Results[]
Sunday, August 25th, 2013
Ulti's Analysis[]
When the bracket first came out, this was the match everyone immediately pointed to and went "Oh, no" with. Crono and Magus in a poll together with Pikachu, with PokeFEAR running rampant? Pikachu was the massive guru favorite, which would be unthinkable a few years ago. Now, with Crono basically a running joke? Every year we just expect him to lose a funny match now, and this year was no different. Magus beating Otacon was the worst possible thing that could have happened for Crono this year.
Magus did his job and was basically SFFd into the ground, but he got just enough of the vote for Pikachu to win with ease. Crono tried holding on early, but was eventually just run over. Pikachu winning by 2000 may look close, but it really wasn't. You have to factor in things like Crono being the first 1 seed to go down.
I will say though, that I'm not sure Crono even beats Pikachu 1 on 1 at this point. 47% of the vote is a lot, and are we sure all 4000 of Magus's votes would go to Crono here, in a close match involving a Pokemon? Pikachu would only need half of them to win or be close, and I feel like he could do that pretty easily. He would at least make it a really good match, and by the time we get another character contest, Chrono Trigger will be that much weaker. We had a bonus match in round 2 that proved this in a pretty obvious way. Mario kicked Crono's ass even with Mega Man X in the poll.
Zen's (Late) Analysis[]
https://imgtc.com/i/4i9AsGS.png https://imgtc.com/i/iI2zTKA.png
here's a match that would have been great if Magus hadn't beaten Otacon. Remember save_us.RAT? I think that was in reference to Pikachu over L-Block. We have given him too much power now.
https://imgtc.com/i/LBfBnsI.jpg
Otacon, you could have saved us from the mouse if you had been here. How could you?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=324&v=CLURZh8IysY
My least favorite part of matches involving Noble Nine members is the absolute tsunami of topics saying "OMG NOBLE NINE BROKEN?!?!?!" which then devolves into discussions as to whether or not the Noble Nine has truly been broken before which devolves into discussions about the Noble Nine being broken before means that there is no longer still a Noble Nine to be broken again which leads to people trying to peg the weakest member of the Noble Nine and
holy shit we have had a billion topics about this, can we stop talking about the arbitrary, outdated concept that is the Noble Nine? CBIX should have been its last hurrah given the vague theming around the concept of the number "nine." It's done. There's no more. The vote totals we're getting no longer sustain the idea of the Noble Nine. It's too easy to undermine. It's nice to talk about them in regards to contest history, but can we get away from talking about the future of the NN?
Back to the match: Pikachu won and won easily. People had assumed Crono could still win, because, y'know, Noble Nine, but the writing was on the walls and we all saw it, some just didn't want to admit it. Pikachu was dominant here and we knew his performance was a tone-setter for the rest of the contest and future contests to come.