Tanita Cup 2024

[Porcupine]

https://www.tanita.co.jp/page/esports/

The second part of Tanita Cup now occurs a week later with an event where you can compete online or in real life (if you are a little kid you can only compete online).

Preliminary Round was last week and Final Round is coming up this Friday (3/30 Saturday at 12:00 noon in Japan). The schedule is longer this year, which caused a few top participants from last year to drop. The overall number of players increased slightly. It's the biggest VO tournament.

Due to the new time, westerners didn't enter. It's allowed to participate in multiple VO games this year so even though I haven't been playing, I entered VOOT and died right away, to the top Grys-Vok who finished second last year. There were several strong Fei-Yen Kn but the legends are gone these days. The best Fei-Yen Kn did great last year; almost all are dead this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfwGLNBb4pk&t=6882 (Preliminary Round)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJhK0ciL6mY (Final Round, upcoming)

https://challonge.com/tc24omg (VOOM bracket)
https://challonge.com/tc24ot (VOOT bracket)

Our small overseas group did well in VOOM. Final Round is Top 16 this year instead of Top 8. Fei-Yen has been traditionally considered bad in VOOM, like 10/80 SP in terms of performance limitations, until Izuko miraculously got Tanita 3rd place last year. I managed to get a second Fei-Yen into this year's finals, so casual observers were saying VOOM seems well balanced.

[Porcupine]

"A clash of titans! Japan's izuko and Hawaii's Porcupine! Two Fei-Yen masters are about to engage in a legendary face-off!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJhK0ciL6mY&t=9735 (Japan vs Hawaii)


This year's tournament featured an abnormal amount of mirror matches. While this ended up fine for entertainment purposes, it was disappointing from a perspective of seeing how specific VRs do against each other. The grand final was 2 Belgdors on Green Hills, won by ifield. He's been staying around us since the Xbox 360 days. It's nice to see him rewarded for his effort and hospitality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJhK0ciL6mY&t=13507 (Kanto vs Kansai)


I think this result shows that all Belgdors continue to improve overall. There are additional powerful Belgdors who reinforce his ranks. Belgdor has been strong for over a decade now. In the old days, Belgdor and Fei-Yen were the two worst VR. Belgdor is one of the few VR that Fei-Yen has usually been kind of good against.

Ironically, Belgdor dominated a tournament roster that worried him. There had never been 2 Fei-Yens before, but the bracket made them catfight, then whoever won had a supposedly unwinnable matchup against whichever strongest Apharmd came out of his own mirror match. There were discussions prior to the Tanita finals to predict the outcome of the bracket.

As I have relatively less experience, my Fei-Yen isn't that much worse against Apharmd. If I could have won that match, I might have had a chance to win the whole thing. I did well enough anyway. A foreigner has never contended to win a full VO Japanese tournament before, and this had the Tanita president, Juro Watari, and a live audience in attendance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJhK0ciL6mY&t=18447


This year's VOOT had only 8 VR among the 16 finalists: 3 Raiden, 3 Temjin, 3 Apharmd Battler, 2 Grys-Vok, 2 Angelan (who is popular on Masterpiece), 1 Cypher, 1 Bal-Bados, and 1 Fei-Yen Kn. This was the opposite of VOOM, which despite being very unbalanced had every VR with an almost perfectly even distribution.

Since a lot of people use Temjin (he's my main in VOOM) here's his mirror to show what high-level Temjin play currently looks like. It was a close battle and won at the very end with an instant RTCW that came out with the zero-frame glitch after a dash attack, which in this extremely rare situation was actually needed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJhK0ciL6mY&t=22348 (Mommy, help me!)


The VOOT grand final was 2 Raidens, won by inaposo. Last year's champion Soyoka (Cypher) was destroyed this year by menchi (Raiden) via double perfect KO in under 10 seconds each round, hence the announcer's quote above.



This is spfOIRS, he is on weekdays in Ranked at different times than other people, so I play with him and other top Angelans for a significant fraction of the few matches I play these days.



Thanks to wangren, whom I played against in Akihabara in 2018, we get to see Fei-Yen Kn's finals picture! He fought a valiant battle against the same Grys-Vok that killed me. I hope to return to VOOT someday and support Fei-Yen Kn.

[MentholMoose]

Thanks for sharing!