SaiGAR

Two icons of GAR: Archer, the namesake, and Guts, the original champion.

SaiGAR (meaning most GAR) is the male counterpart of SaiMoe. The word is a combination of the words Sai (最, a Japanese superlative) and GAR (a slang term used to describe badass men with very masculine traits).

The word GAR originated from an anonymous post in 4chan's /a/nime and manga imageboard dating back to the mid-2000's, in which a user expressed his love for Fate/stay night's Archer. The post had a typo which was meant to be read as "gay for Archer", but many anons kept using the misspelled word because it's funny, and the GAR name soon stuck, eventually becoming used as a label for manly anime characters. The name was later adopted for /a/'s male version of the Saimoe tournament in 2007 and 2008.

What is GAR?

Fan art ^{[source needed]} of some male characters typically considered GAR. From left to right: Okabe, Kamina, Brock, Lelouch, Kaiji, and Alex.

Like moe, GAR is a highly subjective term, and each person's interpretation of what makes a character elicit feelings of GAR is different. Manliness is a common trait of characters deemed as GAR, but obviously, what's considered manly differs throughout many countries.

Common Traits:

• Attractive Art Style - self-explanatory.
• Masculine Features - muscles, square jaws, fierce-looking eyes; anything that makes you look tough and intimidating.
• Badass - is able to overcome adversity with style. Being badass don't just mean physically overpowering someone; outwitting and outsmarting opponents also counts.
• Strong Personality - aggressive, brave, charismatic, confident, hot-blooded, cunning, uncompromising, etc. Anything that makes you dominant in a nutshell.

SaiGAR Tournament History

A Brief Spell

In 2007, one year after /a/nons joined 2channel's Saimoe tournament, the board decided to hold their own male tournament named "SaiGAR", hosted by someone only known as "SaiGAR Guy". It used a website modeled after 2channel's tournament.

Soon after, SaiGAR 2007 became filled with controversies; one such example was the presence of female characters in a tournament meant for males: Revy, a heroine who would be probably a strong contender for SaiGAR if her gender was flipped, and Nanoha Takamachi, the winner of J-Saimoe 2005. Furthermore, the trollish nature of the site's userbase has led to several meme entrants qualifying for the main event such as a badly drawn cabbage, and an extremely long couch. The host was also questioned for allowing Char Aznable and his alter ego "Quattro Bajeena" as separate entrants, and for not clarifying whose version of Kenshiro is entered - either the famous hero from Fist of the North Star, or his uncle Kenshiro Kasumi, who mainly appears in Fist of the Blue Sky.

The tournament also saw voters from the /m/echa board have joining in, since many of its protagonists have distinct GAR qualities like being hot-blooded, aggressive, and cool. /m/'s sudden "unwanted invasion", coupled with their differing interpretations of what makes a man GAR compared to /a/, strengthened the rivalry between the two boards. As such, the tournament eventually devolved into an /a/utists vs. /m/orons affair, culminating in the final match between /a/'s Guts and /m/'s Master Asia, which turned out to be a very hyped, tightly contested slugfest. Guts ultimately won by 5 votes, thereby earning the right to be proclaimed as /a/'s very first (and only) GAR anime character.

Next year's edition unfortunately turned out worse, as some anons have claimed to have cheated during the event by using proxies to artificially inflate votes. Moreover, some of the results were met with controversy, the most notable being Kino, a tomboyish female who received much support in the threads, even though she's in a tournament meant for males. Facing increased pressure from anons, SaiGAR Guy eventually gave up halfway through the tournament and decided to abandon it indefinitely, citing "lol proxies" as the reason.

Post-Mortem and Revival Attempts

Since then, there hasn't been any serious attempts to revive the SaiGAR contest on the /a/ board, especially since the mods and jannies have exhibited suppressive actions against such threads. However, the rise of similar tournaments like Mr and Miss /co/, King and Queen /v/, and Mr and Miss /mlp/ at the turn of the 2020's, as well as the creation of a /tnt/ board dedicated for such events in the alternative imageboard plus4chan, has given newfound hope for a potential revival of an /a/ character tournament.