Results[]
Ulti's Analysis[]
Round | Division 7 Semi Final |
---|---|
Match # | 46 |
Match Date | Thursday, October 18th, 2007 |
Oracle Expectations |
Solid Snake - 42.96% Ryu Hayabusa - 22.31% Riku - 19.98% Nightmare - 14.88% |
GameFAQs Expectations |
Snake first place (4pts) - 78.47% Snake second place (2pts) - 8.93% Riku second place (4pts) - 33.25% Riku first place (2pts) - 4.29% |
Advancing Prediction |
Snake - 87.40% (32,097) Riku - 37.54% (13,786) |
Let me repeat something from the first round:
Ryu Hayabusa - 57670 votes
Riku + Roxas - 56546 votes
As for how Riku alone turned that around, I'm still at a loss. The easy explanation though is he wasn't trying to outdo 57670 votes, because Ryu H wasn't going to get first place here. Add in that Snake, Ryu and Nightmare probably overlap in some way, and you've got an opening for Riku to sneak into second place.
It's not like Ryu didn't try. After Riku was in second place for 25 minutes, Ryu started going up overnight. Obviously, he didn't go up nearly fast enough. The overnight lead peaked at 550, and Riku threatened to get rid of all that during the morning vote. But once the lead shrunk to 160, the brats went to school. Ryu pushed it back up to 550 again, but do I even need to commentate on how the ASV went? I don't think anything related to Kingdom Hearts has ever lost one.
In the grand scheme of things Riku pulling this off didn't mean a whole lot, since whoever got into second place was screwed against the Snake/Kratos/L-Block combo next round anyway. But it was still one of the most inexplicable turnarounds in contest history. Apparently one character does better than two!
Stats and Analysis[]
this match defined Character Battle VI: in round 1, Ryu went out and scored a higher percentage than Riku and Roxas combined. you couldn't even argue Riku over Ryu with a straight face - Ryu went and beat two KH characters combined. everyone's brackets were screwed.
so what the hell happened here? the format happened. I still have no idea how this happened, if round 1 was a massive fluke, or whatever else you can come up with - Ryu was supposed to win this match, and he didn't. Riku started out with the board/bracket vote, but Ryu quickly took the lead and after 30 minutes, started building up his lead as expected. it looked exactly like round 1 if you combined both KH characters' votes.
it only lasted four hours, though. Hayabusa got his lead to about 550 votes and then just froze. it should have been Hayabusa's best time -- or rather, Riku's worst -- but suddenly, Hayabusa started dropping votes with Riku's killer day vote still to come. the morning vote was especially brutal to Ryu and knocked him below a 200 vote lead. he pushed his lead back up to 500 before the afterschool vote, but we all knew that wouldn't be enough. once Riku got going, the lead was as good as gone, and by 5:30 he started building his own lead. Ryu never recovered and lost by 600 votes.
as for why this happened? who knows. maybe Snake hurts Ryu more than Riku, though Snake/Sora in 2005 says otherwise. maybe round 1 was a fluke. maybe Riku's fans are more dedicated than Ryu's. or maybe there's no sense in trying to compare previous performances in this wonky format. who the hell knows?