| abstract
| - This had been one of the more anticipated showdowns... of last year. Dante was the upper midcarder who had never come through when it counted, while Leon was the upstart upper midcarder who had never been given a chance against a character not named Gordon Freeman. But with his great performances against (pre-suck) Mega Man and Bowser, could Leon really give Dante a run? The answer turned out to be no, but that was sort of lost in the whole "Pikachu killing them both" debacle. Now, with Riku here in pretty much the EXACT same setup, could the KH fan-fave ride a fanbase split to advancing? Of course, after last round, there was more talk of Leon keeping close to Dante rather than Riku giving him any kind of a run, some ramblings of certain stattrolls aside. Hogger was also briefly mentioned for, I dunno, *maybe* sniffing at third, but most wisely calculated a character that could barely keep pace ahead of Laharl wasn't going to be making any waves here. Well, the match started - and suddenly, it was like how last year was supposed to have panned out. Leon wasn't just doing better relative to Dante - he was within one vote of him at the freeze. Dante was able to pile all of eleven more votes on that margin after the next update, but Leon went and just took that back and then some in the next to give him a 14 vote LEAD. So, expecting Dante to fire back in the next update, we watch with bated breath... only to see Leon crush and surge to an 83 VOTE LEAD. All hell had broken loose on the board at this point, as this seemed to be Jill v Ocelot all over again, except instead of reversing a thin margin Leon looked on track to be turning around a legitimate BLOWOUT. But Dante held strong, and made a major cut of his own in the next update. From there it was a combination of Leon spikes and Dante whittling the lead down, and the ups and downs made it one of the more exciting Power Hours we've seen in these things. Of course, as those who have watched the Power Hours long enough have learned, a close Power Hour usually means a match that doesn't end up that way. And with Leon having the backing of Nintendoland, all of that fell apart once the night came. Dante was really able to put the thing out of reach with the night, and even though Leon recovered somewhat when the day hit... he's still an RE character, and even the most Nintendoey of RE characters are no match for an even semi-casual vote like Dante's. Still, it's important not to understate exactly how well Leon did in this year's showing against Dante, which also made Pikachu's showing against the two even more perplexing. Riku came to a far third in what was clearly his least impressive contest to date. I guess the most you can say about that is that he did what he did (despite?) looking absolutely bangable in the match picture. And by that I mean um ignore that last remark hey let's laugh at how bad Hogger bombed hahahaha oh what happened to you Ramza?
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