Best Character 5

Best Character 5: Salt;Gate was the fifth edition of /r/anime's Best Character Contest, a mixed-gender elimination contest. The contest was held in late 2020 is named in honor of Rintarou Okabe, the main protagonist of the visual novel / anime series Steins;Gate, after he won the title in the contest's previous edition.

After 5 years and 11 consecutive elite eight appearances, Edward Elric finally breaks his curse of never winning an r/anime contest. In the last four rounds, the alchemist defeated fellow title favorite Mai, first seeded Shirogane, perennial contender Megumin, and finally a season 4-boosted Eren Yeager in the title match to become the subreddit's fifth Best Character.

This is the final tournament hosted by r/anime moderator ShaKing807; subsequent tournaments will be hosted by moderator mpp00.

Nomination Rules

 * If the character is a non-human, they may be nominated only if they are able to use languages to communicate with other characters or the audience.
 * Example: Mewtwo from Pokemon is eligible because they are able to (telepathically) communicate to others using human language, while  Pikachu is ineligible because although he is able to interact with humans, he does not speak their language.


 * Character must appear in an anime adaptation. Characters that have only appeared in a manga, visual novel or hentai are NOT allowed.


 * Only characters that have appeared in an anime as late as Summer 2019 are eligible. Please do not nominate any character who has appeared in an anime later than that season.


 * Picture links must come from MyAnimeList (MAL) or AniList. If not, the nomination will be deleted.


 * Check the Character List first before nominating to prevent repeats.


 * There will be a 5 character per franchise cap, meaning that only 5 characters per franchise will be allowed into the final bracket. These 5 spots will be determined by elimination round votes.


 * Previous winners of Best Girl, Guy, and Character contests are NOT allowed:

Tournament Format
Elimination Stage
 * All nominees are divided into multiple groups (number varies depending on the total nominees). Each group will last one day.
 * Approval voting format: For each group, voters may select any number of characters that they like to advance into the bracket stage.
 * Top 512 characters with the highest number of adjusted votes will advance.
 * For each anime franchise, only 5 characters with the highest votes will advance to the main bracket. Any lower that that and they will be cut off.
 * Adjusted votes: ???

Bracket Stage
 * 512 contestants will play in a single-elimination bracket.
 * Seeding is determined by adjusted votes.
 * For rounds 1-6, each round is split into four groups; voting for each group lasts one day (and one round lasts four days).
 * Quarter-finals and beyond will last one day each.
 * Voting starts and ends at 5 PM EST ; after one group ends, their results will be revealed as soon as possible, and the next group will begin at the same time.
 * Since AnimeBracket does not implement consolation matches, the third-place match (contested by semi-final losers) will be held in a different website.
 * The winner of the final match is declared r/anime's fifth Best Character, and will be banned from participating in future Best Girl, Guy, and Character contests.

Voting Policy
In order to vote in r/anime's major contests, they will have to login their Reddit account first. Only accounts of at least two months old will be allowed to vote in the contest.
 * For Best Character 5, this means accounts created as late as 2020 October 1 can participate in the main bracket.

Schedule
Every 5 PM / 17:00 EST (UTC-05:00), a new thread will be posted in the r/anime forums. The next round begins at that same time, and the results of the previous round will also be revealed.

[Note] Due to Thanksgiving celebrations, the Nomination period will actually last 4 days in total, with each "nomination day" lasting two days instead. [Note 2] Round 3 Group A voting was delayed for one day, then restarted for another day after a campaign post outside the r/anime subreddit caused a spike in vote numbers. This incident meant that Round 3 will last 6 days in total. [Note 3] Semi-finals lasted three days because of errors from the AnimeBracket website.

Rounds 1-3 (Top 512 - Top 128)
Click the link to this gallery to see how the seedings looked like before the 5-character-per-franchise limit.

Despite this restriction, some franchises managed to enter a sixth character in the main bracket. Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is one such example: the lowest-seeded character there is Jonathan Joestar (#222), who managed to slip past the host's (presumably) manually-enforced restrictions; he entered the bracket as the sixth JJBA man below Joseph (#80), Dio (#91), Jotaro (#112), Speedwagon (#136), and Polnareff (#153).

A joke entry, Salt from r/anime, made it in the bracket as a 13th seed. Obviously they're ineligible, but it just shows how much Salt has established itself as a way of life in the anime community, especially when it comes to these popularity contests.

Notable Snubs
The following are notable characters who have failed to make it in this year's bracket:

Former Top 8 Finishers
 * Himeko Inaba (Kokoro Connect) -- Best Girl 1 semi-finalist
 * Megumi Tadokoro (Shokugeki no Soma) -- Best Girl 3 runner-up
 * Kraft Lawrence (Spice and Wolf) -- Best Guy 2 quarter-finalist
 * Soma Yukihira (Shokugeki no Soma) -- Best Guy 2 & 3 quarter-finalist

Other
 * Katsuki Bakugo (My Hero Academia) -- Bakugo got culled in 6th place. Again. And ironically he lost the 5th spot to Uraraka, who is the series' lowest seed (#130).
 * Kirito (Sword Art Online) -- Given SAO's infamy on r/anime in spite of Asuna's win, it's no surprise the black swordsman failed to appear in the bracket. This also meant that no "Guts vs Kirito" too.

Incidents
Round 3 group A, Outside interference. Thread link here