Best Girl 8

Best Girl 8: Salt is War was organized by r/anime moderator mpp00 in his second major contest host (after Best Character 5), and ran from 2021 June 11 to July 16 Eastern Time. Voting and results were held in the AnimeBracket website just like the preceding editions.

For the first time in Best Girl history, there were no new characters featured in the elite eight stage. Mai Sakurajima, the runner up of the previous Best Girl edition, was predicted to win the tournament by most users who participated in the "Best Girl Madness Bracket", and indeed took home the championship. The runner-up was #37 seed Shouko Nishimiya, who pulled off a bracket-busting run highlighted by her victories against notable powerhouses Hayasaka, Chika, and top seed Aqua. Meanwhile, the eternal contender Holo reached her fifth Best Girl semi-finals appearance but lost to Mai; she then claimed the bronze after defeating Aqua in the Strawpoll website.

Outside of the top 8, the tournament saw the record-setting run of #468 seed Hanabi Yasuraoka, achieving the biggest upset of all time by defeating #45 seed Annie Leonhart in round 1, and later became the lowest-ever seed to appear in round 3. This year also marked the first appearance of the Hololive Virtual YouTubers who became eligible because of a long-running series of web shorts; one of these girls, Noel Shirogane, reached round 3 as the tournament's second-lowest seed (#300).

Rules & Tournament Format
All voting rounds begin and end at 18:00 Eastern Daylight Time (UTC-5). (14:00 Pacific Daylight, 22:00 UTC, 06:00 Beijing)

Voting poilcy
 * You must register or login to a reddit account in order to vote.
 * Accounts must be at least 2 months old.
 * NO CROSSPOSTING / BRIGADING / LINKING the contest to other subreddits.

Nomination
 * Lasts 2 days
 * Enter name, series, image URL address
 * Image links must come from MyAnimeList or Anilist, otherwise the nomination will be deleted
 * Females only. Sexless characters with feminine appearance are allowed, but males (traps) are not.
 * Characters who have made their animated debut in 2020 Summer or later are NOT allowed. (that's right, No Kanokari girls, no Tsukasa, no Jujutsu Kaisen)
 * Best Girl champions       and Best Character winners   are also NOT allowed.
 * Check the entrants list first to prevent repeat nominations

Eliminations
 * Voters will choose the characters they want to participate in the main bracket stage.
 * All nominees are divided into 5 groups.
 * Each group lasts 1 day
 * Approval voting - Vote whoever you like; there is no limit.
 * 512 players with the highest adjusted votes will advance to the main bracket.
 * Series Limit: maximum of 5 characters per series.

Main Bracket
 * 512 players, single-elimination
 * Seeded by results in the previous stage
 * Rounds 1-6 are split into 4 groups per round; each group lasts one day
 * Round 1 Group A lasts 2 days instead in order to give users time to fill out their bracket predictions.
 * Quarter-finals and beyond will last one day each
 * A consolation match for third-place, if available, will be held in a separate website.
 * If a match is tied, the higher-seeded contestant wins.

Elimination Round
Full results: Screenshot gallery of results, including excluded characters (PDF link, requires download)

Date A Live Disqualified Before the main round started, all characters from the Date A Live series were disqualified due to voter fraud. Most of its girls were unexpectedly seeded fairly high, and even though the recent anime releases may had an effect, the sudden spike in seeds was considered unnatural and thus, neccessitated investigation. In a comment by mpp00, after asking the site creator Matt Hackmann for stats, he discovered that the show's characters, especially the top 3 seeded girls Kurumi, Tohka, and Yuzuru, had a noticeably larger percentage of voters who used multiple reddit accounts to artificially boost their numbers[citation needed]. Since the site has no way of removing the fraudulent votes, the host decided to remove the characters instead. This is the second instance of Date A Live characters becoming disqualified from the bracket after a similar incident happened in Best Character 3.

The Phantom Sixth Man(agatari) In spite of the character limit, a sixth contestant from the Monogatari series, #100 Karen Araragi, qualified for the main bracket due to human error. The host mpp00 said that while he was manually purging contestants, another girl from the series (Tsubasa Hanekawa, who was seeded #80) slipped past the CTRL+F search function because her show was misspelled as Mongatari.[citation needed] As the bracket had already started, the host has no way to roll it back, and thus, the contest still continued.

Holo no Graffiti During the nomination stage, members from the Virtual YouTuber group Hololive appeared under the series name Holo no Graffiti (HL wiki link), which is a series of 1-minute shorts that was first released in May 2019. As the anime and its characters have their entries in MyAnimeList, they are technically eligible. There were discussions in the reddit threads concerning their eligibility and potential impact that they would bring in the best girl contest, as some users feared that the Hololive fanbase, known for its dedication, might start a brigade and spoil the "integrity" of the tournament. Host mpp00 held a Strawpoll to determine if the users would like to allow the girls from HoloGra, which ended with more responses in favor of "Yes".
 * Five girls qualified in order of descending seeds: #200 Fubuki, #235 Pekora, #281 Korone, #288 Rushia, and #300 Noel.

Summary
inspired by recap anon from /co/
 * How the hell did Yuki Amane get seeded so high?
 * Esdeath getting the most votes
 * Hanabi upsets Annie, biggest upset of ALL TIME
 * Phos gets rekt by fucking Sailor Moon
 * Kimetsu no Yaiba salt > Hololive seethe; Kanao gets BTFO by Noel

Round 3
 * Kanroji loses to Muscle Gal for Top 64
 * Hanabi's miracle run ends to an OL walking in panties
 * Satella can't keep getting away with it
 * Chitoge sneaks to round 4
 * Ichigo BTFO
 * Fucking side character beats a main character FROM A RECENTLY ENDED SHOW just because she's from Reddit favourite
 * Misato can't get it done against the peach butt

Round 4
 * Soviet Yunyun > Tyrant's Eye
 * Homura jobs out to cat tits
 * KyoAni girl showdown
 * Zero Two loses to a Kaguya girl
 * Nezuko BTFO
 * Keions' last stand
 * Reina goes to round 5 for the first time
 * The Kei menace is finally defeated
 * Krista confirmed Best Girl of AoT
 * Hori beats yet another Elite 8 girl again
 * Recency bias > your waifu
 * Ninochads rise up!

Round 5
 * Ryuko fails to reach top 16 for the first time
 * Is it really over for her?
 * SHOUKO SURVIVES AGAINST HAYA BY 21 VOTES
 * Only one predicted her to win
 * Hayasaka lost to Shouya in Best Character 5 with the exact same margin
 * Miku in the top 16
 * Asuka loses to round 5 again
 * Maybe she's deserving of Best Character more
 * Holo vs Saber: Battle of the old guards
 * C.C in the sweet 16 for the first time!
 * Creayus, the dedicated CC fan artist
 * Violet's silent domination

Round 6
 * Renamed as Salty Sixteen
 * Aqua returns, Yuigahama returns
 * Fairly close, but expected
 * Chika and Shouko will face each other
 * Is it Emilia's year?
 * But she's against eternal choker Holo
 * Mai continues her march
 * Megumin nearly upset by Violet

Quarters
 * No new Elite 8 girls
 * The REAL fight starts now
 * User posts a Bunny Girl Senpai rewatch interest thread
 * "Best Girl 8 Winner"
 * Feeling confident now, are we?
 * Others suggesting similar rewatches if their waifu wins it all
 * The results are in
 * Aqua gets her 3rd straight final four appearance
 * Megumin easily defused by Mai
 * Aqua confirmed Konosuba's Best Girl for the third time in a row
 * Holo survives
 * Fifth final four appearance
 * A repeat finalist is guaranteed now
 * Chika BTFO by Shouko
 * 57 votes
 * Nishimiya the Kaguya-sama Slayer
 * "Dark horse" hype
 * Momentum is on Nishimiya's side now

Semis
 * Bunny vs. Wolf REMATCH
 * r/WiseWolfQuantumBunny
 * Is Mai a modern-day version of Holo?
 * More campaigning posts
 * Spotted on Mai's home subreddits
 * If it stays at 12 hours, the damage is done
 * r/SpiceandWolf mod don't want anything to do with this shitshow
 * Time's up
 * NISHIMIYA IN THE FINALS
 * MAI BTFOS HOLO FOR THE SECOND TIME
 * Can anyone ever hope to stop Mai's inevitable championship?
 * Users already coping
 * Discount Yukinoshita, Budget Senjougahara"
 * Nishimiya dark horse momentum hopium

Finals
 * Holo vs Aqua in Strawpoll
 * "Silence of the Bunnies"
 * Start suggesting the next title of Best Girl 9
 * A Salty Voice
 * Salty Girl Senpai
 * Kimi no Salt UwU
 * What now?
 * THE RESULTS ARE OUT, CONGRATULATIONS TO MAI-SAN FOR WINNING BEST GIRL 8!
 * Ez win
 * Now has 5 contest wins
 * One more than r/anime's darling Kurisu
 * AND IT'S A WRAP!
 * User makes a credits scene for the r/anime podcast
 * mpp00 discusses contest burnout
 * Too many events
 * Users consider removing Best Character
 * Who will host that, anyway?
 * But it won't be removed as it's a major event
 * See you in Fall 2021 for Best Character 6: Saltmetal Alchemist
 * See you in Fall 2021 for Best Character 6: Saltmetal Alchemist

Bracket
Due to the website's limited default horizontal space, the first two rounds (512 and 256) are shown in simple tables, while rounds 3 and beyond will appear as brackets.

Bingo
The Shit Taste Bingo is a longstanding feature in r/anime's major contests. It is created and maintained by user Chariotwheel.


 * Requires a reddit account to save your bingo sheet.
 * The process is simple; create your own bingo by searching for your favorite anime girls and arrange it in a 5x5 grid any way you like
 * When a character is eliminated, its portrait is crossed out.
 * Share your bingo to the threads and see if your sheet takes the longest to score a bingo! (straight line of 5 squares in any direction)

March madness bracket
Created by reddit user JDefenseAnime, this will be the third year of the annual "Best Girl Madness" bracket predictions. Sign up link here. Requires a Gmail and reddit account. Sign-ups will last for the elimination rounds only (5 days).

Copied from the original comment:

r/anime Podcast
Since 2018, the official r/anime podcast also covers each round of the best girl contest. Here are the links on Youtube:


 * Round 1 - Round 2 - Round 3 - Round 4 - Round 5 - Sweet 16 - Elite 8 - Semifinals - Final - Results

Statistics
Click this page to see statistics.

Reddit threads
All threads are sorted by oldest comments first.


 * Nominations: Part 1 - Part 2
 * Eliminations: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5
 * Round 1: Group A - Group B - Group C - Group D
 * Round 2: Group A - Group B - Group C - Group D
 * Round 3: Group A - Group B - Group C - Group D
 * Round 4: Group A - Group B - Group C - Group D
 * Round 5: Group A - Group B - Group C - Group D
 * Sweet 16: Group A - Group B - Group C - Group D
 * Elite 8: Quarters - Semis - Final - Winner Announcement

Other threads:


 * Prediction for 1st seed poll thread (artificially upvoted)
 * Tsubasa_sama's pre-tournament analysis