Don’t we all know it? But wait! That picture up above! Could it be…is it from a tournament that isn’t being held on 2ch!?
So, I was scrolling through my bookmarks one day, thinking of where to go to kill a few minutes, and I noticed a link that I hadn’t clicked on in a while. “International Saimoe League”. Sound familiar? After the tiara battles concluded, ISML took a break until the end of September to begin the real tournament; thankfully, I remembered only a few days after it started. However, that was when it hit me.
Did anyone actually notice that they came back?
Okay, so we all know that the real SaiMoe – the one in which the winner will go down in history – is being held in Japan’s 2ch, and that the tournament is well underway. Anyone who frequents the blogosphere should have noticed this by now, and I would assume the members of other otaku communities have also been at least following the tournament, if not voting. After all, all of the information can be found around AnimeSuki, so there really isn’t any excuse for not knowing about any of this.
However, there’s another tournament running right now, with considerably less votes and coverage, that seems to be doing an astonishingly good job.
If you haven’t checked out ISML’s site yet, go there now (but come back here right after because I have more to say).
…
So, what did you see? Anything interesting? Personally, I found that the people behind ISML have done an excellent job setting everything up and running the tournament, even if there were more than a few errors and miscounts in the votes earlier on. No tournament is without flaw, of course, and a newcomer in a world dominated by Japan’s and even Korea’s tournament would naturally have a lot to compete with. However, if you overlook their mistakes here and there (because like I said, what kind of fan-run event doesn’t have mistakes?), you’ll probably see that they’re worth a fair bit more attention than they’re getting.
I guess you could say that I simply made this post to raise awareness…not that my posting about them will really get them any new voters. The point is, though, that ISML has done something that the otaku community has always needed. It’s an international moe tournament available in several languages, the site is well-designed and accessible to allow for easy browsing and voting (unlike these complex instructions), and they have a promo video. Yeah, you heard me. A promo video. How awesome is that?
At the moment, voting has resumed over at ISML, and this time the real tournament is beginning. Who will come out on top? I’m not sure, but if you believe like I do that moe truly is SRS BSNS, then you’ll keep in touch with our easy to access English tournament as well the one that every other aniblogger is talking about. Epic match descriptions FTW!
~ ETERNAL
つづく
