(6)Pikachu vs (2)Sora vs (12)Pokemon Trainer Blue 2013

http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/gallery/albums/cb9/5258-02.jpg

Ulti's Analysis
When Division 6 was being debated pre-contest, Board 8's Pokemon love kind of took over, but also at a rational level. The board wanted Blue or Pikachu to win the division, and was worried that this exact match happening would cause Sora to get an unearned bye into the contest semifinals -- the thought was that Pikachu and Blue would overlap too much, so when Blue beat the hell out of Fox people were happy, but also a bit bummed out.

Turns out Pokemon is strong enough to not give the first flying f***, not to mention Sora is about as anti-voted as it gets these days. Of all the symbols of Square hatred following the merger with Enix and all the stupid decisions in the 2000s, doesn't Sora or Lightning represent that hatred better than anyone else? Does anyone actually admit in public that they're a fan of Sora these days?

The match would actually end up being really good, albeit Sora waited far too long to make a push. Pikachu resisted enough of Blue's LFF to build himself a 400 vote lead overnight, then the Pokemon morning vote proved much tougher than the Kingdom Hearts morning vote. Pikachu kept running with the momentum and built himself a 600 vote lead by lunch. It was only then that Sora decided to make a comeback push of his own, but comebacks against a character that has the exact same trends as you is unbelievably hard. It's not like Sora could rely on the morning vote or ASV to push him over the top, so he had to get his votes elsewhere.

To his credit, he did do this. He started doing a stall-push until the ASV, then took enough of the ASV to make the match interesting. That 600 vote lead was down to 300 by dinner time, but it didn't take Pikachu long at all to get his lead back over 400.

The true push came with the late evening and second night vote, which is not Pokemon territory and has enough Square love left in it to make a match like this close. The problem is that Sora was in too big a hole early, and for all his pushing with the SNV he was only able to get it below 300 with two hours left. Sora did ultimately keep going and only end up losing by 150, but does anyone really think Board 8 would have allowed a popular Pokemon to lose to freaking SORA, of all characters? The fact that this match was only interesting because of Blue's presence really gives us all we need to know about Sora's strength, anyway. He barely has any left, and this match was another Pokemon punching their ticket to the contest semifinals.