ISML 2012

ISML 2012 was the 5th edition of the International Saimoe League. This edition marked the beginning of the Nova / Stella era, a time where the main tournament was split into two separate divisions of 36 girls: Nova Division for contestants with 2 ISML appearances or less, and Stella Division for contestants with 3 or more ISML appearances. The matchdays were reduced to just 35, split into 5 periods of 7 matches. Since the number of periods was reduced, which corresponds to necklace awards, the gem order was completely re-arranged.

Meanwhile, the postseason was expanded into 2 phases: the first is the division playoffs, which involves a single-elimination bracket contested between the top 16 contestants within each division, with the bracket winner claiming one of the two remaining gems renamed as "circlets". The second is the tiara playoffs, from which the quarter-finalists from each division will battle it out in another single-elimination bracket for the right to claim ISML's grand prize.

Kanade Tachibana defeated Eucliwood Hellscythe in the Tiara final, capping off what is arguably the most dominant season in ISML history. The Angel was the first champion to complete a perfect season: she posted a 35-0 record in the Nova Division, and then won all of her matches in the Nova and Tiara playoffs, with the majority of her wins being blowouts. On the other hand, the defending champion Mikoto Misaka was eliminated in the Tiara quarter-finals by Hellscythe.

In the male exhibition tournament, Sword Art Online protagonist Kirito won the Scepter after dethroning Lelouch in the semi-final and defeating two-time finalist Hideyoshi Kinoshita in the title match.

The seasonal diadem was introduced in 2012, which is contested between females who appeared in anime broadcast between each season of the year.

Regular Season
Each division plays a single round-robin format. 35 matches, split into 5 periods of 7 matches. Top 16 will advance to division playoffs, ranked in this order:
 * 1) Points (3 for a win, 1 for a tie. A loss adds points based on [Your Votes / Opponent's Votes].)
 * 2) Wins
 * 3) Strength of schedule of DEFEATED opponents (SDO)
 * 4) Strength of schedule of ALL opponents (SAO)
 * 5) Vote difference (VD)
 * 6) Total votes earned (VF)
 * 7) Staff selection

What is SDO?
 * I don't know.

What is SAO?
 * I don't know.

Aquamarine
Every single one of the necklace match contestants in Aquamarine period happened to have 7 wins, with Aisaka Taiga at the very advantage high SDO of 91.718, 3.651 higher than the next highest SDO holder Nakamura Yuri. It seemed that she shouldn't have much trouble to obtain her third necklace. But Kanade Tachibana proved that her overwhelming strength, which had smashed every single opponent that stood in her way and left her with low SDO, was just enough to cancelled out her low SDO disadvantage. With Shana also in the match to split the votes of Kugumiya Rie fans, Taiga missed out on the Aquamarine Necklace by 0.554 points and the first Necklace of 2012 goes to Kanade.

Amethyst
Knowing that if she get this necklace, she will be the first contestant in the history of ISML to obtain the same necklace three times in a roll, Nagato Yuki fought hard in order to make it into the necklace match. Aisaka Taiga once again held the advantage of having the highest SDO and this time she was determine that the recent lost in Aquamarine necklace match would not happen again. But for Taiga, there was also Shana, her Kugumiya Rie sister who was also aiming at this necklace to set one step further into completing the collection of seven necklace. In the end, it was Gokou Ruri who gained the highest necklace score by combining her second highest SDO and third highest vote percentage and won the Amethyst Necklace among the chaos.

Ruby
After suffering a bitter defeat in the last period from Nagato Yuki, Mikoto Misaka showed us that she still had the power of a former champion by taking down 7 wins, defeating the former Ruby necklace holder Shana and landed herself a place in the Ruby necklace match with the highest SDO. Despite having tough opponents such as Aisaka Taiga, this time without Shana to split the votes from Kugumiya Rie fans, and some new faces from Nova division, the match was completed one sided towards Mikoto. At the end of the match, not only Mikoto gained the Ruby necklace, she also broke the record of highest votes earned in a necklace match and became the first champion to obtain a necklace after gainning the Tiara.

Emerald
Former Emerald Necklace winner Aisaka Taiga found herself unable to defend her previous necklace after a narrow lose to Mikoto in Round 7. The new Haganai girl Hasegawa Kobato was lucky enough to have strong opponents who were weaker than her in the first 6 round and held her lead in SDO, only to be completely smashed in the last round by the quiet, white-hair necromancer Eucliwood Hellscythe, who then took her place as the highest SDO holders. With three tough opponents already out of running after gaining their necklace, and two strong K-ON girls splitting the votes among the K-ON fans, Eucliwood easily snatched the Emerald Necklace and made it her second necklace.

Topaz
Knowing that the Topaz necklace was the last possible necklace, ISML veteran Shana was desperate to protect her streak of at least one necklace each year, smashing high SDO holder Saber and Taiga in the last two round and put them out for running. But that action also allowed her weaker Kugumiya Rie sister Kanzaki H. Aria to gain a place in the necklace match and snatch some votes away from the Kugumiya Rie fans. With 2010 champion Akiyama Mio holding the highest SDO and was determine to follow Mikoto's footstep of getting a necklace after gaining the Tiara. Shana's power was not enough to close up the gap between the odds of SDO and Mio successfully gained the last necklace of the year.

Exhibition Gems
What the fuck is going on

Playoffs
Nova / Stella Playoffs:


 * 16 females from each division play in a single-elimination bracket.
 * Winners of the Round of 16 match advance to Tiara playoffs
 * Winner of each division claims the Sapphire circlet (Nova) or Diamond circlet (Stella)
 * Third place is awarded to the semi-finalist who lost to the division winner.
 * Rankings from quarter-finals and below are decided by their final position in the regular season
 * These rankings will be used as seedings for the Tiara Playoffs.

Nova (Sapphire)
The first two days of Post Season Phase 1 went smoothly for Nova division with no upset. 16th seed contestant Haruna's lose to Kanade left Eucliwood to be the only character from "Kore wa Zombie Desu ka?" anime advancing onto Post Season Phase 2 while all the other contestants from Nova had at least one comrade from the same series. A surprise upset happened on the 3rd day when 3th seed Gokou Ruri defeated 2th seed Eucliwood Hellscythe by merely 1 votes. But Ruri was soon outblowed in the final day by the undefeated Tenshi Kanade Tachibana and Kanade obtain the Sapphire Circlet after smashing every opponents who stood in her way.

Stella (Diamond)
Like Nova division, the Stella division also went smoothly on the first day with no upsets. However, on the second day, 7th seed contestant Saber surprised everyone by defeating 2sd seed contestant Shana by the VD of 211. The third day came with excitement as the two interesting matches were set up, at the end the result showed that Yuki was unable to defeat Mikoto again like she had did in Amethyst Round 7 and Saber was unable to continuously defeat two Kugumiya Rie voiced character. The final day ended with Mikoto Misaka defeating Aisaka Taiga and obtained her second jewels this year.

Tiara Playoffs
Format:
 * 8 quarter-finalists from each division are combined together in a 16-player single-elimination bracket.
 * Nova girls will always play against Stella girls in the Round of 16.
 * Bracket: N1-S8, S4-N5 N2-S7, S3-N6, S1-N8, N4-S5, S2-N7, N3-S6
 * Winner of the final match claims the Heavenly Tiara and declared as this year's champion.

Characters are seeded by the following criteria:
 * (1) Winner
 * (2) Finalist
 * (3) Whoever lost to the division winner in the semis
 * (4) The other semi-finalist
 * (5-8) Quarter-finalists, arranged by final regular season position

Bracket
Phase 2 started off straight away with a brutal match up of Regular Season Nova 2nd seed Eucliwood Hellscythe against Regular Season Stella 2nd seed Shana, where it marked the first time ISML veteran Shana lost a match so early in a fight for Tiara. This was also an early sign for Eucliwood's later overwhelming strength of continuously defeating two strong Stellas, this year's Ruby Necklace and Diamond Anklet winner Mikoto Misaka on the Quaterfinal and Aisaka Taiga who was then the only Stella left standing on the Semifinal. While Nova 1st seed Kanade Tachibana continued outblowing her opponents like she'd done during the Regular Season, showing no mercy to prevent the same fate from last year happening to her again. The final day came with the top 2 Regular Season seed from Nova facing off each other, after a long day, Kanade took down Eucliwood with the decisive 9064-4485 and became the new Tiara Winner, taking her sorrow from last year along with it.

Winner's Gallery
Necklace & Tiara

Trivia
General
 * This is the first edition with no new [necklace]] winners.
 * In Ruby Necklace match, Inori Yuzuriha became the first contestant of 2012 who had passed Preliminary in Phase 2 to participate in a necklace match. She also participated in the Emerald necklace match and was the winner of Topaz earrings.
 * Shana is the only contestants who has participated in 4 different necklace matches this year.
 * All the contestants who came second in their groupings in Preliminary Phase 2 managed to make it through Phase 3 and advanced in Regular Season.
 * The top three and the bottom three rank of the Final Standing after Elimination are taken by Nova contestants.
 * In the Final Standing, Aisaka Taiga is the contestants with the highest rank that does not have a necklace, she is also the only Stella in Semifinal.
 * Highest SDO at the end of a period: 100.134 by Mikoto Misaka (Emerald Period)
 * Following the step of Mikoto Misaka and Akiyama Mio, this year's Tiara winner Kanade Tachibana  is also the Aquamarine Necklace Winner.
 * As of Ruby Necklace match, Mikoto Misaka became the first former Tiara holder to win a necklace after gaining the Tiara. This was followed by Akiyama Mio after Topaz Necklace match.
 * All the auto-advanced contestants in Nomination period managed to make it through Preliminary Period and advanced into Regular Season.
 * All the necklace winners this year were auto-advanced during Nomination period.
 * All the contestants in Post Season Phase 2 entered at least one Necklace Match back in Regular Season.
 * The Top 1 ranked from from Nova and Stella during Nomination Period are Akemi Homura and Louise Vallière, both of them couldn't make it into the Post Season.
 * All the Regular Season contestants managed to come top 3 in their groupings during the Preliminary Phase 1 at least once.
 * At the end of ISML 2012 Nagato Yuki was the only contestants who managed to be in the top 8 in the Final Standing starting from 2008. (2008: 2, 2009: 4, 2010: 7, 2011: 7, 2012: 8)

Vote extremes
 * Highest Votes:
 * Preliminary Phase 1: Kanade Tachibana, 5464
 * Stella Seeding Round: Yui Hirasawa, 3286
 * Preliminary Phase 2 (Nova only): Erio Touwa, 4191
 * Preliminary Phase 3 (Nova only): Shouko Kirishima, 4700
 * Regular season: Mikoto Misaka (vs Kuroko Shirai, Aqua 1, 6996 - 1539)
 * Necklace round: Mikoto Misaka, 3984 (Ruby, 66.962 score)
 * Lowest Votes:
 * Preliminary Phase 1: Himari Takakura, 626
 * Seeding Round: Misuzu Kamio, 545
 * Preliminary Phase 2: Astarotte Ygvar & Chihaya Ayase, 849
 * Preliminary Phase 3: Himari Takakura, 1108
 * Necklace round: Aria Holmes Kanzaki, 563, (Topaz, 25.223 score)

All-time RS wins table
Top 16 ISML competitors arranged by total regular season wins after this year. Bold names indicate tiara champions.