International Saimoe League

The International Saimoe League (ISML) is an online anime character popularity tournament which "aims to find the most moe among anime girls". Originally spun off of the Anime Saimoe Tournament held on 2channel, ISML was created by AnimeSuki forum members in 2008 with the purpose of allowing voters from around the world to participate, as opposed to the Japan-exclusive Anime Saimoe and Korean-exclusive Best Moe Tournament in Anizone.

ISML has many characteristics that make it stand out from other popularity contests, with the most significant being its league system that is similar to major United States sports leagues like NBA and NHL, and gem awards which are given to contestants who perform well during the regular season. The champions are awarded the "Heavenly Tiara" (female) and "Lapis Scepter" (male). Initially contested by females only, ISML held a separate male exhibition tournament from 2011 to 2014, and later added a main tournament for them starting on 2015.

Today, ISML is one of the oldest and longest-running character tournaments still active, and is seen by some users as the last remaining event from "saimoe's golden age / first generation". ISML is also the main subject of this wiki, since it was founded by ISML's key staff, particularly KholdStare88 (aka "Kholdy" and "Chocola"), who currently serves as the tournament's commissioner.

Format


As befitting of its name, the International Saimoe League has many rules, voting methods, numbers, and other particularities that are likely only interesting to geeks due to its complexity and sheer scale; the entire ruleset of each edition is published through its official Charter.

Naming convention
ISML's official naming convention in English follows Hepburn romanization. Most characters are written in Eastern Order (family name first), and use Japanese names whenever possible. In accordance to Hepburn romanization, macrons are always used for "long o" (ō) and "long u" (ū) vowels. Non-Eastern sounding names follow their own naming convention in-universe (e.g. Edward Elric, Illyasviel von Einzbern)

Examples:
 * Rena Ryuuguu --> Ryūgū Rena
 * Kyou Fujibayashi --> Fujibayashi Kyō
 * Golden Darkness --> Konjiki no Yami
 * Squid Girl --> Ika-Musume

Nomination
ISML officially opens through the nomination phase which lasts one week. Voters are given a ballot where they nominate a character by writing their full name and anime series. Naming convention and language does not matter as long as the nominee specified is made clear. Each ballot must comply with minimum requirements and restrictions imposed by the organizers (e.g. maximum 3 characters per anime). After the period ends, a selected number of characters with the highest nominations will advance to the next stage.

Unlike the 2channel Saimoe and Anizone Saimoe tournaments, which limit participation to within one year before a given edition's start date, ISML accepts characters from all anime regardless of airtime, enabling characters to return to the tournament even after their anime has ended. Starting from 2012 however, ISML has imposed a restriction that prohibits characters who appeared in the same year the tournament was held in, and these characters competed in the introduced seasonal contests instead.

In addition, some characters are exempted from nominations (or as the Saimoe Wiki calls it, "Direct Invites"), and will automatically qualify to the next stage when they fulfill certain requirements. Note that the "next stage" varies every edition, and can either mean advancing to the preliminaries or a direct ticket to the regular season.
 * From 2008 - 2011, direct invites came from the best performing girls in last year's 2channel Saimoe and Anizone Saimoe, alongside last year's necklace winners and girls who have scored above a certain point threshold in the ISML regular season.
 * ISML 2008 used direct invites from 2channel, Anizone, and Korea Super Best Moe's 2007 edition.
 * 2012 - 2014's direct invites were allocated to the top performing girls in last year's regular season. These girls were put into one of two divisions depending on their previous ISML appearances — either Nova (newcomers and sophomores) or Stella (veterans).
 * ISML 2015 only invited the two finalists from each seasonal contest in 2014 to its Nova Division, for a maximum of 8 girls.
 * With the merging of the female tournament and a new commissioner stepping in, ISML 2016's direct invites were re-assigned to last year's necklace winners, alongside the top 2 finalists from last year's seasonal.
 * From 2017 - 2020, males were also given invites by winning a pendant.
 * In ISML 2021, seasonal runner-ups were no longer invited. Additional invites were given to all characters who made the playoffs bracket last year, but did not win either necklace or pendant. With the introduction of male seasonals, their winners was also qualified for next year's main tournament starting from 2022.

Preliminaries
The preliminary period consists of several rounds of varying formats; its main purpose is to thin out the nominees in order to fit the regular season's league capacity. Seeding rounds, which determine each character's match-ups for the following preliminary rounds or regular season schedule, are also held at the same time.

Preliminaries were an integral part of ISML since its inception, but it was abolished from 2016 to 2020, which made nominations extremely important as they became the sole method for putting characters in the main tournament. As a consequence, all direct invites from those editions advanced to the regular season instead. The preliminaries returned in 2020 as a result of the tournament combining the elements of 2017-2019's multiple stages and the large groups of 2008-2015's league format.

Regular season & Gem awards
ISML's regular season is a league-style round-robin tournament that lasts many months, which will decide the sixteen (16) best-performing or surviving characters that will advance to the postseason. It is notable for being split into seven periods; in order they are:
 * Aquamarine, topaz,  amethyst,  sapphire,  emerald,  ruby, and  diamond.
 * These colours are reflected in ISML's emblem, a flower with seven petals representing its periods.

The format has varied throughout ISML's history, but for the first years of its existence, the tournament used a massive single round-robin where every girl plays all other opponents once.
 * Between 2012-2015, the female tournament was split into 2 divisions of 36 girls each: Nova (newcomers and sophomores) or Stella (veterans). Both divisions are held at the same time, and are completely separate — in other words, a Nova division contestant will not play any Stella division contestant during the regular sesaon. The male division on 2015 also had a similar 35-man league format.
 * Since the number of matches were reduced, the periods were also reduced to five. Likewise, five necklaces/pendants were awarded during the time: Aquamarine,  amethyst,  ruby,  emerald, and  topaz.
 * Sapphire and Diamond were reserved as "circlets", and were respectively awarded to the winner of Nova and Stella division's playoffs bracket. The Saimoe Wiki considers these awards as just necklaces/pendants with a different name.
 * In 2016, the regular season saw a return to the original 7-gem order. It used a unique "World-Cup"-style format, where 128 players were split into 4-man single round-robin groups, of which only the top 2 players advance, similar to the football tournament's group stage used from 1998-2022. The regular season was split into three stages: top 128 (distributed in the first four periods), top 64 (emerald and ruby), and top 32 (diamond).
 * Between 2017-2019, each period has its own group stage where players are split into groups of 6 (or 4 in 2019), for a total of seven stages. This format also introduced the Wildcard rounds, where the worst (or next-worst) contestants in a given period play a last-chance round in order to avoid being eliminated in the regular season.
 * The regular season format from 2020 onward uses the Three Splits format as a hybrid of the 2017-2019 multiple group stages, and the lengthy, large groups of the old league format. Split 1 starts off like a typical 6-man group stage, while Splits 2 and 3 were fought in 16-man groups, and lasted for three periods each. Wildcard rounds were reduced to three (two in 2020), held at the end of each split.

Each period lasts several matches, and the best-performing contestants on that period will participate in a special round to determine who wins that period's necklace (females) or pendant (males). Each period will produce only one necklace and pendant winner.
 * In ISML's early years, the necklace was simply awarded to the best peformer in a given period, usually determined by wins, points, and the SDO stat (strength of defeated opponents — the quality of opponents that she defeated.) This allows the possibility of a contestant winning multiple necklaces. Starting from 2011, a contestant cannot win multiple necklaces in a single year, following Shana's record-three necklace wins in 2010.
 * The original necklace rounds (2011-2015) were determined using limited voting (vote only a few girls). The vote percentages are then put into various formulas involving the SDO stat to produce the final score; the character with the highest final score wins the award.
 * 2016 has a similar voting format, but only votes were used to determine the winner.
 * Starting in 2017, the gem awards used Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), which is currently in use today. Voters have to rank 8 girls from 1st-8th. The character with the lowest votes is eliminated, and every voter who chose them as their top choice will have their votes transferred to their next highest choice. Eliminate last place, transfer votes, repeat until there are 2 characters left, or someone scores more than 50% of all votes cast.

Playoffs
The final part of ISML is the playoffs (officially called "Elimination"), where 16 contestants will play through one or more elimination brackets to decide the year's champion.
 * The original playoffs format was double-elimination, used from 2008 to 2010.
 * The current format is single-elimination. The 16-man bracket (with no variations) was first used in 2011, and in 2017-present.
 * 2012-2015 playoffs were divided into two phases: Division playoffs, contested within the Stella and Nova divisions, and the Tiara finals, which combines the top 8 finishers from each division in a single bracket.
 * 2016's format used a 4x4 group stage and 8-man bracket instead.

During the playoffs, consolation matches will be held among eliminated contestants, which will determine their final rankings in the tournament. However, due to ISML's varying tournament rules, the method used to rank the characters has likewise differed on every edition; because of this, some of the contestants' final positions do not necessarily reflect what stage they were eliminated in.

Character eligibility
To be eligible for the main tournament, characters must appear in a Japanese-produced animated medium: TV shows, Films, Made-for-DVD (OVA), Internet (ONA). Foreign source materials are allowed if the adaptations were produced by Japanese studios (e.g. Korean Webtoons like Tower of God)
 * Hentai (R-18+ rated works) is NOT ALLOWED.
 * Must be a human / humanoid, or possess anthropomorphic qualities.
 * Must have a name or other universal means of identification.
 * Must regularly appear in the series, or have a significance to the story's plotline.
 * For non-binary characters (sexless, gender ambiguous / unknown, switches between sexes, hermaphrodite) they will be assigned based on which gender traits are more dominant, or which gender the audience assumes them to be.
 * Examples: Houseki no Kuni's sexless gems , Made in Abyss's  Nanachi (gender unknown) and Monogatari's  Ougi Oshino (apeeared as a boy and a girl) compete in the female division.
 * Otokonoko characters, popularly known in the Western anime community as traps, will always compete in the male division.

Voting policy
Compared to its Japanese and Korean counterparts, ISML's voting is simple and relatively easy to understand. No account creation is needed.
 * All characters have icons and names, you just have to click on someone.
 * At the bottom of the screen, there are icons for sex and age range. These are optional.
 * Before submitting your votes, you must enter a CAPTCHA. To prevent bots, you will have to wait a certain amount of time before you can even submit.
 * You must vote on at least 8 matches.
 * Voting is only limited to ONE (1) vote per IP address.
 * Only one vote per 1 vs 1 match-up.
 * A voter may not vote on behalf on another person.
 * Voting is limited to certain matchdays.
 * Once your ballot is submitted, your votes can only be changed by asking the staff for permission.

Features
As one of the oldest and longest-running online character popularity contests, ISML has many characteristics that set it apart from other competitions besides its league format.

Annual Charter & Constitution
ISML publishes a yearly charter which supplements the basic rules. It stipulates details that are not mentioned in the basic rules, including the specific format of a certain year, detailed schedule, additional restrictions, and so on. This allows the organizer to make some changes every year while maintaining the contest's core values. The contest also provides a legalese document called the "Constitution".

From the website:
 * The Annual Charter defines the values and limitations of and establishes a schedule for ISML. The Charter purposes to be the flexible aspect of ISML that complements the static Constitution. It aims to provide ISML with the ability to make the innovations necessary to remain entertaining each year.
 * The purpose of the Constitution is to provide a permanent set of guidelines that govern and provide the basic framework for the structure and execution of all ISML tournaments. While staff members may come and go throughout the years, the principles of the League should not change. Supporting the Constitution are the Annual Charters mentioned in Article VIII which fill in the blanks and provide specific details for the particular year's tournament.

Exhibitions
The Exhibition Matches were first implemented in 2010 with the purpose of raising awareness on anime characters who did not appear in the main competition. Users can also suggest exhibition matches in the official ISML forum.

From 2011 to 2013, the Male Exhibition contest was introduced. Its format consists of a multi-man elimination round and a 32-man single elimination bracket. Despite the "exhibition" label, the male champions are considered of equal status to those who won in the male regular season era (2015 onwards). However, their posters are NOT displayed in the front page. Meanwhile, 2014's male exhibition is replaced by Trap Exhibition, causing former finalist Hideyoshi to ascend into the hall of fame because (s)he's the most popular trap at the time.

Throughout ISML's history, many sub-contests under the Exhibition label have been organized with a poster being awarded to each winning contestant. In addition, several exhibition contests have become an integral part of several editions:

Other exhibition contests by year:

Dedicated Support
Unlike other competitions, ISML has a dedicated website solely for its contest which supports multiple languages such as English, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Japanese, Korean, Russian, Vietnamese, German, and (since 2021) Bahasa Indonesia. Since the site is non-profit, it has a donation page to ensure continued operation of the contest. The proportion of Chinese sponsorship is overwhelmingly high.

From 2008-2017, the result pages displayed graphs of each match's hourly vote progress, map of voting percentages from each country/region, and regular season statistics tables. In addition, there were many features outside the competition itself, such as:
 * detailed profiles for all main tournament contestants
 * Match of the Day (with flavor text)
 * Emblems for anime series (Example: the Toaru series' emblem depicts a 5-point star defaced by a lightning bolt, which represents its strongest contestant Mikoto Misaka)
 * AMV promotional videos
 * During ISML 2019's nomination phase, support for the victims of the Kyoto Animation arson attack was promoted and recommended on the site's front page.

However, due to the manpower and technical problems of the management team, many of these features disappeared from 2018 onwards as the website switched to a different layout. The increasing workload of the staff also led to numerous delays and interruptions of various updates. In particular, there were cases in the 2019 contest where the results were delayed by as many as 63 hours.

In 2020, the ISML staff produced a "Saimoe Podcast" which was published in Youtube. The principal speakers consist of:
 * Momento10 - podcast host and mediator, writer of the "Match of the Day"
 * maglor - Korean-American, primary tournament organizer. Uses Shirobako girls Erika Yano and Aoi Miyamori as avatars.
 * Chibasa - French site administrator and moderator

Conception
In 2006, the popularity of Anime Saimoe Tournament and news of Best Moe Tournament spawned interest in English based Moe Tournament. The format of Elimination period for the Preliminary and Round-robin League Style for the Regular season was first proposed by Psieye on AnimeSuki forums. In 2007 following discussion about Super Moe Tournament results, the talk of English based Moe Tournament was reawakened and minhtam1638 started working on ISML as a reaction to this. After much discussion in the AnimeSuki Forum, the format of having Auto-qualifying entrants based on their records in Anime Saimoe Tournament and Best Moe Tournament was adopted along with free for all nomination phase to fill the number of 64 that was needed for the Tournament league play.

The main reason for the creation of ISML was spawned from the criticisms of two other tournaments, Anime Saimoe Tournament and Best Moe Tournament, for reasons that the single-elimination tournaments held in Japan and Korea were decided at random. To correct this problem, ISML uses a round-robin tournament, which ensure that all participants will face the rest exactly once. After the round-robin phase, the top 16 participants are seeded into double-elimination instead of randomly paired. Because each participant needs to be elimination twice, this process reduces random spikes in popularity that may cause a consistently strong character to fall.

Another goal for ISML is to have its polls open to voters across the world; whereas Anime Saimoe Tournament attempts to block non-Japanese ISPs from voting, ISML is tailored to embrace voters from as many backgrounds as possible. From the first voting in ISML, which was the 2008 nominations, voters were encouraged to submit nomination in any language they were comfortable with. Volunteers promoted ISML in websites based in many different language. By the end of 2008 Regular Season, non-English speaking voters outnumbered English speakers.[better citation needed] As of 2009, ISML is the largest moe tournament in the world. Its layout is user-friendly, requiring no registration and using image-assisted voting for recognition. While international voting is encouraged, ISML has a strict eligibility rule on its contestants. Only characters that are recurring or of significant importance are allowed; simply a cameo appearance does not receive consideration in ISML

Editions
A list of ISML editions.

Winner's Gallery
For the gem award posters, see the necklace and pendant page.

Tiara Winners

Statistics
For more details, click here.

Navigation
Notes

References

Articles:
 * Official website
 * Moegirl link (Chinese)
 * Namuwiki link (Korean)

Community links:
 * ISML forum
 * Discord invite link
 * ISML Tieba (Chinese)
 * Twitter
 * Facebook
 * Instagram (created and maintained by Ignite; requires IG account)