Axel's Contest History

Who is Axel?
Axel makes his first appearance in Chain of Memories, the crap sequel to the original Kingdom Hearts. Well actually, only the gameplay is crap. The story is quite good, mostly due to Axel and the emergence of Organization XIII. Organization XIII are what are known as Nobodies; nobodies are essentially white Heartless borne of the creation of a regular Heartless, but are attuned to their actions rather than the Zerg-like Heartless that just kill whatever is in front of them. Nobodies seek to find their hearts and become whole again. The strongest of the Nobodies formed Organization XIII in an effort to expedite this process.

After the events of Kingdom Hearts, Axel lures Sora into a twisted realm called Castle Oblivion, a place that consumes one's memories as you travel deeper into it. Axel's master plan is to trap Sora there and get his heart back, but he underestimates how strong Sora is and that Sora could best even that place. And so, Axel gets pissed off, kills a bunch of members of O13 in a grand coup de grace and moves on to other plans.

Cue the events of Kingdom Hearts 2. Sora and friends still have no clue that Axel is somewhat against the Organization, but it all comes to a head at the tail end of the game. Axel finally turns on the Nobodies and kills himself with his ultimate attack, all to allow Sora to enter the Organization's stronghold and kick some ass.

"My heart wouldn't be in it, you know? Haven't got one." -Axel

Axel ends up being a pretty kickass anti-hero, if only because on top of his being a good character, Quintin Flynn (also the voice of Raiden) portrays him very well and makes him sound pretty damn cool. Flynn needed a badass role after Raiden, and Axel was it.

"Got it memorized?" -Axel

Axel's Contest History
Win-Loss Record: 0-2

Summer 2006 Contest Destiny Division - 7 Seed
 * Destiny Round 1 --- Lost to (2) Mega Man, 35340 [30.13%] - 81959 [69.87%]
 * Extrapolated Strength --- 38th Place [25.24%]

Axel was a nice newcomer to the field in 2006, but was put in an impossible spot thanks to the female half of the bracket. He did make his one match count, though, in helping to expose Mega Man before anyone else did. Once upon a time in that match, Mega Man was over 75% and climbing. Then the Kingdom Hearts day vote hit, and off Axel went. It would be nice to see Axel in a good spot next year... say, maybe him against Prince of Persia.

Summer 2007 Contest Division 1 - Third Group
 * Division 1 Round 1 --- 3rd place, 25282 [18.55%] - Samus Aran, 70546 [51.75%] - Frog, 25410 [18.64%] - Sarah Kerrigan, 15075 [11.06%]

Not many expected Axel to do much here, but he helped give us one of the best matches of the contest. This format was not thought to be conducive to comebacks, so when Frog was up 1900 votes with nine hours left, most people figured this one was over. The problem was that we forgot two things: The powerful Kingdom Hearts day vote and the abysmal Chrono Trigger day vote. At that point, Axel started to rip through that lead as if this wasn't a four character poll. In a matter of FIVE hours, he had completely erased Frog's 1900 vote lead and began to build one of his own, getting as high as 329 ahead with a little more than an hour left.

Then, of course, Frog began to make his own little comeback. The slices that he made on Axel were very...dubious, to say the least, but nothing was done. In the end, Frog had advanced, leaving a bitter taste in the mouth of many when it was all said and done.

And I've gotta say, Axel might have one of the best day votes, period, even amongst Kingdom Hearts characters. The way he began to fly with the after school vote the last two years was very impressive.