LogFAQs > #918544704

Match 111: Sephiroth vs. Amaterasu

Sephiroth 19901
Amaterasu 12525

I believe it was sometime during Round 4 that the "lineal Noble Nine" concept was introduced, and I bring it up again because at the time, people were still expecting the Noble Nine to largely hold serve and possibly restore the Lineal Nine to something closely resembling the actual Nine, with probably seven and as many as 8 of them in there--with the one guaranteed outlier, there in place of Sonic, being Amaterasu, courtesy of her Round 1 blowout of defending champion Draven combined with Sephiroth having managed not to lose his spot in 2013 despite finishing in third place in his eventual defeat--largely because said defeat came in the semifinals and as such, everyone else involved in the match had already gotten past an actual Noble Niner that still possessed a spot in the Lineal Nine at the time. (In Mewtwo's case, the aforementioned Sonic.) Of course, things didn't go that smoothly--Zelda ran over almost everyone, taking Snake's spot (which he was unable to win back); Tifa defended the spot she won from Mewtwo by defeating Sephiroth; and Mega Man won the rematch with Pikachu so it was his spot, not Pikachu's, that Crono took in Match 143. (Yeah, 2013 did a lot of weird things to the Lineal Nine--the lowest finisher is the one that loses their spot, so three characters outright earned their spots in second place finishes because they were the only ones entering the match without a slot and a fourth actually defended their slot with a second place finish because the third-place finisher also had one to give up to the winner.) When this was stated, someone said they were fine with the idea of it being Eight Noble Niners and Amaterasu. Slaying Draven certainly gained her a lot of good will here, but I feel like she's been a favorite here for awhile. The public perception of Board 8 is that we're a bunch of sticks-in-the-mud who hate anything upsetting our established order of expectations, but the truth is that we hate it just as much when things are too predictable, finding it boring. The nuance that the outsiders that invaded us in 2013 and 2015 didn't understand is that the upset has to make sense. Draven and Undertale putting up 201st-decade numbers in the 202nd decade and generally making a mockery of the elites didn't make sense; it was a clear aberration, and furthermore, because it eventually polarized things to "pro-X vs. anti-X" instead of "pro-X vs. pro-Y", it meant that entrants of vastly different natural strengths could get comparable numbers on the eventual champs, leading to the proven fodder Jak and a game whose ending was so ill-received that the creator's eventually released a "fixed" ending as DLC winding up near the top of the X-Stats. Amaterasu pulled "upsets" because we just vastly underestimated her. In her very first match, she was up against a proven midcarder, an unproven (Round 1 loss to Link in his only previous appearance) but recognizable character, and a potential target for a joke rally; as a new character without the benefit of joke appeal, people weren't expecting her to advance. She did, then advanced again when a more hyped newcomer flamed out massively. Actually, nothing she's done since then can reasonably qualify as an "upset" except maybe beating Shadow in 2010--she's made it to Round 2 in every contest, sure, but she's gotten favorable draws every time. We've learned to stop underestimating her.
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Also known as Cyberchao X.