LogFAQs > #937763081

swirIdude posted...

That's not how the Noble Nine works.

KokoroAkechi posted...

Honestly, the way that members have tried to defend the sacredity of the nn has been outrageous.

Agreed on both counts. The Noble Nine is just a thing. They were the top 9 characters in the X-Stats in the first Character Battle, and it was a really arbitrary cutoff, but it worked. And for one year, it truly made sense that 9 was the cutoff, no lower and no higher.

Keep that in mind. It was only one year. After the 2005 contest, Snake and Sonic still had no victories over other Noble Niners, though they certainly had beaten some of the top contenders for making it greater than 9, while Samus's only wins over a Noble Niner came against Sonic and Mega Man's had only come against Sonic and Snake; in 2007, L-Block happened and also Vincent beat Crono. The only time at which the Noble Nine had the status of "none have lost to outside competition and all of them have transitive losses to all of the others" was after the Elite Eight of 2006 when Snake beat Mega Man and Sonic beat Crono.

So why are we mythologizing them? There are plenty of other strong characters out there, some of whom weren't even in the first Character Battle. That's the part that really makes it silly; the 2002 Character Battle had a ridiculously high amount of fodder, due to the glut of fighting game characters in the field. But being in every character battle is required to be considered "elite"?

The Noble Nine are still the Noble Nine, and they always will be. It's just that their streak ended in 2007, or 2010 if you insist on only counting 1v1s, and if you're really anal and only count 24-hour 1v1s, not until 2018. But there are non-Noble Niners who are on the same level as the lower ranks of the Noble Nine. Zelda, Pikachu, and Tifa proved it in 2018, and MMX is probably right there, too.

---

Also known as Cyberchao X.