(8)Hero vs (11)Rinoa Heartilly vs (20)Aeris Gainsborough 2013

Chris single-handedly has been trying to get DQ5 Hero into a contest for years. In a contest where Board 8 decided all of the 8 seeds by ourselves, this was the contest for it to finally happen.

But actually winning a match? Nah. Aeris > Rinoa > Hero was bound to be a lock. Look at Dragon Quest's contest history:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/2436 http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/3449 http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/4126

Unless some character got into a character battle that I forgot about, that's the entire list. Three matches of absolute crap.

So when Aeris blew the poll away and Hero's joke votes got him into second place early, no one really batted an eye. Even later when Hero built that lead to 250 in an hour, it was still seen as a joke.

It wasn't until the realization that he wasn't actually slowing down did people realize what was going on here. Dragon Quest 5 Hero was actually winning second place! Yeah it took a massive series of related events, like Aeris being in a poll with him alongside one of the most hated FF females in the series, but who cares!

Hero, freaking DQ5 Hero, got into a contest and busted some gurus upside the face. No one can ever take that from the little guy.

Also since Rinoa might never get into another poll, it's worth noting how much she sucks as a character. Seriously, she is absolute whore garbage that should have been killed during two different spoilers in that game, and to this day I'm convinced she was never killed because of FF7 disc 1 backlash. But her not being around would have at least made her tolerable.

I'm still convinced that all the Squall hate for years and years was just Rinoa hate channeled onto him because of his idiot beta male ass going out of his way for her over and over again no matter how many times she didn't appreciate it. Screw Rinoa, most deserved victim of a contest upset in recent memory.