Ms. /co/ 2021

Ms. /co/ 2021 was the fourth edition of the annual tournament for females held in 4chan's /co/mics & cartoons board. The competition began with the nominations on September 10th 2021, 18:00 Eastern Standard Time, and concluded with the final match on September 18. The tournament was won by Golden Age-era character Betty Boop after she defeated Johanna from the Hildafolk series by just 10 votes, a new record for the closest final match in a /co/ tournament. Betty's win makes her the oldest-created character to become a /co/ champion as she first appeared in 1930, surpassing Mr. /co/lympus 2020 winner Tom Cat's debut by 10 years. Meanwhile, Johanna's daughter Hilda claimed third place over Powerpuff's Miss Bellum in the consolation match.

The 2021 edition was marked by even more strategic voting as most of the perceived contenders, high seeds, and fan-favourites were eliminated earlier than expected, causing the voter turnout to decrease after each round; the final match had roughly 2/3rds as many votes as the first round. Because of this, some anons have found the tournament to be "mediocre" and "boring". Furthermore, many of the tournament's surviving girls, especially the completely new Elite Eight roster, were deemed "unremarkable", "relatively obscure", or only supported by "recency bias" and/or memes. However, the contest's reputation among anons was somewhat improved by the final's unexpectedly close result and a resurgence in fan art towards the end.

The tournament saw a new highest seed to be eliminated in the first round: #3 seeded Loona, who was voted out by being a furry character from a Vivziepop show,; her loss set the tone for the year's general theme of "upsets". In addition, a group of championship contenders dubbed by anons as "Team F.A.R.T.S." (Frankie, Azula, Raven, Toph, Shego) emerged as a dominant topic in the discussion threads, but their unfortunate acronym and fetishists co-opting the word led its members to be steadily eliminated, culminating in its last two remaining members, #1 seed Frankie and #4 seed Shego, losing in the sweet 16.

Rules
Source: Stats anon's pastebin link

How to nominate?

 * To nominate a character, a user must include their name, picture, and series in their post. Nominating 2 or more characters in a single post is not allowed.
 * All characters must either originate from /co/ media: Western animation and comics
 * Each valid nomination must garner at least nine (9) replies in order to qualify for the contest. These replies are only counted if they are all within a single thread, and do NOT carry over to other threads.

Eligible Nominees

 * All female /co/ characters (except those listed under "Excluded characters" shown below)
 * Any character that was allowed or has appeared in past Ms. /co/ tournaments (Grandfather Clause)
 * Characters can be any age
 * Puppets are allowed (e.g. Muppets, Sesame Street)
 * Generalization Statute: Multiple versions of the same character --- be it from various adaptations, spin-off series, or alternative universes --- are combined into a single entrant. In other words, you are voting for the entire history of that character, not just one particular iteration.
 * Example:   Zatanna (DC Comics, Young Justice, DC Super Hero Girls, etc.)
 * Character Limit: Each series can only have a maximum of three (3) girls in the main bracket. These are decided by their votes in the qualifying poll. However, there is no restriction on the number of girls that can be nominated from a single series.
 * Exceptions: Marvel Comics, DC Comics, and Disney core universe characters + related series (Mickey, Oswald, Goofy, and Donald)

Restrictions

 * Any character that is clearly not /co/ is not allowed (e.g. /a/nime and live action shows)
 * /v/ideo game characters that did not originate from /co/ media are not allowed
 * Real-life politicians that are portrayed as cartoon characters / caricatures are not allowed, satirical or otherwise.
 * No /mlp/ characters
 * No Board-tans
 * No "OC donut steels"
 * No meme creations (e.g. Virgin vs Chad)
 * One-Month Old Clause: Any character debuting from the 1st of the previous month to the start date are ineligible.
 * Which means that new cartoons or comics released from August 1, 2021 and later cannot be nominated.
 * Grandfather Clause: All characters who have previously made it into Ms. /co/ or Mr. /co/lympus tournaments, and are not banned by the Elite 8 rule, are eligible to participate regardless of the above restrictions. (Examples:  Dr. Eggman,  Saxton Hale,  JFK,  Wendy's,  Princess Zelda)

Excluded Characters
Elite Eight Rule: Characters appearing in the quarter-finals of the previous contest are not allowed to compete in this edition. They will be eligible for nomination in the next contest.

Jenny Rule: Ms. /co/ champions are permanently retired, and will be barred from participating in future tournaments.

Pre-Tournament
Most discussion prior to the tournament was conducted in plus4chan's pre-tournament thread, as any thread about the /co/ntests in 4chan (hype threads, discussion) is removed by janitors. Because of this, some anons feared the possibility of the tournament being derailed or cancelled. A plus4chan developer named Black Hand considered creating a separate board dedicated for tournaments and related events, which was mostly met with approval from users. This new board was christened as /tnt/ (Tournaments & Events).

On the day of the contest, the main threads created by organizer stats anon went normally as planned, save for one nomination thread that was banished to the /trash/ (off-topic) board by a mod. The organizer also posted nomination threads on plus4chan under a different tripcode just in case the 4chan threads went down. All nominees were selected from both websites.

Qualified
Live nomination list: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1U0AYMqyrk50Ei5NyADfbybpxLMfdgq0xiGqGKuYe1g4/edit?usp=sharing Results: https://rentry.org/ti58n A total of 1197 characters were successfully nominated. The qualifying poll received 738 responses.

Ties are resolved by series name, then character name. Only the names written on the Rentry and Google Docs are considered. Characters who appear in the bracket for the first time are labeled in bold.

Did Not Qualify
Excluded by Series Limit The following characters have enough votes to qualify for the main bracket, but are excluded due to the 3 characters per series rule. This has chanced from a maximum of 5 characters per series in 2020 to 3 in 2021. DC, Marvel and Disney as a whole are excluded from this rule.

Ranked 129-200 TBD

Tournament Bracket


Same format as before: 128 girls, single-elimination bracket. 7 rounds, 7 days. Characters are seeded based on their rankings in the qualifying poll.

All girls who reach at least quarter-finals will be granted Elite Eight status, making them temporarily ineligible for Ms. /co/ 2022


 * Losers of the quarter-finals will play a 4-way consolation match in order to rank from 5th-8th. This will take place during the semi-finals.
 * Semi-final losers will play each other at the final round to decide 3rd place.
 * Lastly, the winner of the final match will ascend into Waifuhalla as Ms. /co/ 2021 champion, and will permanently retire from the tournament.

Voting policy:


 * You must log-in to a Gmail account in order to vote. All emails will be anonymous to the organizer and other voters.
 * You must answer a question related to 4chan culture before you can access the voting form.
 * You must vote on all match-ups. In other words, no abstaining.
 * You must answer one or more Captchas before you can submit your votes.

5th-8th consolations
For the consolation match, voters ranked the quarter-final losers from 5th-8th. Each girl will be ranked based on the position with the most votes.

Useful links

 * Plus4chan /co/ pre-tournament discussion thread
 * Mr. and Ms. /co/ Wikia page
 * Stats anon's Pastebin
 * Ms. /co/ booru
 * Mr. /co/lympus booru
 * Dropbox OC link

Vote Results & Archived Threads

 * Google Polls Results: Round 1 - Round 2 - Round 3 - Round 4 - Quarters - Semis & 5th/8th - Final & 3rd

Plus4chan /tnt/ thread links:
 * Pre-tournament: https://boards.plus4chan.org/co/t437012.html#top
 * Contest threads: Nominations 1 - Nominations 2 - Round 1 - Live thread
 * Other: Wiki Maintenance thread - OC Anchor / Drawthread