(5)Terra Branford vs (12)Charizard 2018

Lightning_Strikes 's Analysis
What happened?: Good goddamn question. This match seemed open and shut. Nintendo has been beasting, Final Fantasy has been not, Charizard has looked great twice in earlier contests, Pikachu looked great, Red looked great. Then this match starts.. And it's neck and neck during the board vote? What? Terra then spent a long time over 47%, looking like she might take the whole thing during the power hour. Then things started to go Charizard's way and he began winning updates consistently, and Terra never really got it back. It is very interesting that Terra was best during the Power Hour here, and the match was relatively stable otherwise. Charizard didn't have the 3-5% losses that other Pokemon characters have shown, instead only bleeding less than 1% from his peak. Lastly it's really significant that the match was effectively tied between anonymous voters with the registered boost helping Charaizard keep clear. It didn't change the result, but I wonder if it hadn't happen, would there have been rallies to push Terra over? Who knows.

What could this mean?: A lot of people are calling Charizard and Pokemon/Nintendo/whatever a fraud, I dunno. Both Nintendo as a whole and Pokemon more specifically have looked consistently great, including in this match. Really I think this is just Terra. She didn't act like most Square characters have, though it's likely no coincidence that the closest comparison is Kefka. I think a lot of this is on her strength. FFVI has been growing over the last several years, and she likely earned that 5 seed. It would be interesting to see Terra put up against some typical midcarders, she could probably do a lot of damage. As for Charizard, well I suddenly feel glad I have Bowser, but a lot of that is to do with the next match.