Sai Mecha 2012: Nominations Phase Open, and New Tourney Rules
April 15, 2012
Welcome back, mecha fans! And thank you for your patience as we got things organized. Sai Mecha 2012 begins now! The nominations phase will be open from today until the end of Sunday, April 29. Nominations will follow the same system as last year, but we’ve made some changes to the tournament system that will hopefully make for ever better mecha mayhem and fanboy/fangirl trash talk. Read on for the details!
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Nominations Procedures
To nominate mecha for Sai Mecha 2012, follow the instructions here:
1. Choose up to 10 mecha, and email them to me at executiveotaku AT gmail DOT com. One entry per person. Please put the series the mecha is from after each.
2. The 32 mecha with the most nominations will be put into a randomized bracket and split into the Earth Side and Colonies Side.
Same as last time then. The changes to this year’s tournament come in the final phase of things.
GARHALLA vs MIDGAR
After talking to Ghostlightning about this year’s tourney, he came up with a good idea to try and keep things fresh. Unlike, for instance, International Sai Moe League voters, mecha fans tend to be a lot more devoted to past shows and contestants. We didn’t want there to be the same matchups all the time, so the solution to this comes in the form of GARhalla. The final four contestants from last year’s tourney wait in GARhalla for the new heroes of the 2012 tournament, MidGAR, to challenge them. The tournament will proceed as normal until the final four contestants are chosen. Then the heroes of MidGAR will rise to challenge GARhalla, and RaGARok will begin.
During RaGARok, the four 2011 and four 2012 contestants will be put into a randomized bracket and face off for the final battles. This way some 2011 contestants will fight each other, some 2012’s will fight each other, and some will be a mix. This will make it harder for one single mecha to dominate every year. But, if a contestant should win twice in a row (in this case, if EVA Unit 01 won again) they will be cast up into the night sky to reign for eternity, as the gods did to heroes who proved their worth. They will then be retired from competition to make room for new challengers.
That’s it, mecha fans! Welcome to Sai Mecha 2012! We look forward to another great competition this year. Get your nominations in and spread the word!
Sai Mecha 
Dat VF-1 walk. HATERS GONNA HATE
AT LAST, TIME FOR CANCER.
Vengeance for VFs this year! You’re all already dead.
KEN NO
YOUR HOKUTO SHINKEN WILL KILL US ALL
Big plays coming out.
Suffer not the unclean to live, we must purge this with FIRE. Yes, the fire from a mecha’s engines and HOT BURNING PASSION.
Midori! Aka green mecha from Rinne no lagrange! Woooooots
I see we’re already off to a bad (horrible) start…
We must crush all Lagrange mech-wannabes.
MOE IS THE CANCER KILLING SAIMECH-
NO WAIT, THAT’S ME
Noooooooooo! Why must you deny the epic Maru!? >;D
Aw man, only ten? Gotta do some pruning.
Not sure if liking these new rules. IMO Eva-01 at least should’ve been barred from any future tournaments, would hate to see things go down the same way again and have to wait another year. Of course, we could just start holding these tournaments more often…
DEATH TO THE MOMMYBOT PLOT ARMORED EMO MACHINE!
… In a completely unrelated and unbiased statement, Shin Getter better win this one.
I see you guys are ready to taste disappointment once again.
I WILL DRINK THE TEARS OF THE GETTERFAGS
I think I’ll be all for the VF’s for this tourney since Gundam is becoming a bit retarded at the moment.
2012 will be TEAM GAINAX year.
Reminder for the Getterfags, this is the time to make things right.
F YEAH! THIS HAND OF MINE GLOWS WITH AN AWESOME POWER!
Man only 10, it’s gonna be hard to make a narrow list. It was hard last year, and that was BEFORE I marathoned all the Gundam shows that I missed. Will variants of a suit be grouped together though? E.g. will Jegan, Jegan-D, Jegan ECOAS Type, Stark Jegan be counted together as one unit or separate in the nominations? Or what about
RX-78GP03S (the Stamen suit)
RX-78GP03O (the Orchis platform)
RX-78GP03D (the two components combined together as the full Dendrobium)?
I try to keep variants together as one entry unless they’re they have major design changes. So in this instance, I’d count all those Jegans as one contestant, and for the GP03, it’d just be one unit (the Orchis is just an equipment pack, really.) Combining different models of the same mobile suit allows a better chance of that mecha making it into the tournament, since some shows are bigger on having smaller variants of a design than others (there’s lots of variants of the Zaku II, but only one Big O, for example.)
What about the 3 forms of Aquarion, and theres 3 differents Aquarions(Assualt-Type, Original and Evol)
Same as Getter Robo I think. One Aquarion will cover all three forms, unless specifically stated otherwise e.g. Black Getter
Aquarion Evol and Original Aquarion are of two different things, I think.
They are… different types, although theres the possibility that Vectors can gattai with vectors from another type
Loving the new rules, especially the two wins in a row thing retiring Champions of Overwhelming Glory. Definitely keeps things fresh.
My friends, I would like to make an earnest plea, just give a few minutes of your time, thank you.
Getter fans, are you tired of being the punchline of last year’s tournament? Are you sick of watching lesser, unworthy, REALISTIC (ugh) robots ascend to Godhood? Are you mad as hell and unwilling to take any more shit from Full Metal Panic fans?
Bretheren, we must unite against the cancer killing Sai Mecha; which will be named as soon as genral consensus agrees as to what this cancer actually is. Whatever this cancer is, SHIN GETTER ROBO is the chemotherapy.
Last year we failed to enter even the preliminaries due to division in the ranks. We lacked a cohesive, unifying mandate to place our support behind, and it cost us dearly. I am just as guilty of this as the rest of you, nominating the little remembered New Getter over more popular stalwarts.
(Except for exulted Brother JoeQ, who nominated EVERY Getter. May Ryoma smile upon him in Valhalla!)
So this year when you make your selection, I humbly beseech you to select Shin Getter. Any Shin Getter is permissable by the rules, it could be Armageddon’s unit, Shin VS. Neo’s nerfed robot, or even the manga’s Unstoppable Planet Eater. But unless it’s Shin, our low numbers might not even get us past the first stage.
Why Shin Getter? While it may lack the old school charm of the original, the sharp lines on 2004’s New Getter, Black Getter’s wicked paint job or Getter Emperor’s brokeness; it remains a byword for planet destroying mechs, Gurren Lagann’s baby daddy and the main mech of the franchise for a good twenty years. It’s the one mech every Getter fan likes on some level.
So PLEASE, I entreat you: don’t let the God of Evolution be trounced by the pitiful likes of the Arblest or another dozen Char variants. You don’t want us to end up like Ideon, lying broken and discarded in favour of innumerable shiny Gundams, do you?
Sai Mecha 2012: Let our three hearts unite as one, giving justice one hundred fold power, GET! GET! GEEEETTTER!!! SHIN GEEEETTTERR, ROBOOO!!!
Speak of the devil….
LO[REDACTED]OL
Yes, nominate a Getter, folks.
SO I CAN DRINK THE TEARS OF THE CRUSHED GETTERFAGS
HEATS!!!! SHIN GETTER FOR LIFE!!!! WE WILL TRIUMPH THIS TIME!!!! WE WILL HAVE REVENGE!!!!
YOU WILL HAVE FAIL
I will drink your tears this year. (And then drink my own tears next year if it still fails to make it in)
My nominations post will go up on WRL in a few hours. All of you can start weeping at the sight of so much awesomeness and utter lack of fail.
Are you going to be constructive with your first list and then flame the hell out of everyone on all subsequent posts? You know, like last year?
Or should I ready butt for immediate hurting?
Prepare your anus for massive flamebaiting.
It’ll be a lot easier.
And remember the Lube.
I’m ecstatic that such a clever solution has been developed for the finals. However, I’m also somewhat disgusted, because I have to come to terms with how that grotesque, spandex-laden deathtrap of a mech won the Earth Side Championship Match. I feel responsible for its victory because I didn’t vote or campaign. I feel like I should have done more, and that had I known about the tournament before it reached that crucial point – before Gurren Lagann got bumped off and the spiteful, borderline-memetic Gainax fandom rallied together to push that purple golem into its respective final match – I might have been able to do something, even if it would have amounted to little more than throwing away a vote into the gaping, jagged maw of The Beast. I’m not even upset about any of the other mecha losing to Unit 01 – hell, even I wouldn’t have voted for the Zaku II in the final round last year – but at the same time, I know that 01 received a surge of votes due to sheer vindictiveness, and that makes me sick.
I had no clear favorite before that tournament, and I still don’t – in general, I appreciate mecha in all shapes and sizes. But I cannot in good conscience let another travesty such as the aforementioned tarnish Sai Mecha. I can’t put any one robot series over the heap – not until the nomination process is over, anyway – but I’ll do my damnedest to campaign for every series I can ON THEIR OWN TERMS, instead of trying to make a petty statement. So long as this tourney is about the mechanical splendor of robot shows – and not WHOLLY grounded in the stories which feature them, or STRICTLY about using said tourney as a platform for spouting shitty memes, or to fly the flag for your favorite animation studio – then the mecha should get the spotlight.
With that being said, I look forward to the metallic carnage which awaits us in the upcoming weeks.
VARIABLE FIGHTERS, vote for them as they are the clearly most superior mechanical design ever made.
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