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It was always clear that Remilia had performed admirably in this match, but knowing now just how overpowered Samus turned out to be in this contest, what Remilia managed to do was nothing short of incredible. Remilia proved able to fully keep up with Samus well into vote counts in the 130s, and even after 185 votes, Samus only lead 52% - 48%. And the eventual 46-54 loss was still significantly better than any other girl managed to do against Samus. Whether or not Remilia truly was the second strongest girl of this tournament is still up for debate in my opinion (for starters, the match vote counts just kept increasing, and Samus kept powering up), but nothing should take away from Remilia’s fantastic showing.
For her part, Samus had with this match not only shown that she could still thrive in a contest with dramatically boosted vote counts, but she had even broken Patchouli’s record for most individual votes received in a single match, despite facing a much stronger opponent. And if Samus could beat the Scarlet Devil herself by 20 votes, it was suddenly hard to imagine an underling like Pache managing to overcome the Metroid heroine. Of course, there was still at least one Touhou girl who could reasonably be expected to be not only stronger than Remilia, but stronger than Samus as well…
In that sense, Samus’s somewhat narrow win over Remilia was the best possible result for this tournament as a whole – a Remilia win would have set the stage for Total Touhou Tyranny and endless butthurt, while a Samus blowout would pretty much have killed the entire tournament. But Samus “only” scoring 54% on Remilia? All the way up to Reimu’s long-awaited clash with Samus, there was actually a very good case to be made that the shrine maiden, being the main character of the Touhou series, was not only stronger than Remilia, but so much stronger than her that Samus was looking like something of an underdog. I’ve made the Reimu-Remilia, Cloud-Sephiroth comparison before, but I still think it seemed like a very reasonable one to make when looking at just how much stronger a main character is than the second most popular character/single most popular villain. And in the GameFAQs Character Battles, I’ve seen someone like Solid Snake go from defeating Sephiroth 53-47 to losing 48-52 to Cloud. Again, Samus only got 54% against Remilia…
Now of course we know better, but right after this match had taken place Samus was still looking borderline beatable, entirely due to Remilia’s Herculean efforts. The fact that a girl who already boasted immense natural strength had needed to go absolutely all out just to barely bring Samus below 55% wasn’t fully comprehended at the time, but with the benefit of hindsight, we can now fully appreciate what Remilia managed to accomplish – actually making a Samus match competitive and exciting! Hell, this particular match even produced some original memes created specifically for this moment, making the “true final” of the tournament feel all the more special.
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@Griffith Samus fans actually gradually became better about supporting their girl as the tournament progressed, which is part of why Reimu ended up being stomped so badly.
But during Samus's match with Remilia, Team Vampire Loli was definitely way louder and more active.
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@ChristiJunior @Griffith
Samus has the distinct advantage of being inoffensive, from a venerable, established franchise as a tall blonde sex goddess with both elite tits and an elite ass. Even if she's not everyone's favorite, everyone respects her.
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@ChristiJunior For our part, it was unrealistic to believe Samus would lose on racist fedi. On the other hand, we had the loli demographic, and Remilia has some real memetic power of her own. No one really defended Samus except the anti-Touhou voters, but a blonde Aryan goddess with a last name like “Aran” is too much to overwhelm. Normalfags don’t look at the thread anyway 🤷♂️
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@ArdainianRight @Griffith Yeah, and Metroid is still niche enough, or at least hardcore enough of a series to avoid anti-Normie voting of the kind that felled Tifa. Then again, Tifa's rivalry with another popular FF7 girl might also have hurt her (my favoring Aerith was certainly one reason I voted Shanoa). If high-profile rivalries are a big source of anti-voting, someone like Asuka might be screwed in the Anime Girl Tournament. Hell, even Megumin could be hurt by something like that.
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ROUND 2, MATCH 3:
5th Seed Reimu Hakurei (Touhou) VS 21st Seed Tamamo (Monster Girl Quest)
Reimu: 83 votes
Tamamo: 50 votes
With Remilia actually managing to make Samus look somewhat beatable, the Reimu > Samus upset train was back on track – provided that Reimu actually managed a good round 2 showing. And this time the Touhou heroine was up against someone FAR more dangerous than round 1’s Cerberus. Monster Girl Quest Tamamo had displayed great natural strength in the Qualifier Poll, and then proved to have lots of devoted, passionate fans, capable of overcoming even Shantae and accumulating a whopping 109 votes, shattering all previous tournament vote total records in the process. Of course, MGQ Tamamo’s own records had also been beaten soon enough, and the Fox still found herself the underdog going up against a contest favorite like Reimu, but a somewhat close, respectable loss (45-55 at worst) still appeared a likely outcome, with there even being some hope of Tamamo channeling her Shantae-slaying powers to topple the Touhou.
Lolno. Reimu immediately took the lead, and while Tamamo kept things reasonably close at first, Reimu always remained in firm control. After 32 votes, Reimu lead 56% - 44%, but such a lead didn’t satisfy the Mad Miko, who decided to go full Total Youkai Death on the foxy Monster Lord. Reimu began utterly steamrolling Tamamo, pushing her percentages far, FAR down, to the point of approaching, and then exceeding a Doubling, while also flooding the match thread with pics and memes. After 70 votes the score was 66% - 34% in Reimu’s favor, and after 89 votes Reimu had reached a very Nice 69%. Even THAT wasn’t enough for a girl on a mission to put the fear of God in Samus herself, and after 100 votes Reimu had broken 70%. At this point Reimu was actually beating Tamamo even worse than she had beaten the much weaker Cerberus, and was looking like a completely different beast from her round 1 incarnation.
Eventually, long after the match was already over, Tamamo finally did wake up, and actually did manage to inflict a pretty bad percentage bleed on Reimu, bringing her all the way down to 62%. The shrine maiden is apparently quite the lazy girl, so her taking it somewhat easy after securing her Statement win is if anything in-character, and certainly didn’t seriously undermine what she had accomplished – absolutely CRUSHING a legitimately strong opponent, and making her look like pure fodder who had no business even being in this tournament, rather than someone who was arguably the Star of round 1. THIS is how a potential champion is supposed to look, and it reminded us of why expectations for Reimu were so high in the first place, to the point where pulling off the second biggest win of round 1 had looked somewhat underwhelming.
Reimu had by now clearly powered up, and was looking like more than a match for Samus. The one somewhat alarming piece of data was the low vote totals (especially compared to Samus VS Remilia), but that could be explained away by Reimu absolutely killing the match as quickly as she had. The Samus VS Reimu hype was real, and Reimu hadn’t even delivered her most impressive tournament performance yet – which would of course make her actual performance in the semifinals all the more shocking. But we’ll get to that in due time – and after this match at least, Reimu stonks were on the rise, which the poverty-stricken shrine maiden surely appreciated. Tamamo meanwhile would be better off forgetting round 2 entirely, and instead savoring her legendary match with Shantae, which is what will always define her tournament run anyway. And let’s not forget that another Tamamo was not only still in the contest, but was due to bring great glory to all Tamamos everywhere.
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ROUND 2, MATCH 2:
8th Seed Momiji Inubashiri (Touhou) VS 9th Seed Fio Germi (Metal Slug)
Momiji: 121 votes
Fio Germi: 109 votes
Momiji and Fate Tamamo both got to keep their meme pictures from round 1 throughout their entire tournament runs, due to those pictures just being so iconic and Powerful that using anything else to represent them in the polls would effectively be a nerf to their contest viability. And Momiji certainly had her work cut out for her in round 2, going up against the Metal Slug girl who easily defeated the other Touhou wolf girl of the tournament. However, while Kagerou is technically the more notable character in terms of game appearances, Momiji is such a beloved fan favorite that she proved to be in a whole different league.
The match started off neck-and-neck, and it stayed like that for a good while, with the score after 16 votes being 50-50. Momiji was however forcing Fio on the defensive, repeatedly trying to break away while the Italian girl had to fight desperately just to keep the match tied. At 28 votes, it was again 50-50, but it was only a matter of time before the wolf would strike, and eventually Momiji DID successfully take a clear lead and run with it, building a 7-vote surplus with no response from Fio whatsoever. The Italian girl did eventually wake up, but the damage was done and Team Awoo was firmly in the driver’s seat, even extending the lead further after fending off a Fio comeback attempt. And the lead just kept growing, with Fio being made to pay for what she did to Kagerou, and Momiji going up a stunning 60% to 40% after 67 votes.
After that, Fio’s wolf-hunting skills did however come into play, and she starting clawing herself back into the match, going on a ferocious push that brought the wolf down to 54%, then 53%, (only 5 votes now separating them), then she was suddenly only 2 votes behind, and then the match was 50-50 after 94 votes, before Fio took the lead! However, that was a far as Fio’s momentum was able to take her, as Momiji had a 51-49 lead at the 100 vote mark. Fio wasn’t completely out of ammo yet though, as she quickly erased that slim lead, tying the match up and then taking a 2 vote-lead herself, but she wasn’t able to hold that lead for long either, and after this final Italian offensive, Momiji’s popularity and her extremely enthusiastic fanbase really started making itself felt – the Awoo went on the offensive again, and rather quickly built up a 5-vote lead, which she slowly and methodically increased, until it had become outright insurmountable. Moreover, after a valiant effort by Fio fans, the fluffy tail frens were eventually dominating the match thread as well, and in the end Fio just wasn’t able to overcome Momiji’s meme magic, losing by 12 votes.
That said, this was still a good, close match, so close in fact that I can’t help but wonder if Fio would have won if the two had faced off in round 1 – the way she dispatched Kagerou was VERY impressive, and if the Italian could have gotten the chance to take on Momiji before the two Tamamos had fully mobilized the fluffy tail fanatics, and before Patchouli the master sorceress got the chance to give all the remaining Touhou girls stat buffs, she might just have had enough natural strength to get the job done. In the end though, both these girls were quite formidable, and while Fio lost, she went down guns blazing.
As for Momiji, she would be looking to avenge another Touhou girl in the quarterfinals, namely Remilia, but while Fio Germi had been a challenge, her next opponent Samus was seeming more like mission impossible, with the bounty hunter looking to truly get underway with her Touhou Shoah. Momiji would probably have to power up massively in order to even stand a chance against the Genocidal Aryan.
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Christi Junior
Ardainian Hebrew Israelite
Griffith
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