#BestVidyaGirlContest Post-Tournament Analysis (Semifinal Matches)

1ST SEMIFINAL MATCH:

1st Seed Samus Aran (Metroid) VS 5th Seed Reimu Hakurei (Touhou)

Samus: 194 votes
Reimu: 143 votes

Ever since the final 32 girls of this tournament had been revealed, Reimu was the one gal who seemed to stand a real chance of taking down Samus. Given the strength of Touhou, and Reimu’s status as the Touhou protagonist, Reimu was not only set to be a contest titan, but would genuinely have been a legitimate pick for the title of Best Vidya Girl – she has been in tons of games (hell, even on the Switch I think she boasts more game appearances than Samus does, and that’s counting the NSO Metroid games), she’s been around since 1996, and from what I can tell she boasts more Gelbooru art than ANY OTHER CHARACTER IN EXISTENCE! Seriously, Reimu alone has more art than ALL of Naruto, My Hero Academia, or Evangelion. There’s more art of Reimu than there’s art of DBZ, Bleach and Attack on Titan COMBINED. Even as strictly a video game girl, all of Reimu’s game appearances, and her surprisingly robust Nintendo representation, means she’d be more than deserving of a character slot in the next Smash Bros.

And while Samus clearly boasted fearsome strength, Remilia had shown that the Metroid heroine could conceivably be beaten – and Reimu is not only a more important Touhou girl than Remilia, she comfortably beats the vampire in the official Touhou popularity polls:

https://maribelhearn.com/thvote

Additionally, Reimu had proven that she also boasted enormous strength on Fedi, scoring 3 straight blowout wins en route to her semifinal showdown with Samus. After a perfect build-up, everything was set for an incredible battle between two girls that both looked borderline unbeatable.

But when the actual match began, things quickly took a bizarre turn – for starters, the match was surprisingly slow, but that at least could be partially explained by only one girl showing up – because Samus ended up getting 16 out of the first 17 votes, breaking 90% on Reimu for the most lopsided match opening in tournament history! Samus being the girl that would dish out such a ridiculous beatdown was hardly surprising, but REIMU of all people being on the receiving end was beyond surreal. And on top of this Samus was actually kinda dominating the match thread early on, in stark contrast to her showing against Remilia. And unlike Remilia and to a lesser extent Momiji, Reimu was barely even attempting a comeback. Around the 20-votes mark she had stopped the worst bleeding, but after 33 votes Samus still led by 17, and the best Reimu could do was reduce that lead to 13, before Samus again started completely steamrolling the Miko. Even the powers of God and Anime couldn’t seem to save Reimu.

After 100 votes, Samus lead 65 - 35. Soon after Reimu pulled off her best comeback attempt of the match, bringing the Samus lead down to “only” 19 votes (still a bigger lead than 2B ever enjoyed against Tamamo). Samus fought back, with Reimu somewhat resisting the first counteroffensive, but then all hell against broke loose: Samus reached a 28 vote lead after 166 votes, and just kept steamrolling Reimu, her lead soon breaking 40 votes and peaking at a 46 vote lead, before stabilizing at 40-45. Keep in mind, the reason the match was stabilizing at this point was that Reimu fans were now finally showing up in force and dominating the match thread – which just proves again that even the most Elite girls need to fight as hard as they can just to temporarily keep up with Samus. Actually overpowering Samus in a 24 hour match? I dunno, the vidya girl in question would probably have to become real and bribe Fediverse users with sex for votes, or targeted assassinations of GloboHomo leaders for votes (depending on the instance userbase).