqualify productions derived from other 18+ rated forms so long as the productions themselves are not rated 18+.

Duplicate Entries


 * Different 'forms' of the same character or otherwise effectively identical derived forms of a character only form one entry, even if they span multiple series. In particular, this means that a character can only enter the tournament once even if multiple series of their show aired in the timeframe.
 * Multiple personalties do not count as separate characters and as such all fall under the same entry, barring exceptional circumstances where it can be shown in the long term that they are in fact different people rather than simply multiple personalities.
 * Twins normally count as separate characters. However, if they are identical and it is impossible to tell them apart in terms of appearance and personality, then they qualify as one entry only.

Nomination Rules


 * Many characters automatically qualify for the preliminaries, as decided in a thoroughly confusing manner by some shady cabal in the planning phase. The full list of pre-entry qualifiers can be found in Japanese here.
 * Characters not on the pre-entry list require only one nomination to qualify for the preliminaries, to be made either on the date their series is up for nomination or at the final open nomination stage.
 * People are free to nominate as many characters as they wish, but still require a code to do so legitimately.

Preliminary Round Rules


 * All qualifying characters are split randomly into 16 first preliminary groups. Characters who finish in the top 12 of their first preliminary group (a total of 192 characters) advance directly to the first round of the tournament proper. Characters who finish between 13th and 39th of their first preliminary group (a total of 432 characters) advance to the second preliminaries. All other characters are eliminated.
 * The characters in the second preliminaries are shuffled again and split into 4 groups. Characters who finish in the top 24 of their second preliminary group (a total of 96 characters) advance to the first round of the tournament proper. All other characters are eliminated.
 * In the event of a tie for 12th place in the first preliminaries, all tied characters proceed to the tournament proper. Similarly, in the event of a tie for 24th place in the second preliminaries, all tied characters proceed to the tournament proper. As a result of this, each tie adds to the total number of characters competing in the tournament proper. Likewise, in the event of a tie for 39th place in the first preliminaries, all tied characters proceed to the second preliminaries.
 * Voters may vote for up to 10 participants in a first preliminary match, and up to 12 participants in a second preliminary match. Using 'slots' to vote for the same character multiple times is not allowed.

Main Tournament Rules


 * All qualifying characters are shuffled randomly into eight groups of 36 and proceed in a single knockout format for three rounds (four characters to a round one match, three to a round two or round three match). At this point the group winners will be shuffled into a final knockout section (two characters to a match from hereon) from which the winner is crowned the champion of Saimoe.
 * In the aim of expediency, two round one matches will be run at a time. Likewise in round two.
 * In the event of a tie for first place, all tied characters proceed to the next round. There appears to be no ruling for what happens if the final is tied.
 * Voters may only vote for one character per match. In early rounds where multiple matches run at the same time voters may vote for up to one character per match, but do not need to vote in every match for their vote to be valid.

Rounds 1-3
Players per round: 289 > 72 > 24 > 8 > 4 > 2
 * Round 1: 289 contestants, split into 8 groups of 36; 9 quartets for each group. Vote one girl from each quartet; only one will advance. Group A has one extra girl, making one of its matches a five-way instead (same rules apply).
 * Round 2:  Surviving contestants are grouped into trios. Same rules apply (vote one girl per trio, only the top scorer advances).
 * Round 3: Afterwards, the winners of each trio will face each other on another three-way voting match labeled "Group Finals". Winners advance into the elite eight single-elimination 1v1 bracket, where they will be re-seeded.

Group A
Round 1

Group Finals (Top 72 --> Top 24)

Group B
Round 1

Group Finals (Top 72 --> Top 24)

Group C
Round 1

Group Finals (Top 72 --> Top 24)

Group D
Round 1

Group Finals (Top 72 --> Top 24)

Group E
Round 1

Group Finals (Top 72 --> Top 24)

Group F
Round 1

Group Finals (Top 72 --> Top 24)

Group G
Round 1

Group Finals (Top 72 --> Top 24)

Group H
Round 1

Group Finals (Top 72 --> Top 24)

Elite Eight
Single-elimination 1v1 bracket.