ISML Winner and My View on Moe

Congratulations to Kanade for winning the 2012 ISML!

Yes, the winner of this year's International Saimoe League is Tachibana Kanade of Angel Beats!

Everyone predicted her to win so I'm not much surprised. Besides, she rarely (or never) lose. I'm glad though to see a HanaKana character win that is not Nadeko. Now, today in this Halloween day I'm not going to celebrate, I'm going to write my current view about the word moe.


What is 'moe'? What makes a character 'moe'?

The truth is, it all depends on the tastes of one's person and how they interpreted the word 'Moe'. The usage of 'Moe' is pretty much the same like the word 'beautiful' in English, or 'unyu' in Indonesian. Something that delights, yet it's different to every person. However, moe is more oftenly used on 'cute' girls.

She is what I called moe.
Vote for her in ISML once Kagerou Days anime is out!

While it wasn't wrong, I think 'moe' could be anything that triggers one's burning passion. 'Moe' literally means 'budding' or 'burning' anyway. In my case, characters like Kido Tsubomi (pictured in image above) or Kinoshita Hideyoshi which made me head over heels towards them and goes 'MY WIFE!!1one!' or 'PRECIOUS BABYYYY!!' is what I called moe. 

Touwa Erio, my personal favorite ISML contestant of this year.
She is too adorable!

However, Moe isn't just that. Moe actually can be anything. People tend to use them to characters they called cute like I am, but Moe could be anything, since it doesn't have particular meaning.

Why are there AST, KBM, ISML, if the meaning of Moe is really ambiguous? It's basically the same as 'Why does beauty contest exists?'. Well, both of them are basically popularity contests to determine which character people thinks as beautiful or moe the most. Yeah, you might refuse the truth, but the truth can't be changed---- Saimoe contest were no more than popularity contest. 

Which makes it worse, I saw some Saimoe fans overreacted towards their favorite character losing and even cheats to make their favorite characters win. I see no point. It's an unofficial popularity contest, and Moe was an ambiguous word to begins with....

Kanade deserves the tiara, IMO.

Back to ISML! I don't have particular wishes about ISML next year, but I would really love to see next year have good twists, no cheaters and no repeat winners, also exhibition match suggestions that's not on the forums for the staffs to consider. So, do your best, ISML staffs!

I guess that's what I'm going to write about Moe for now. Thank you for reading!