Aniplus Character Tournament

Aniplus Character Tournament, abbreviated as ACT or Aketo (애캐토), is an online mixed-gender anime character popularity contest organized by South Korean TV channel and anime distributor Aniplus. Introduced in 2013, Aketo is considered the nominal successor to Anizone's Korea Best Moe Tournament, which was discontinued following a series of events involving Gintama fans in the 2012 male contest.

In this wiki, Aketo is seen as the only remaining active major saimoe contest held in Korea. The website is only accessible to South Korean users because of the country's "territorial copyrights"; an outside user wishing to enter the site must use a VPN. In order to vote into the contest, a user must register their account using a mobile phone number or i-PIN (Internet personal identification number), which reduces the possibility of artificially inflating votes through multiple fake identities. Furthermore, the existence of rival distributors like Animax Korea, Netflix, and Daewon Media, as well as insufficient awareness regarding the tournament, has resulted in a relatively small vote turnout throughout its entire history (ranging from 1500 - 3000).

In most Aketo editions, female characters tend to be prioritized more often than males simply because female voter accounts are rarely observed in the website.

Eligibility

 * Only characters who appeared in a Japanese-produced animated medium that was broadcasted / distributed by Aniplus within a given year are allowed.
 * Characters who only appeared before December-released contents cannot participate in this contest.
 * Humans, Humanoids, and also Non-Humans are all allowed.
 * Characters who have very BRIEF appearances are also eligible (case by case).
 * The very first Character Pools are presented by Company's policy: List of characters by categorized by medium. (10 ~12 characters per one content)
 * Cancelled shows in Aniplus.tv are not allowed to nominate any characters.

Tournament Format
All editions are composed of 3 ~ 4 stages.
 * 1) Qualifying Stage: This round selects TOP 3 characters from each series that was broadcasted in Aniplus during a given year.
 * 2) Preliminaries: All qualified characters will be split into several groups which will play each other on a limited-voting format (vote a maximum of 1 / 2 / 3 etc. characters per group). Only 32 characters can advance to Main Stage.
 * 3) Main Stage: (Except 2013~2015 editions): Ro32 and Ro16. Each round consists of 4-member groups, again on a limited-voting format. Top 2 characters from each group advance to the next round.
 * 4) Bracket Stage: Single-elimination format. Bracket match-ups are determined by Ro16 results. A third-place consolation match will be played between losing semi-finalists.

Results
5th-8th are arranged by how many votes they got during their loss in the quarter-finals. Most editions also display 9th and 10th placers, which are also decided by most votes earned during their loss in the top 16 round.


 * 1) mark: This edition did not count the ranks below the 4th place. Reference Link = Namuwiki

Trivia
''For more details, see Aniplus Character Tournament/Statistics. Stats copied from Namuwiki's article page.''

General:


 * Series with most appearances: Fate - 9, since 2013
 * Characters with most appearances: Shinobu Oshino, Illyasviel von Einzbern, Rin Tohsaka, Shirou Emiya - 6
 * Best performing animal: Chito (Flying Witch) - Top 32 (2016)
 * Most successful anime studio: A-1 Pictures - Saekano (Katou), Seishun Buta Yarou (Mai)
 * Most characters in one edition: 70 - Idolmaster Cinderella Girls Theater (2017)
 * Fewest characters in one edition: 2 - The Laughing Salesman New (2017) and Pop Team Epic Remix (2021)

Most successful females:


 * 1) Megumi Katou - 1st (2018), 2nd (2020)
 * 2) Mai Sakurajima - 1st (2019), 3rd (2018)
 * 3) Rem - 1st (2016), 4th (2020)
 * 4) Yukina Minato - 1st (2021), 5th (2020)
 * 5) Chino Kafuu - 1st (2017), 7th (2020)

Most successful males:


 * 1) Houtarou Oreki - 1st (2013)
 * 2) Imas CG Producer - 1st (2015)
 * 3) Kirito - QF (2018)

Gender distribution in Top 32 Round (Female - Male)


 * 2013: 28 - 4
 * 2014: 27 - 5
 * 2015: 28 - 4
 * 2016: 29 - 3 (Chito (Flying Witch), an animal, is counted as female)
 * 2017: 30 - 2
 * 2018: 25 - 7
 * 2019: 28 - 4
 * 2020: 32 - 0 (first edition with no males)
 * 2021: 28 - 4

Other:


 * Super Sonico the Animation (2014) and Ensemble Stars (2019) are the only series disqualified from the tournament despite being technically eligible to participate.
 * Super Sonico was initially planned to be aired in Korea by importing the copyright, but it was cancelled presumably because the first episode showed the highly controversial Yasukuni ShrineW, which is dedicated to people who died in service of Japan from the late 19th to mid-20th century, including notable war criminals responsible for committing atrocities during World War 2.
 * Ensemble Stars was disqualified due to copyright issues.

Navigation
Notes

External links
 * article about aketo 2014 (crunchyroll; derived from sgcafe)
 * isml forum thread on aketo 2018 top 32