(Hey, if you don’t have the time to read a 1000-word post filled with passion and energy, that’s cool. Just click here to jump to my main message, and it’ll all be good. It’ll make a lot more sense if you read the whole article, but I just need a little favor, real quick. If you want to listen to my story, thank you for that.)

And moe competitions can get you put into a straightjacket and thrown into the corner of an isolated white room with no windows.

Well, if you’ve been following me recently, or searching Google with exceptional accuracy, you may have found that I’ve been following the events of International Saimoe League, which is basically like J-Saimoe (which is basically the moe internet version of March Madness (which is basically a effing huge basketball tournament (which is a series of games played by a large number of teams, where only those who win – OK, you get the point))).

Except for the fact that ISML is in English, has a taste for the dramatic like I do, runs for probably about 10 months out of the year, and as such is inherently appealing for those who like a little friendly competition over their favorite characters.

Well, ‘favorite characters’ is a bit of a misnomer, as any devout follower of a moe tournament will tell you, quite aptly, that a moe tournament is not about popularity or favoritism, but yes, moe.

How odd. But for me at least, moe and favoritism overlap a fair deal, especially in the context of this competition, where there are very few characters that fall into the subset of ‘characters I like a lot but do not consider moe’ (for example: a lot of the ef cast).

What does not appear to overlap, is my taste and other people’s tastes.

The preliminaries are going on in ISML right now, and we’ve reached round 5 of 7, with just 11 characters left to join the other 53 in the main competition.

It’s probably one of the more dramatic times of the competition, just like the end of the season before March Madness, as everyone fights for one of those final shots in the Big Dance.

I mean, after all, in the main ISML competition, each character’s guaranteed 63 matches. It’s harder to gauge the flow of the tournament as a whole; who’s doing good, who’s doing bad. But in the preliminaries, it’s much more urgent.

With three matches left, that’s three shots to get in. Each time, the character with the highest vote-count in each of four divisions gets in while the other 6 or 7 get left out, so it’s direct competition. If you lose here, that’s it. There is no brushing yourself off and trying to rally like in the marathon regular season.

Which is why I’m here today, to orz or genuflect or whatever and say -

Citizens Readers, lend me your votes.

You may think that with three rounds left, there’s still a lot of time for [your beloved character here], but let’s face it: if you didn’t have the votes in the last four rounds, they’re not going to appear now. There are already too many powerhouses for an underdog to make a serious comeback …

… unless you make a miracle happen.

And who else would be more perfect for a miracle than Shiori Misaka?

For some reason, she just hasn’t been as popular as the other Kanon – nay, the other Key girls. Just look at the numbers so far:

All four core Clannad girls (Tomoyo / Nagisa / Kyou / Kotomi) pre-qualified for ISML.
Misuzu from AIR pulled off a win earlier in the preliminaries.
And all four other Kanon girls are in as well, three pre-qualified (Ayu / Mai / Nayuki), with Makoto smashing the competition in preliminaries.

But there’s still one missing. Don’t you think that’s an injustice?

But don’t take it on a level of unfairness. I don’t want to make you cast a vote you don’t believe in, just in the name of ‘parity’. I’m not about gaming the system. If I wanted to do that, I’d just grab 50 IPs and cast the votes myself. Or I’d offer my friends a dollar each to vote.

I want to prove that together, we can create a miracle legitimately. So I want to really convince you, that Shiori is worth your vote. I want to do this honestly.

Take it on a character level.

You like ice cream, right? Everyone likes ice cream. Shiori likes vanilla ice cream. She likes it so damn much she eats it in the snow while she has a cold.

That’s devotion. You know devotion, right? You have a character in anime, someone you think is really moe or gar or awesome or whatever. Or maybe you just have an anime as a whole whose story or morals you live your life by. There’s something you’re really passionate about, that you’re willing to defend, one way or another, to the end of the earth. You know devotion. Shiori knows devotion. Shiori knows you. She understands devotion. She understands you.

Isn’t that worth something?

And I didn’t even have to go into all the character spoilers and plot developments and all the wonderfully beautiful fountain scenes and everything that really makes Shiori more than that too.

You like moe, right? What could be better than a little-sister type like Shiori? A little shy, a little lonely, looking for someone strong to be like…

OK, fine, I understand, you hate moe. You’re tired of braindead, monosyllabic-phrase-uttering airheads who wouldn’t know how to breathe unless they were told to by some generic-looking guy. Well, great news for you.

Shiori is a damn respectable genius as well. A genius, I tell you. She’s not like those other moe characters you’re thinking of.

She’s poetic. Says some really deep and meaningful quotes. She wants to be strong on her own too. She’s not going to follow you around forever. She’s trying really hard to be mature. She’s a thinker. Try matching wits with her sometime.

See? Look. Best of both worlds. You want a little moe with your strong, realistic female character? Want some strength to your moe stereotype? You got it. Shiori is like the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of anime girls. You gonna tell me you don’t like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

So, see? Shiori’s perfect. Wonderful girl. Beautiful outfit, too.

But the public, everyone else who couldn’t tell Naruto from the Simpsons, see, they don’t think Shiori’s much. She’s not cute enough. Too old. Maybe they forgot she existed because her arc was only three episodes long. Probably busy worshipping whatever rubbish they call ‘harem’ these days. Aki-can or something. They wouldn’t know the golden days of the harem if it wore angel wings and crashed into them.

Emotion. Moe characters reinforced with strength. That’s what I’m talking about.

And that’s why I’m asking you to do something simple. Give Shiori just a bit of your time. Can’t hurt you. Can only help her. Will only take a minute.

Here’s what you do:

You click this link to the International Saimoe League voting arena, where all the action goes down.

And you see Shiori there, in Group C? That familiar smiling face? Click that little button there. Make her light up.

Those other groups? I don’t care who you want to vote for. I’m not going to say ‘you can only vote Shiori’ or anything. You got another girl you love? Someone else you respect? Be my guest. I understand. Not like Shiori’s the only moe one out there. Go ahead and make Haruka Nogizaka, or Osaka, or Yuno or whoever makes you happy.

All I ask is that you give Shiori that little boost she needs to make the big time. She deserves the attention. The popularity. At least, the equality with the other girls she’s friends with. They’re waiting for her. Don’t let her down.

See, I know you’re a good person. You give enough of your time to read this blog, after all. I thank you for that. Whether you’re a devoted reader, or maybe just a passerby who saw the title, or maybe a blogger yourself. You let me have my silly little rant, you let me express my passion.

We have something in common; we’re here because we love anime, and love the characters in it.

And if I’ve learned one thing from anime, it’s that the future won’t change (at least with these voting patterns) unless we change it with our own hands.

And so, I just want to see if I – if we – can achieve this small little miracle, a little personal victory on the battleground of crazed fandom warfare. To prove that we can bond together and do something, no matter how inconsequential (whether it be in terms of ’she probably won’t do that well in the main tournament’ or ‘c’mon, it’s just a silly contest with fake characters’), is something that holds meaning. To me, and to you.

I know I can count on you for this.

So please. Just one vote.

-CCY