QUARTERFINAL MATCH 2 PRE-GAME ANALYSIS

13th Seed Shanoa (Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia) VS 5th Seed Reimu Hakurei (Touhou)

Barring a Biden-esque Momiji comeback, Samus looks set to reach the semifinals with ease, where everybody expects her to face the main Touhou heroine. However, Reimu’s opponent has already taken out a top seed in the form of Alice, and in both her 24 hour matches so far the Castlevania girl scored over 100 votes. Meanwhile, while Reimu easily won her first two matches, she has yet to reach that 100-votes milestone. Additonally, Shanoa is perhaps the single best story of this tournament, a true underdog who made contest history and reached the quarterfinals after unparalleled drama.

That said, Reimu has already faced one girl hot on the heels off a hyper-dramatic match with huge vote totals in the form of Monster Girl Quest Tamamo, and Reimu effortlessly defeated her. Apparently one of Reimu’s defining traits in Touhou canon is her laziness, and Contest Reimu has fully reflected that so far, underperforming against a non-threat like Cerberus, before absolutely overwhelming the much more dangerous Tamamo until the battle was decided, at which point Reimu started slacking off again and bleeding percents. Reimu’s lack of interest in stat padding would naturally lead to margins of victory that make her seem like less of a beast than she truly is, and if her opening against Tamamo is any indication, Shanoa will need to go all out merely to avoid the match being put out of reach within 20-30 minutes. Of course, if she DOES somehow manage to keep this match close, it will be impossible to count out Shanoa, given how winning nail-biter matches has become her specialty. 

For Reimu there is another dimension to this match, namely how she’s going to stack up against Samus. A big win against Shanoa would definitely make a Samus – Reimu match look wide open, while a narrow victory would establish Samus as the obvious favorite, barring a massive collapse in her own match with Momiji. As for Shanoa…look, you might argue that someone who has already beaten Tifa is also capable of beating Samus, but it’s very clear that on Fedi at least, Samus is in a completely different league than the Final Fantasy VII girl. If anyone is going to stop Samus from reaching the finals, it's going to be Reimu.

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