Kuja's Contest History

Who is Kuja?
In the beginning of Final Fantasy 9, you know absolutely nothing of Kuja (hence his downfall in his one and only match) and are led to believe that Queen Brahne is the main villain of the game. By the end of disc 1, you learn that Brahne is in cahoots with a weapon supplier from a far-off continent.

This supplier's name is Kuja, and he's giving Queen Brahne the means for war for reasons far beyond the scope of setting the Mist Continent into chaos. In the world of FF9, souls eventually become mist after the body dies. Mist is used in many facets of life in FF9, from powering houses and trains to giving monsters power... and in Kuja's case, he is using mist to build the black mages that keep wreaking havoc upon the Mist Continent.

Despite Brahne being as diabolical as can be, Princess Garnet insists that her mother is a good person and that Kuja is solely responsible for her insanity and greed. And she turns out to be correct, but the party finds out much too late to make much of a difference in stopping Kuja from literally destroying every town and castle on the Mist Continent, as well as killing Brahne and kidnapping Garnet so that he may steal her eidolons from her.

The party eventually realizes that they have to go after Kuja if they want to restore peace to the world, because he'll only spread his influence to the other continents of the world and do to them what he did to Mist. But the closer they get to Kuja, the more they all begin to realize that there is much more to him than meets the eye.

Aside from the thong, anyway. Nothing can take the player's attention off of that ;)

Kuja seems like the standard villain for most of Final Fantasy 9, but he grows to be appealing and unique in his own right by the end of the game with all of the plot twists and such that come about. He also speaks entirely in prose, which the drama nuts out there (including yours truly) adore. There is a talent that comes with speaking entirely in poetry, and Kuja has mastered it on top of being a power-hungry lunatic.

"Peace is but a shadow of death, Desperate to forget its painful past... Though we hope for promising years After shedding a thousand tears, Yesterday's sorrow constantly nears. And while the moon still shines blue, By dawn, it will turn to scarlet hue." -Kuja

"Why should the world exist without me? That wouldn't be fair." -Kuja

Kuja's Contest History
Win-Loss Record: 0-1

Spring 2005 Contest - Triforce Division - 2 Seed
 * Triforce Round 1 --- Lost to (7) Master Hand, 34009 [46.24%] - 39535 [53.76%]
 * Extrapolated Strength --- 28th Place [14.64%]

Aside from Ridley, Kuja was the single biggest flop of the Spring 2005 Contest. At least in Ridley's case, he lost a debated match in the first round. Kuja however was put into a position where most felt that he would coast through his fourpack before being blasted away by Ganondorf.

He never made it that far, despite several warning signs beforehand that Master Hand might win the match. After Kuja began his match with Master Hand by jumping out to a 400 vote lead, Master Hand slowly worked his way back into the match -- and after a very long, painstaking period in which Master Hand went from being down by 400 to up by 200 and stalling, Kuja absolutely tanked. The afternoon vote went entirely against him, and the match went from being dead even to being ab absolute blowout.

How this happened still remains a mystery, though there are a few reasonable conclusions. During the time of this match, Nintendo was at its highest popularity point since 2002. Kuja also suffers from Albedo syndrome in that you don't see him until after you're well into the game. There are also the matters of FF9 being released at the tail end of the Playstation's life span and there being mixed emotions about the game overall. Some love it, some hate it.

But even through all of this, seeing such a large choke job come from a Final Fantasy character isn't something that most throught they'd ever see. This may have also been a prelude to the dominance that Nintendo would go to show in Summer 2005.

As for ever seeing Kuja again to see if he can make up for this performance, it's very unlikely unless CJayC is bored enough to run a villain contest again. Not only did Kuja tank in this thing, but he finished 28th in the stats. In a field this weak, that's absurd.