(9)Magus vs (10)Hal "Otacon" Emmerich vs (19)Jade Curtiss 2013

Ulti's Analysis
As a huge Magus fan, this match made me so nervous. I unapologetically love the so-called gothic characters that all the 13 year-olds want to be like. The Maguses and Sephiroths and anti-heroes of the world. Everyone knows how Magus has become a complete contest joke by now, but I'll give the recap anyway in case someone searches this up on the Wiki without knowing context.

2003 - Even with MASSIVE contest hype following Crono's 2002 performance, Magus only doubles Sam Fisher, needs almost all 24 hours to beat Ganondorf, then gets 35% on Link.

2004 - Blows out Luca Blight, gets blown out by Crono.

2005 - The year where he started being a joke, also known as getting hyped to win his division before losing in round 1 to Knuckles.

2007 - Low-scoring round 1 win before getting blown out by Big Boss for second place in round 2.

2008 - Joke status solidified by losing a huge lead to Sandbag for second place in round 1. This was doubly funny because once upon a time, Magus was projected as being able to outright beat Sonic the Hedgehog, who got first place in this match.

2010 - Blown out by Alucard in round 1, in a match that people were somehow questioning. I'm the biggest Magus fan on Board 8. I was telling everyone he had no chance. It's like asking me how the Colts are going to do, guys.

2011 - Rides his rivalry with Frog through two wins, and loses in round 3 to Alucard v Dracula. Two years in a row of Magus losing to Alucard.

Which brought us here. People saw this and thought Magus would lose, but that was joke status gone nuts. I even bought into it for a second, but then I realized that Otacon is a bit loser character in the MGS series that almost no one cares about. It isn't Snake or Big Boss, and hell, it wasn't even Liquid or Ocelot. It was Otacon. Magus losing this would have been like him losing to Naomi Hunter or The Fury. Magus may be a joke, but he does have limits to how much he can suck. Even with Jade in there sucking JRPG votes away.

(To be fair, a lot of the Otacon hype came from people that were justifiably pissed off about Crono/Magus in round 2 allowing Pikachu to just steal his way into a win he did not deserve. NOTHING got better draws in this contest than Pokemon, and we were perhaps one Draven rally away from Mewtwo winning this entire contest.)

So I told people Magus was winning this. Was I confident about it? Hell no I wasn't confident about it! This is MAGUS we're talking about. But when the poll started and we entered 50-35-15-ville, I was quite the happy guy.

A, I was happy Magus finally won a debated match, even if the debate was forced. And B, I was so happy about that round 2 Crono/Pikachu/Magus nonsense. It was both everything good and everything bad about this contest wrapped up in a neat little 12 hour package.