> WASM shares more ideas with CIL than the JVM [..] In WASM the memory management strategy is up to the application.

That level of difference doesn't matter. The point is that WASM is a portable and sandboxed target (like JVM) which is (or will be) faster, more secure (e.g. capability based security in WASI) and with more language support (strictly more when optional GC becomes a thing) and other differences are implementation details.