The International Saimoe League, also known as ISML, is a worldwide online popularity moe contest.[1] It is one of the many spinoff contests of the Anime Saimoe Tournament held on 2channel, yet is held on its own independent site. ISML is tailored to embrace voters from as many backgrounds as possible, currently supporting seven different languages; the primary language of the tournament is English.
ISML is unique in that it implements a regular-season league and playoffs system, which makes the tournament last for many months. Another distingushing feature is the gem awards, which are given to the best-performing contestant of each period. These awards are called necklaces which are given to females, and pendants which are given to males.
While the details of each tournament format vary every year, the general format follows the Nominations ---> Regular season ---> Playoffs order.
ISML officially opens through the nomination phase, where voters are free to nominate any anime character they like. Each voter is given a ballot with a limited amount of entries, and each entry must have a character's name and their corresponding anime series. In addition, there are certain conditions the voter must meet so that their ballot becomes valid. A selected number of contestants will qualify for the next stage. Some contestants can skip the nomination stage entirely when they fulfill a certain condition.
Some editions have implemented preliminary rounds, consisting of a series of elimination rounds which thins out the number of bottom-placed nominees that will advance to the regular season. The preliminary period includes the seeding rounds, which will determine the schedules of each contestant in the regular season.
The regular season pits contestants in a series of 1v1 matches, which are split into seven periods (five in 2012-2015). Each period is named after a gemstone. The entire format is usually played through a massive single round-robin group (2008-2015) or multiple group stages (2016-present).
After each period, the best performing contestants at the time will qualify for the gem rounds, where the winner of that round is awarded the necklace/pendant of that period. From 2016 onwards, the worst contestants of each group stage are outright eliminated, and from 2017 onwards, the next worst contestants will be subject to a wildcard round where they will fight for a chance to stay in the tournament.
At the end of the regular season, sixteen best performing / surviving characters will advance to the playoffs, where they would play one or more elimination brackets to decide the tournament's champion, called the Heavenly Tiara for females, and Lapis Scepter for males.
The tournament's schedule varies through the years, with the nominations starting either in January, March, June or July, and the final match ending around October, December, or the following year.
Character eligibility
Physical Appearance
Must be a human / humanoid, or possess anthropomorphic qualities.
Must have a name or other universal means of identification.
Female: Must possess feminine characteristics, i.e. be born a female, have female sexual characteristics.
Male: Biological sex must be male, i.e. have a PENIS. Characters with a clear feminine appearance and voice but is biologically a male (called "traps" by the anime community) belong here.
If the character is non-binary, gender-ambiguous, or a hermaphrodite (possessing both male and female genitalia), the staff will decide if there are more masculine or feminine qualities, and then put them in the desired gender.
Media
Must appear in a JAPANESE ANIMATED medium: TV shows, Films, Made-for-DVD (OVA), Internet (ONA). If the source material is foreign, but the show is adapted into anime by Japanese studios, they will be permitted to compete in the contest.
Hentai (Japanese animated pornography rated 18+) is NOT ALLOWED.
Character must regularly appear in the series, or have an individual significance to the story's plotline.
Main Tournament: Only shows premiering on or before December 31 last year will be eligible.
Seasonals: Anime debutants as well as characters not in the main tournament are allowed here as long as their show aired in this year's following months:
Winter: January - March
Spring: April - June
Summer: July - September
Autumn: October - December
Voting policy
Voting is only limited to ONE (1) vote per IP address.
Only one vote per 1 vs 1 match-up.
A voter may not vote on behalf on another person
Voting is limited to certain matchdays.
Once your ballot is submitted, your votes can only be changed by asking the staff for permission.
Characters will be Direct Invited into the Preliminary rounds instead of the regular season.
Necklace rounds were first introduced this year. Instead of a contestant having the period's best record winning the necklace outright, the 7 best-performing contestants of each period will fight in the necklace round.
One girl, One gem Policy: No contestant can win multiple necklaces in the same year; necklace winners are also banned from participating in further gem rounds of that year.
Starting from this year, the postseason will be decided by Single-elimination tournament.
Male tournaments are first introduced here, in the form of Exhibitions.
ISML 2012 has the female contestants split into two divisions: Nova Division for debutants and characters making their 2nd Main Tournament appearance, and Stella Division for veterans with 3 or more appearances.
However, the Stella / Nova criteria has changed from 2013 until 2015:
Stella now consists of characters who have 2 or more Regular Season appearances, and characters who have participated in Regular Season 4 years ago. The rest are assigned to Nova Division.
Stella's Preliminary period is shortened to just one round.
Preseason is still the same, but the regular season's format is changed to accommodate the Nova / Stella split:
Each division now has 36 contestants (for a combined total of 72).
The format is still a single round-robin, however, there are no inter-division matches. (Meaning Nova girls will only fight other Nova girls and vice versa.)
Since there will be only 35 matchdays, the season is now split into 5 periods. Each period still consists of 7 matches each.
The top 16 girls of each division will advance to the Postseason.
In the Nova / Stella era, the gems were ordered differently: instead of the typical Aquamarine-Topaz-Amethyst-Sapphire-Emerald-Ruby-Diamond order, they used Aquamarine-Amethyst-Ruby-Emerald-Topaz instead, corresponding to the five periods in the regular season. Sapphire Circlet was awarded to the Nova Bracket Winner, and Diamond Circlet was awarded to the Stella Bracket Winner..
Necklace rounds were changed to have the top 3 performers of each period in both divisions battle out for the necklace. A seventh contestant which is the best performer out of the remaining contestants will join the 6 contestants to complete the match regardless of division. A necklace holder is not allowed into the necklace match.
The postseason is split into two phases:
Phase 1: Each division will hold a single-elimination tournament consisting of the top 16 girls in each division. Whoever wins the first round advances to Phase 2. Yes, a girl only needs to win once in Phase 1 to qualify.
There are no consolation matches. This includes the third place match.
The rankings for quarter-finalists and below are decided by regular-season placements. For the semi-finalists, whoever loses to the bracket winner gets third place. This ranking process will be used as seeds in Phase 2.
Sapphire Circlet is awarded to the Nova Bracket Winner, and Diamond Circlet is awarded to the Stella Bracket Winner. (Despite a rule that prohibits a girl from winning multiple necklaces in a single year, they can technically break this rule by winning their respective bracket. This is the reason why the organizers changed the prize from "Necklace" to "Circlet".)
Phase 2: Single-elimination tournament consisting of the quarter-finalists from both Nova and Stella. Nova girls will always fight Stella girls in the first round. The winner claims the Heavenly Tiara.
Schedule of Defeated Opponents (SDO) + 220 * Vote For Percentage (VF%)
Postseason Phase 1 format is overhauled; the top 16 girls of each division will play four rounds of Swiss-system tournament to decide who advances to Phase 2. The elimination bracket still appears for Circlet purposes.
Tie-breaking criteria for the Swiss sytem is as follows:
Wins
Quality wins (against opponents with the same / higher wins than yours)
36 males play in the regular season. However, the top 16 contestants of the Male Division advance directly to Postseason Phase 2 instead.
Gem rounds:
The calculation changed into using voting percentage in Round + (Partial Score of All Opponents (PSAO)/ 3, and the voting percentage (VF) is 100 * (votes receives / sum of all voters in Arena), both Female Division (Nova and Stella) and Male Division.
Consolation gems are discontinued, and is replaced by the Divine Circlet award.
A new method of determining matches for the postseason is invented, called the Seeding score.
Formula:Current score +/- Your/opponent's score x (Percentage)
Everyone starts with a score of 100. Percentage value is determined by what match day it is. (i.e. If someone wins their 27th match, their seeding score will increase by 27%.)
The Nova / Stella era has come to an end, and the Female Divison is reunited once again. The 2016 edition ushers in a new leader, and with it comes an all-new tournament format explained below:
Major Changes:
No preliminary periods. The nomination stage decides who will play in the main tournament.
Direct Invites: Seasonal Diadem Winners and Runners-up automatically qualify into the Main Tournament, bypassing the nomination stage entirely. They are indicated by Auto in the nomination results.
Regular season
Regular season is now split into 7 periods, just like in ISML 2008. The gem order is restored into the original order.
Instead of a single large group containing all players, contestants are split into multiple groups of 4, which then play a single round robin. (Think World Cup-style group stage.)
At the end of each period, the best performers play in the Necklace / Pendant round and advance to the next period, while the bottom 2 of each group is eliminated outright.
Postseason / Elimination Stage
Unique to ISML 2016 is the implementation of a final group stage, where 16 contestants are split into 4 groups of 4, and play a single round-robin. Top 2 of each group advance to the quarter-finals, wherein it becomes a single-elimination bracket from there on.
From 2017 onwards, Necklace and Pendant winners who didn't win the previous year will now gain Direct Invites into the Main Tournament. (Counting Seasonal Diadem winners and Diadem runners-up, this makes 14 direct invites for females, and 6 direct invites for males.)
Regular season:
Contestants are now split into groups of six (6).
From 2017 onwards, the Necklace / Pendant round is decided through Instant-Runoff voting (IRV, also called Alternative voting).
Wildcard rounds were introduced this year. The next worst contestants are relegated in an elimination round to determine who survives to play in the next period.
Postseason / Elimination Stage:
The 16-player single elimination bracket returns with all of its salty glory.
Number of group members are reduced to 4 per group. Which means that the entire regular season lasts for a total of 21 match days. (not including gem rounds)
Scheduled to begin in July 1 and end in February 2021.
Major Changes:
120 contestants of each gender will compete. Out of these, only 96 contestants will qualify for the main tournament.
Preliminary and seeding rounds return this year. The last edition where these rounds appeared was in 2015.
Consolation gems return after its last appearance in 2014. These awards are similar to necklaces and pendants, but they are awarded to bottom-placed contestants instead. This will be the first year where consolation gems will be awarded to males.
The regular season format is changed; it is now split into 3 stages, where contestants are divided into groups of six. Each period lasts 5 matches for this format.
Round of 96 (Aqua): 16 groups of 6. Sixth placers eliminated. 24-man wildcards, where only 8 characters will survive.
Round of 64 (Topaz - Sapp.) - 4 groups of 16. Top 6 advance. 12th and below eliminated. The rest are subject to a 20-man wildcard round, where again only 8 characters will survive.
Round of 32 (Eme. - Dia.) - 2 groups of 16. Top 8 advance to playoffs; the rest are eiminated.
Playoffs: 16-man Single-elimination bracket.
History
In 2006, the popularity of Anime Saimoe Tournament and news of Best Moe Tournament spawned interest in English based Moe Tournament. The format of Elimination period for the Preliminary and Round-robin League Style for the Regular season was first proposed by Psieye on AnimeSuki forums. In 2007 following discussion about Super Moe Tournament results, the talk of English based Moe Tournament was reawakened and minhtam1638 started working on ISML as a reaction to this. After much discussion in the AnimeSuki Forum, the format of having Auto-qualifying entrants based on their records in Anime Saimoe Tournament and Best Moe Tournament was adopted along with free for all nomination phase to fill the number of 64 that was needed for the Tournament league play.
The main reason for the creation of ISML was spawned from the criticisms of two other tournaments, Anime Saimoe Tournament and Best Moe Tournament, for reasons that the single-elimination tournaments held in Japan and Korea were decided at random. To correct this problem, ISML uses a round-robin tournament, which ensure that all participants will face the rest exactly once. After the round-robin phase, the top 16 participants are seeded into double-elimination instead of randomly paired. Because each participant needs to be elimination twice, this process reduces random spikes in popularity that may cause a consistently strong character to fall.
Another goal for ISML is to have its polls open to voters across the world, where as Anime Saimoe Tournament attempts to block non-Japanese ISPs from voting. ISML is tailored to embrace voters from as many backgrounds as possible. From the first voting in ISML, which was the 2008 nominations, voters were encouraged to submit nomination in any language they were comfortable with. Volunteers promoted ISML in websites based in many different language. By the end of 2008 Regular Season, non-English speaking voters outnumbered English speakers. As of 2009, ISML is the largest moe tournament in the world. Its layout is user-friendly, requiring no registration and using image-assisted voting for recognition. While international voting is encouraged, ISML has a strict eligibility rule on its contestants. Only characters that are recurring or of significant importance are allowed; simply a cameo appearance does not receive consideration in ISML.
In ISML 2008, there were no Pre-season phase, but 64 eligible characters were admitted from Anime Saimoe Tournament and Korea Best Moe Tournament. Its Regular season phase consisted of a round-robin divided into 7 periods. Each period has 9 matches, and the winner of that period would be given a necklace. After 63 round-robin matches, the top 16 moves on to eh Post-season phase, which consisted of a double-elimination tournament. The winner of the Post-season is the winner of ISML 2008, which was Fate Testarossa.
ISML 2009 introduced a Pre-season phase, which consisted of nominations and preliminaries. Its Regular season remained a 64 contestants round-robin tournament. In addition to its usual double-elimination, the Post-season introduced a relegation tournament which serves as an eligibility phase for ISML 2010.
A major change in ISML 2010 was its reduction of 64 to 50 characters in its Regular season. There are still 7 periods, but each period would only have 7 rounds with 25 matches per round. In addition, each of the 49 rounds would have an Exhibition Match, which features two characters who didn't make it to the main tournament.
This tournament also introduced more new exhibitions, such as Trap Exhibition (Males who look, act, and sound like females) and Visual Novel Exhibitions.
There are only two (2) characters who won as Champion in both the International Saimoe League (ISML) and in the Best Moe Tournament in the female division: Hinagiku Katsura (ISML Champion 2009; Best Moe Champion 2007), and Mio Akiyama (ISML Champion 2010; Best Moe Champion 2010). Mio Akiyama won the ISML and the Best Moe Tournament on the same year of 2010.
The closest and the most fiercely fought championship in ISML happened on 2009 between Hinagiku Katsura and Shana. In the finals, Hinagiku defeated Shana by a slim margin of just eleven (11) votes (2117-2106) to become the Champion and be crowned with the tiara in 2009. In a past confrontation between the two in the 2007 Best Moe Tournament, Hinagiku defeated Shana in the finals by a razor-thin margin of just two (2) votes (2015-2013) to become the Champion in 2007.
ISML is the only major contest where the Fate franchise (NOT to be confused with the Nanoha character) hasn't won the grand prize (yet). The closest a Fate character has ever come close to winning Scepter / Tiara was Archer (blown out against 8man in the 2018 final) and his Master Rin Tohsaka (defeated in the closest final ever, against Violet in 2019)
