LogFAQs > #913733210

Okay, part of me feels like Cloud and Sephiroth weakening faster than Tifa and Aeris/th might not be so much a "female increase" of some sort or this site's demographic getting older and moving past edgy dudes - it was probably more that "dark and edgy" was the spirit of the 2000s when most of these contests took place, while now that isn't so much the case.

Even outside of video games, the 2000s featured a lot of "dark and edgy" superhero movies like Blade, Hulk, Daredevil, and The Dark Knight Trilogy. Nowadays every superhero movie that tries to be like that is destroyed by critics and seen as a mockery.

Aside from that, I did some research and there's an awful lot of speculation that Cloud in Kingdom Hearts 1 is meant to be a stand-in for Vincent Valentine, who might not have fit the tone of the game. That makes sense, since Vincent was being pushed pretty heavily by Square at the time, thus explaining why he's so much weaker now...but Square was giving Vincent all that publicity because "dark and edgy" was the in-thing at the time. Might also explain why characters like Squall, Auron, Dante, and Charizard are so much weaker now.

As an aside, part of me feels like Samus was so prone to SFF in earlier contests because she got a lot of contest strength from simply being recognizable to the vast majority of this site's demographic. Nowadays though a lot of her strength is legit.
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