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| - Pikachu got put in a pretty rough position this contest - dealing with fanbase leeching not only once, but twice in the span of his first two matches. This match would pit him against an SSB vet as old as he, and while there was no (real) chatter that he could drop the actual match to him, there was the idea that he would be hurt significantly more than Ike, who would obviously have much less overlap due to a non-trivial portion of his strength actually coming from, y'know, his games. Alucard had his own problems, however, as people were doubting if he'd be able to beat Arthas, who had a pretty good showing last round. Couple that with the chatter that his power stemmed more from WC III than WotLK and that he had his WC III picture this round, and you had some variation there, too.
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| abstract
| - Pikachu got put in a pretty rough position this contest - dealing with fanbase leeching not only once, but twice in the span of his first two matches. This match would pit him against an SSB vet as old as he, and while there was no (real) chatter that he could drop the actual match to him, there was the idea that he would be hurt significantly more than Ike, who would obviously have much less overlap due to a non-trivial portion of his strength actually coming from, y'know, his games. Alucard had his own problems, however, as people were doubting if he'd be able to beat Arthas, who had a pretty good showing last round. Couple that with the chatter that his power stemmed more from WC III than WotLK and that he had his WC III picture this round, and you had some variation there, too. In the end, the expected would happen, but in the kind of dramatic fashion that we all love it to unfold in. Pikachu ripped it up with his disgusting board vote at the beginning, while Alucard showed Arthas had no chance of taking him down - heck, Arthas was losing to Captain Falcon. While he would recover, this would end up being a pretty bad showing for him, and pretty impressive for the Captain considering what he was dealing with and that he had somehow lost to WARIO last year. As for the main event, Alucard's killer night vote took hold - and man, this time it was a doozy. In the span of an hour the nightwalker surged a comeback, snagged the lead, and built himself a healthy margin before morning came. Then, as if gaining one of his anime hax second winds, Pikachu ripped open an improbably large comeback of his own, nearly erasing Alucard's margin entirely. So what does Alucard do? Why, build up a lead even bigger than his night vote peak with the during school vote just to spite the rat, giving the slightest glimmer of hope before the ASV - all before the inevitable happened and he got slapped en route to a close victory for Pika. Honestly, we all knew what we were in for as soon as the match started, pretty much, but the way it unfolded was something that's always good to see in these contests. Knowing the trends can diminish the surprise, but there's something about multiple lead changes and comebacks during a match that just makes me smile, and when trends are defied (as we would see in later matches), it makes it just that much more shocking. As for final impressions, Alucard showed he wasn't completely off the map - but losing to Pikachu despite the rat's split fanbase and looking like he would have lost to Captain Falcon straight up isn't the most reassuring of things. Arthas showed he was an okay low midcarder, probably around current Diablo strength, but not much more - at least for now. Falcon was just "whoa", and Pikachu managed to simultaneously impressive and disappointing at the same time. On the one hand, he did make it to Round 3, this time as the victim rather than the beneficiary of SFF in both matches. On the other hand, he got less than 55% on Ike and let Captain Falcon make him lose to a guy who has become all but irrelevant in this day and age. At any rate, he had no shot against Block next round - though that didn't stop a lot of the crazies from arguing it anyway.
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