Christi Junior on Nostr: #BestVidyaGirlContest 2024 Post-Tournament Analysis (Touhou Mini-Qualifier Polls) The ...
#BestVidyaGirlContest 2024 Post-Tournament Analysis (Touhou Mini-Qualifier Polls)
The actual 10-way poll ended up being one hell of a ride, and this hyper-competitive match really showed just how deep the Touhou bench is: apart from Tewi and Youmu, all the remaining 8 girls were at one point or another a serious contender to qualify. While Marisa dominated early on, and Cirno eventually established herself as a clear Top 2 girl, the battle for 3rd place was absolutely fierce. Remilia, who I had expected to challenge Marisa for 1st place, was struggling way more than expected, with her younger sister Flandre outperforming her for quite a while. And even after Flandre had been overtaken, Remilia found herself on the losing end of a real dogfight with Momiji, the focused support of the Fluffy Tail Frens being a great difference-maker. Meanwhile, Touhou’s actual protagonist character, Reimu, was for a long time badly trailing the series’ most popular girls, finding herself on the lower half of the rankings.
Eventually things shifted significantly, with a strong and sustained Remilia push eventually enabling the vampire to decisively defeat the wolf girl and seriously begin threatening Marisa (who had been slipping lately) and Cirno. Marisa fans fought back, but in the midst of the Remilia VS Marisa catfight, Cirno quietly took the #1 spot and then began extending her lead. And while all of that was happening, Reimu suddenly caught fire and started rapidly gaining ground on the top 3 girls. While Cirno had secured a pretty solid lead at this point, both 2nd and 3rd place were now up for grabs – but that still couldn’t prepare anyone for the final result: by the time the poll had closed and the last update had been registered, Marisa, Remilia and Reimu had all received an IDENTICAL amount of votes! So while Cirno could celebrate her somewhat surprising victory, the 3 other girls would have to fight it out for the 2 remaining tickets to the main tournament.
Last year saw our first 1-hour tiebreaker poll between Shanoa and Alice, but this time we got our first *3-way* tiebreaker poll. This one was considerably less exciting that the earlier 10-way brawl however: Marisa quickly took a dominant lead, Remilia established herself as a clear number 2, while Reimu was a distant third. As the match was drawing to a close, the scores did start tightening considerably, and Reimu received another late surge of votes, but the order never really changed: Marisa – Remilia – Reimu, which meant that Marisa and Remilia had qualified for the best vidya girl tournament, while Reimu had been eliminated. And considering that Reimu turned out to have been pretty heavily alt-voted during both her matches, I’d say it was definitely the right 3 girls who qualified – though it’s quite notable that Remilia actually ended up being the only Touhou girl from the 2023 field to return this year. The bullet hell franchise was definitely looking poised for another dominant run at this point – last year Remilia had been second only to Samus in terms of contest strength, and yet Cirno and Marisa seemed to be even more popular!
The actual 10-way poll ended up being one hell of a ride, and this hyper-competitive match really showed just how deep the Touhou bench is: apart from Tewi and Youmu, all the remaining 8 girls were at one point or another a serious contender to qualify. While Marisa dominated early on, and Cirno eventually established herself as a clear Top 2 girl, the battle for 3rd place was absolutely fierce. Remilia, who I had expected to challenge Marisa for 1st place, was struggling way more than expected, with her younger sister Flandre outperforming her for quite a while. And even after Flandre had been overtaken, Remilia found herself on the losing end of a real dogfight with Momiji, the focused support of the Fluffy Tail Frens being a great difference-maker. Meanwhile, Touhou’s actual protagonist character, Reimu, was for a long time badly trailing the series’ most popular girls, finding herself on the lower half of the rankings.
Eventually things shifted significantly, with a strong and sustained Remilia push eventually enabling the vampire to decisively defeat the wolf girl and seriously begin threatening Marisa (who had been slipping lately) and Cirno. Marisa fans fought back, but in the midst of the Remilia VS Marisa catfight, Cirno quietly took the #1 spot and then began extending her lead. And while all of that was happening, Reimu suddenly caught fire and started rapidly gaining ground on the top 3 girls. While Cirno had secured a pretty solid lead at this point, both 2nd and 3rd place were now up for grabs – but that still couldn’t prepare anyone for the final result: by the time the poll had closed and the last update had been registered, Marisa, Remilia and Reimu had all received an IDENTICAL amount of votes! So while Cirno could celebrate her somewhat surprising victory, the 3 other girls would have to fight it out for the 2 remaining tickets to the main tournament.
Last year saw our first 1-hour tiebreaker poll between Shanoa and Alice, but this time we got our first *3-way* tiebreaker poll. This one was considerably less exciting that the earlier 10-way brawl however: Marisa quickly took a dominant lead, Remilia established herself as a clear number 2, while Reimu was a distant third. As the match was drawing to a close, the scores did start tightening considerably, and Reimu received another late surge of votes, but the order never really changed: Marisa – Remilia – Reimu, which meant that Marisa and Remilia had qualified for the best vidya girl tournament, while Reimu had been eliminated. And considering that Reimu turned out to have been pretty heavily alt-voted during both her matches, I’d say it was definitely the right 3 girls who qualified – though it’s quite notable that Remilia actually ended up being the only Touhou girl from the 2023 field to return this year. The bullet hell franchise was definitely looking poised for another dominant run at this point – last year Remilia had been second only to Samus in terms of contest strength, and yet Cirno and Marisa seemed to be even more popular!