LogFAQs > #915783047

Match 96: KOS-MOS vs. Aqua

KOS-MOS 16438
Aqua 12209

Ulti's got the, erm, "stupidity" surrounding this match covered, so I'm going to avoid talking about ranting users and stick to the characters in the match. Here, have a quote from KOS-MOS's Contest History page.

What in the world happened to KOS-MOS? After two years in which KOS-MOS was a middle of the pack character, she went out against Luigi in a match that she had a decent chance to win and completely bombed.

After Xenosaga 2, no less. KOS-MOS's disappointment paired with Albedo turning out to be cannon fodder in Spring 2005 confirms what many already believe, which is that the popularity of Xenosaga is likely gone for good. Either that or Luigi boosted beyond belief.

That's from her 2005 contest run, one and done. Luigi would end up losing the very next round to Tifa, and normally a character putting up 66% in a match that was supposed to be debatable would lead to massive overestimations but Tifa's Round 1 performance literally saw her get a better percentage on Vyse than Cloud did in an earlier contest so Luigi was still the underdog. I bring this up because her two "middle of the pack" runs only granted her one win. She's since made it to Round 2 via the awfulness of the female bracket and via Blizzard SFF allowing her to easily come out in second place in a match with a clear winner and three characters of similar strength fighting for second place, but this is her first trip to Round 3. Even though her games proper are over a decade in the past, and she only maintains any relevance via a consistent string of guest appearances. (Play Super Robot Wars OG Saga: Endless Frontier.) This, however, probably is one of the reasons that this site gets ridiculed. There's a perception that we're stuck in the past and that characters/games are worthless until they can be viewed through nostalgia goggles. Sure enough, KOS-MOS finally breaks through to Round 3 only when placed in a fourpack with three characters from the 2010s.

Of course, it should be noted that this was only the second contest where that was possible, because nominations for Character Battle VIII were in December 2009. Compare this to the six contests in as many years that she was in after her game came out (yeah, she's still too young to have been in CBI).

What is the current policy on vote-ins, by the way? I know that at the time, Ulti said he was in favor of considering the 2010 vote-ins part of the contest because it kept alive CATS' streak of making every contest (which was undeniably broken here), but in this year's topic when he mentioned how wide a range of seeds Lara Croft has had, I brought up the stat about both she and Pac-Man falling in the vote-ins that year after being 1-seeds in 2002 and he said that no one cares about vote-ins. I bring it up because if they do count, KOS-MOS is on the list of characters to debut post-CBI that have been in every contest since their debut game came out.

KOS-MOS was actually one of three characters that made the vote-ins but not the main bracket in 2010 that reached Round 3 this year, along with Wario and Bayonetta. We were guaranteed at least one before Round 2 even started because of Bayonetta's 2nd-round opponent also qualifying. The rest of the vote-in field did fairly decently, too. I'll put them all together, even the ones I already mentioned.
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Also known as Cyberchao X.