LogFAQs > #916926912

Oh, wow, someone else bumped it.

Match 105: Squall Leonhart vs. Zelda

Squall 11385
Zelda 19656

Well. This is certainly a thing that happened. And it was terrifying. Squall has been in every contest, and he's consistently been one of the top midcarders, though it took until CBII for this to really be noticed due to some horrendous seeding in 2002 that saw Squall fed to a Noble Niner in Round 1, and a Noble Niner that was actually seeded properly (which not all of them were).

How bad? More than once this contest, Ulti pointed out that 15-2 upsets had been all but unheard of until this contest. Now imagine (2)Crash Bandicoot vs (15)Squall Leonhart. That is a match that could have happened in 2002. It didn't; Crash was given an opponent who actually belonged on the 15-seed line (if we're being generous) and Squall was fed to Snake. But it could have.

Now, Zelda hasn't been there for every contest, because for some reason it took until CBII for any Nintendo franchise to have multiple representatives in the contest unless you consider Mario and Donkey Kong to technically be the same franchise due to their shared origins. But she's been in every contest since then, and it's usually taken a Noble Niner to defeat her (though she did come in second in a fourway to Vincent in a "clean" match, one round before Link showed up and absolutely annihilated her). All things considered, this result might've been far more expected if not for a handful of votes.

Stop and think about it for a moment.

Yeah, that's right. Zelda lost to Charizard by all of 15 votes in 2013. And it was widely expected that Charizard would be able to take advantage of Zero's demonstrated ability to not get SFFed into oblivion by Mega Man (see: Weighted Companion Cube, 2008) to win Division 9. Charizard was considered a disappointment in part for failing to do this, by the only slightly less narrow margin of 23 votes, but also for nearly getting "upset" the round before by Zelda. Now, remember also that Pokmon had a representative in almost every match near the end of that contest. Divisions 2, 5, 6, and 8 had all been won by Pokmon entrants, which meant all three Contest Semifinals would also contain one. There was serious Pokfatigue. Is it unreasonable to think that, had Zelda managed to muster up those 16 extra votes needed to beat Charizard, she could've done what he couldn't and beaten Mega Man? And then of course she easily outpaces Red in the contest semis to get to the 4th place match and, just as Mega did, has no trouble handling the LFF-afflicted Mewtwo and Pikachu to win that match.

But back to the match at hand. Nintendo had clearly boosted, and Zelda especially seemed strong, so most Oracles, at least, saw this coming, selecting Zelda at a bit over a 5 to 1 ratio. (Gurus, not so much. 93-65 in favor of Squall.) But the magnitude? Not even close. Zelda won with 63.32%, 3.31% above the highest-scoring Oracle prediction...which was itself 2.75% above the #2 Oracle prediction. This was just a gobsmacking.

And of course, everyone was quick to dump on Squall, because taking this at face value would mean Zelda was at Noble Nine level, and that just couldn't make sense. After all, it's called "Noble Nine level" for a reason, and that's because they're the only nine that can ever reach it naturally. L-Block and Draven got there with rally power, sure, but when a Noble Niner loses a legitimate match? Only happens because of the Noble Niner's decline. Not because the other character has strengthened to their level. That just can't happen.
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Also known as Cyberchao X.