Reflection - Personal 2019 UNI Review

Hm... so.

Functionally, with the conclusion of what is most certainly the last local of the year, I feel like I can safely say that my 2019 UNI season has concluded. As I start writing this, I'm struck with the feeling that this has been a pretty long year. Often, when speaking about having a long year, I think that there's a negative connotation that follows, but when I stop and think about everything, quite a lot has happened!

I mentioned this in a tweet, before but all of the stuff there had all happened in the same year. I think that I should probably talk about my year as a player first though and contrast that with my goals from last year's review:

- Secure myself in Top-16s at majors. (2/6) [X] -

Frosty Faustings XI: 5th / 177

Michigan M@sters 2019: 13th / 124

KVOxKSB 2019: 25th / 95

Combo Breaker 2019: 25th / 427

Evolution 2019: 65th / 1024

Climax of Night [re:run]: 17th / 237

Well... I think that I fell short of this specific goal that I wanted to set. I think that the quality of play in North America and in myself has definitely risen drastically over the course of the year, but if I'm looking at this objectively, 33% is missing the mark. I'm not really too unhappy about missing this goal and I think that I want to attempt this goal again in 2020!

- Top 8 at a major. [O] -

Not much really to say about this one, I hit my first Top 8 at a major level with Frosty Faustings XI! I achieved this one pretty early in the year, so I was pretty excited about that. I also had a shot at doing it again at Climax of Night, so I'll change my goal for 2020 here to Top 8-ing two majors!

- Become the best player in the Midwest. [X] -

I'm proud to say that I'm not at the top because the Midwest is so strong, but it also tears me up inside that I didn't get this goal. With Magnets alone, I think I went 0-5 in sets this year, so that is something I wanna improve on next year. I won't list the order, but I would say that the players (to date) that I'll have to pass up in regards to placements if I do wanna become the best in the Midwest are: RoyalHeart, UNIST_Player, Magnets and Duesta.

This doesn't ignore my rivals from Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky. Ohio and other parts though. Once more, I'll be trying for this goal in 2020. I happened to notice that I didn't really win anything outside of Ohio as far as regional events, too. 2nd at Makai (in Ohio), two Boiler Rooms, and at Summer Games 2. Then, 13th at Michigan M@sters, and 5th at Frosty Faustings... I guess I should put in that I wanna win something outside of Ohio too then, huh?

I've generally done well on the East Coast, with 9th at Duel Moon and 5th at Red Bull Conquest Philly this year.

----

As a community member, I took a bit of a step back from doing community-run events by myself. What I did do though this year was:

- Helped seed numerous tournaments this year.
- Organized and ran UNI @ Makai 2019.
- Organized and ran the 2v2 side tournament at MiM@s 2019.
- Volunteered as a senior bracket runner @ CB 2019, assisted in running and organizing the 4v4 Teams Exhibition with UGS | Havard and Queen of Moths.
- Organized and ran random 2v2 teams reverse selection and run part of UNI Singles @ Lunar Phase 20: Bodega Special along with the Lunar Phase Production group.
- Organized and ran NA/EU vs JP Exhibitions at EVO 2019 with DJ Cream and Hagure.
- Performed in an advisory role for CoN [re:run] and ran the 4v4 Regional Team Exhibition alongside Team DATA's Kara.
- Ran UNI brackets, commentate and setup stream matches for RAJ 2019.
- Provided commentary at Columbus locals, Frosty Faustings (Top 16), LP20 (Top 8), AnimEVO (exhibitions).
- Wrote a combo document for Akatsuki players.
- The stuff in this aforementioned tweet.
- Streamed some primers and did pools analysis for UNI majors.
- Recorded casual sets and MMs for the folks back at home at various events on my YT channel.
- Wrote a few blog posts here and there (lol).

So... maybe I didn't take as much of a step back as I thought that I might have. It's interesting when you actually itemize all of this stuff, huh? Uh... I'll be planning to do some of these duties in 2020 but probably not all of them again.

----

As far as facing into 2020 with the end of UNIST and the incoming of UNICLR, I've been left with a few thoughts. I also wasn't able to hit the goal of becoming the best Akatsuki player in the US by the time this version ended, since Squish is honestly just too amazing. I think I was largely in my own head and too stubborn to admit how much I respect Squish and how he plays but those sort of feelings have dissipated. I don't think that I've hit his level yet, but in CLR I fully intend to pass him up. I think that I can relatively confidently say that I'm in the Top 3 of Akatsuki players worldwide as this version of the game comes to an end, but in CLR I wanna make that Top 1. Who knows if I'll be able to achieve that or not, but we'll give it our best for as long as I'm able.

Also, I want to continue to be a force for good in our community and help in creating or maintaining an environment that feels comfortable and safe for players to interact with both outside and inside of the Midwest.

Finally, I've gotten the go ahead from the head honcho to announce that I've been re-signed for the next year with Sugoi Factory with an additional caveat: I'm also available to seek out additional opportunities too. So, if there is a team that is seeking to breaking into the UNI space for next year and are looking for a consultant or a coach for their new potential prospect, feel free to reach out to me via Twitter DMs or through this email account: enginojuushichi@gmail.com. Let's talk!

With that, I'll end it here. See you again soon, for this year's scene review!

Re:flection - Climax of Night [re:run]

It's actually been a little while since Climax of Night now, I've put it off for a while, right? Let's just say for a while that I've been [working on it] and I hope you let me off with just this.

On the front end, I'll say that I definitely enjoyed the event. It was nice to see so many people that I hadn't seen in a while, as well as meet new people for the first time. I'd been in an advisory role of sorts for Climax of Night too, so even though I wasn't one of the main components of creating the experience (I think), I was lucky enough to still be able to see behind the scenes all of the effort that brought this amazing event to fruition.

I can't speak enough about the efforts, expertise and creativity of the Climax of Night team. This dedicated group of people are some of the best in class and I find myself very fortunate to be able to work with and watch them at work. A lot of other gushing I could do about the event has been said by many others, so I guess I'll call this section here (lol).

--- Before Pools ---

As far as my player experience was, I felt like I had a strange sort of mood going into the event. It was my first real major post EVO (went to RBC Philly however) and while I felt like I was still growing, I don't think I had any particular goals going in. I more or less expected to get out of pools, maybe play a match or two in losers and then scratch out. I was pretty okay with that, actually...

Then I saw who my opponent was supposed to be in pools: Silent is a player that I respect, playing a character that I thought I generally had an expectation of being able to handle. When we played at EVO though, I ended up coming away from playing him (and Boogie/MateoKK) with more questions than answers. Looking back at the EVO videos, the matches were a bit closer than I thought, but I had gotten handled pretty thoroughly.

I think I'm a rather vengeful person--- in game of course, so I naturally wanted to avenge my loss to him. In that, I found my goal for the weekend. "I want to beat Silent and get out of pools in Winner's Side," was basically what I told myself. So, I stacked some of the earlier work I did for anti-Phonon with some theory crafting, some studying of common strings that I saw he liked to do and a small bit of watching/giving advice for when Squish played against Clim the week before.

--- Saturday Pools (UNI) ---

Mentally, I traced my way through the brackets. I had to play Melonade's Gordeau, AC's Hilda, SmartSteer's Orie before fighting silent. I think that I ended up starting pretty slow against Melonade, her neutral was pretty good, but it didn't seem like she was that confident on offense, so I was able to slowly pick my way in after getting her Gordeau to the corner and work my mixup from there. After that, I played AC in a pretty basic way, I think. I tried to keep my pressure relatively safe against VO and tried to mix up my throw timing without committing too much on offense.

After that, I had to wait a little bit before I was able to play Smart Steer. I knew going in that I usually do pretty well against him, but the Orie MU is such that could easily go wrong if you get too complacent. Thankfully, I took the first game pretty cleanly. The second game got pretty slopping with a few drops and honestly some lax judgment calls, but I ended up winning that set.

At this point, I had accomplished my base goal. I got safely to Winner's Finals and I was guaranteed out of pools. I wanted to beat Silent and get out in Winner's but the main portion had been done. So, when we met up, I was pretty relaxed. I knew what I had to do and I had practiced it coming up to the event. And actually he showed me one of the tricks I had practiced the first thing into the set, 66b (1) 22a 236b. You can actually stand parry every part of that, but if you parry the 22A, it ended up locking out the cancel (on the dummy). If you parry the 236b, there's nothing that phonon can do and you get a guaranteed 5a or 5b punish which I did at the round start. I could have done a better combo, but I thought that showing him I had an immediate answer was probably better than attempting something harder.

Looking at it now though, I think both Silent and I ended up playing really nervously and sloppily lol. There were a lot of drops on both sides and surprisingly, especially in the last games, he let a LOT of jumps through that were really risky. Eventually it seemed like he got worn down and I won the set 2-0. I hope that I get to see Silent again soon and we can play another set, lol.

But nonetheless, I got out of pools in Winner's Side with my opponent being burgertime. The last time I saw her, we played at Combo Breaker where I lost a FT7 6-7. I had some ideas of what I wanted to do, but I didn't have to play again until 11am on Sunday so I figured that it would be fine to worry about it later lol. I still had Melty Blood to do and the Teams Exhibition that I ended up running.

--- Saturday Pools (Melty, UNI Teams) ---

Melty went about as well as expected. Because Paragon Dissonance wasn't there, I got a bye (woo) before losing on stream. I got the first game against the Ryougi I played, but once the switch to Tohno was made, it was basically a wrap lol. I lost to (nycz)brandon's Ryougi off stream to go 1-2, about as well as I expected to do.

Later that night, DataFGC's KARA and I would end up running teams together. I'll say on the front end that I'm really thankful for Kara and she was an extremely important part of getting the event to run. With it being pretty late in the night, a lot of the players had already played and wanted to do other things. Additionally, Melty pools were going strong and we had a mix of player and volunteers who were held by it and the other tournaments going on. Thus, we had a lot of drops and difficulties wrangling everyone. I was also playing in the event, which did not make things any easier lol

That couldn't be helped, but Kara was absolutely fantastic. Once everything finally got running, I'd say that it went as smoothly as it could have. As far as my performance went, I was on Team Nebraska (and Co[lumbus]). We played against Team Canada with Psykotik, Rikir, Smartsteer and Chunk Brinkston. I ended up squaring off against Psykotik who I managed to beat, though we ended up tying 2-2 to force a tiebreaker. I believe that Bearzerg and Smartsteer had to face off, with BearZerg ending up as the winner, so we moved on to face the New York team... Which we were swept by lol.

Now that I was eliminated, it was easier to focus on finishing out the event. By about 11pm, I was done and starving so we went out to get some food and that ended my night.

--- Sunday (Top 48) ---

After grabbing some delicious breakfast at ATL's breakfast club with a lot of the NE UNI gang, I went back and prepared a little for Top 48 (functionally Top 24 for me, as I was in Winners). Unfortunately, I didn't get much practice against Merkava... but I thought that my gameplan was probably fine. A little before I talk about the match, I was asked if burgertime and I planned on matching colors with the stage by both Brett and Tari, but we ended up getting Amber Streetlamps on Random... and I chose to play the color I did as a shoutout to ITTN.EXE and because the Browns were playing later that day. So it ended up being a huge coincidence.

As far as the gameplay went... I really just didn't feel like I could start well against her. In retrospect, I don't think how I wanted to play it was wrong per se, but it didn't end up working out that well. I had a few drops like the kill confirm in round 1 game 1 or on some missed conversions, but Sylvie had controlled the pace of the match throughout and won in straight games. There are some decisions that I'd want back, but them's the breaks, right?

I left the ballroom for a bit to use the bathroom and gather myself before I went to play against Psykotik to get into Top 16. This potential matchup was one that I had actually looked forward to, since I had also lost what I thought was a pretty close 3-1 at EVO on my recording, which was his revenge for our MM back at Combo Breaker that I won 5-0.

As I think the nature of our games are now, Psykotik and my match was a pretty grueling affair with slow pacing, timeouts and clutch moments galore. One of the key decisions that I think truly dictated the match was Joe's refusal to make a big commitment at round start. I would take space and jump or try to shoot a fireball round start and he had the 214x series ready. So, on about 5/9 round starts, I think that I lost the first interaction.

Our first round ended with a double down draw on a tatsu vs thrust interaction that turned into a timeout win to put him up 1-0. I followed that with two time out rounds in a 3 round game to take game 2 ,before we had a back and forth three rounds in the last game that he got the better of after catching my backdash with forward movement. The things that I remember sticking out were that he teched I think all but two or so throws, so it was very difficult to open him up.

Psykotik ended up popping off after the win, which I was really happy about, honestly. I didn't feel too beaten up about losing to Joe and Sylvie (though I'm obviously a little salty about it now--- I wish I won lol) and it's honestly really cool to know that I was pushing someone that much to want to beat me.

Psykotik has been one of the players I respect the most and one of the players I've wanted to beat throughout the version. I had lost to him in New York back in 2018 when we played and I worked really hard to improve on my matchup against Orie. Every time that we had ended up playing up until this year, I felt like I was always behind. But when I saw him at CB, I had basically been beating him throughout the entire weekend before our MM. That was pretty important to me, because I had thought that only I had thought of him to be a rival of mine lol.

To see the work that he put in every other time I'd played him (from CB to EVO to CoN) was pretty inspiring. I felt like I had to be on my toes every time and I was always refining my game to be able to do well. Thus, even though I lost and it's likely the last time that I'll be able to play him in this version, I'm pretty happy to see that someone was looking at me that seriously as a player.

But that ended my tournament run, just shy of Top 16. T-17th/237 is a placing that I'm pretty content with. I think I'll do a shorter blog post later recapping my thoughts about the year, but I think that by the end of the version I've truly put myself in the high level of this game. I don't think that I'm a top player... but I know that I'm a high level one at the very least.

--- Sunday (Post Brackets) ---

After I was done playing in tournament, I felt pretty listless, so I hung around watching the rest of Top 48->16 then got some lunch and took a nap before I came down to watch Melty prior to Top 16. I was actually zoning out as they started to do the transition to it and Shinobi came up on the mic. Not really focusing in on what he was saying, I happened to look up and I saw Miller and Dante just looking at me. I kinda blinked my eyes and while Shinobi was still talking, they were like "We already know that they're talking about you. Go up there!"

So that's the story about me realizing that I was being recognized for my efforts in the community, lol. Even thinking about it now as I type this with this neat trophy next to me, it feels kinda surreal. I recognize that I do a lot for the scene and I know that my (relatively) large following is partially before that, but it's still wild to actually be acknowledge for stuff that I do. It's so natural to just do what I end up doing that I don't even really think about it... but I really appreciate the award and everyone that worked on putting it together.

I'm extremely thankful for everyone that I've gotten to meet, play with, and interact with because of this game. Playing UNI has lead to some of the coolest experiences in my short 28-year-old life. As we finish out the year and move towards the next version in 2020, I hope that the community will be able to continue along this path that I'm so proud to be able to take. I also want to thank #blackexcellence for doing the damn thing, DATAFGC and funkyp's team for the event as well as all of the Climax of Night staff, artists, volunteers and more that make events like this special. I'm extremely honored to have been able to work with you all for this event. Melo and Chaesu, thank you so much for the gifts again, they have made me so happy.

Normally, I would do a long extended shoutout section at the end of something like this... but I think that I'll just end it about here. It's been a pleasure being a part of this wonderful community. Please look forward to my personal 2019 reflection and the Year-End-Review which is to come before the end of the year!

Reflection - Evolution 2019

So, I've been back home for about two days by now and I feel like I should write a reflection post about EVO.

If I'm being honest, I think it was the worst feeling tournament experience that I've ever had when travelling to UNI. I was pretty sour about my placement at Michigan Masters, but somehow this one felt even worse. I'll go ahead and mention that the UNI bracket experience wasn't one that I thought was bad. I'm a little bummed that I didn't get to play on stream in R1 pools like it was initially suggested that I would be able to do, but that's the nature these events.

Ultimately, I ended up tying for 65th out of 1100-odd entrants at the current largest tournament in the world for UNI. I think it's important to present that in this way because it's still a feat worth talking about, even if I currently don't really think that way.

I'll also get my tournament losses out of the way now, because I feel like I lost to two players that I respect and I don't really want to describe that in a way where I use the other things as an excuse for why I lost to them. First:

- vs jct/Waterloo Hilda (Hilda) [1-2]:

This set is a bit of a blur, honestly, but as far as I can recall I think our set went like: 0-1, 1-0, 0-1. The things that stuck out to me were how strange his neutral choices were compared to any other hilda I played. He played the 66x 22x whiff game really well and I hadn't really been able to control the GRD cycle as well as I wanted because of that.

Offensively, I also recall autopiloting my pressure in a way that he felt comfortable green shielding against me and I didn't react to that in time to punish him. Additionally, he fielded 5[C] which I blocked... but didn't parry for a full punish, an important part of snagging control early. I think that I blocked more of the mix early, but he gained success late in part of being able to control the GRD cycle well.

I was upset at my loss, but I understood that he played me like a fiddle to do it.

- vs WindGodDude (Seth) [1-2]:

When I looked at the bracket really early, this was actually a potential opponent I really dreaded having to run into. Seth is one of the least common characters that I've played against and while I know of some answers to parts of his pressure/gameplan, I haven't practiced against him enough to really feel comfortable.

The first game I lost, I know I generally ate shit on mashing and getting hit by 5C late staggers for a bunch of damage. WGD didn't really feel like he did a lot of sophisticated stuff, but I'd have to think it's because he didn't really feel like he needed to. In the second game, I think I ended up hitting him with CH 5B a bunch which is like 3100 a pop at least, then I wanna say he got hit with IW in the corner at some point and died. It's the nature of things.

The last game, I barely even remembered what happened but I think I lost in two straight rounds. I didn't feel upset about this one because WGD is strong and I don't really understand how to fight Seth. I tried to play it on the ground and just autopiloted stuff I use online + vs what I used vs TTK Touma months ago.

---

Outside of the tournament proper, I should also mention some of the fun things that I was able to do as well before I forget them, lol.

- On Thursday night, I got to hang out with Fox (Gun) and Shinobi before we went to get dinner with French Bread. I greatly enjoyed talking with the team through RyoRca-san and sharing a bit of the experience of North American UNI alongside Fox and Shinobi. I was a bit intimidated, but I hope I did it well lol.

- On Friday afternoon, I spoke with Besteban about UNI and Climax of Night. Esteban is a fantastic dude who asked really good questions and I'm honored to have been able to speak on behalf of the community. I'm looking forward to his release on Hold Back to Block and I hope everyone else is too!

- On Friday night, it was honestly really fun being a part of the UNI crowd that stayed around to watch and phone record matches from Semi-Finals. Watching high level players play and discussing various cool things about it is always fun. (As an aside, I always feel like I enevitably piss you off so if I did, I'm sorry Mia/Glaceon! orz) Transitioning over back to the stage and sitting down to watch Top 8 qualifiers was also great.

- Friday night (cont:), it was maybe a small gesture, but after Top 8 was solidified, I'm happy that I got to walk and talk with you, Rei as we went to grab alcohol at Fat Tuesdays. I was basically on my last legs, but being able to unwind in that way meant a lot to me. You're super cool and I hope we can drink and play at a less hectic event next time.

- Saturday morning, sitting in and playing against Pfhor, Lukada and jct before Top 8 was fun. Probably the most fun I had playing the game the whole weekend, lol. Side betting during top 8 and talking to Fox (Gem), Rei, Taicus, Tari and Coma was really enjoyable. Seeing my boys Suika and Cookie kill it on the mic was amazing!

- Saturday afternoon, it ended up being pretty fun being able to commentate matches and give insight along with brandon, cookie, silent and later suika. Playing with Nekomiko and boogie was also a pleasure. I got to see Alyssa at her art booth and chat for a while, I love seeing her so it was always fun!

- Saturday night, ramen with Squish, Redblade, Isaac, and silent was a good cooldown from a busy day.

- Sunday night, curry with TG, Magnets, ZachCat, Phaze and the other guy whose name I don't remember was really fun, too.

- UNI @ food court was generally cool to see and I'm glad that people enjoyed it as much as they did. UNI suite was also very lively and it was amazing seeing all of the faces around and that the French Bread team stopped in to see everyone!

- Everyone that I met or got to see again from the UNI side. You guys are great and are a large part of why I even continue to want to do stuff like this. Thank you.

---

Now, with all that said. Thursday was one of the worst flight experiences I've ever had, as being up at 3:30am (eastern) for the flight, delays, more delays and then arriving by myself in Vegas fucking sucked. I'm glad that I met up with Cathaticus and Koover at the airport, but still ended up having to navigate by myself to get to my various destinations.

I got there at the Mandalay 12:30pm pacific, though my sponsor and hotel room (in the Tropicana) wouldn't be available until 6pm. After waiting in line with all my shit to get my badge, I ended up parking in the food court by myself until I saw Gamegenie555, where at that point I set up UNI. Later, I ended up seeing Rikir and Fox (Gun), plus some others and so that was generally what started UNI at the food court.

https://twitter.com/EnginoJuushichi/status/1157052551725850624

Nevertheless, I still had obligations to go to dinner which got pushed back to 7-ish so we stayed there until like 6ish, then after trekking to Fox's hotel (Mandalay) thinking I'd drop my stuff off and go to dinner with FPan, we ended up having to meet up with Shinobi downstairs. I found out then that my sponsor was in badge line back past the foodcourt, so I had to have them wait as I tracked Zankoku down to get my room key. I went back to meet with them, but they were already at the Luxor, so I took all my stuff and cabbed there to Shinobi's room before going to dinner.

Then I trekked back to Shinobi's room, got my stuff, then finally went back to my own hotel room at roughly 11:15 pm. I then preceeded to sleep like shit and wake up multiple times before scraping like 6 hours of sleep.

Friday morning linecon -> playing round 1 pools (12pm) happened. But, because of the line situation, I was extremely hesitant to leave and pay x amount of money to go back to the Tropicana to rest and I interviewed with Esteban at 4p before my 6p round 2 pool. From there, I stayed around until all of the T8 qualifiers were done, so another full day.

Saturday morning was okay, I met up with TG and sleepy to eat at the Luxor buffet for breakfast. Watched top 8 and when I went to go play afterwards, I was interrupted in the middle of a money match to be asked about exhibitions. Lost said MM in the last game, then scrambled over to manage that. Found out hiari forgot about his exhibition so I had to figure out how/where to contact him.

In addition to that, because of how our schedules kinda ended up, I didn't really get to hang out with any of my Sugoi Factory teammates, many of my friends from the Midwest and by and large, I ended up having to trek to and from places largely by myself when carrying a bunch of shit in an area I had never been to. Oh, and I ended up feeling like I wasn't playing well all throughout Sunday. I basically didn't want to do anything except stay in my hotel room the whole day, but that would have made me feel even worse than I already was.

So yeah, it was a bit of a word vomit but that was my EVO experience this year. Bit of a downer, but I'm looking forward to the next event nonetheless. See you next time!

Reflection - KVO x TSB and Prior

So, at the time that I find myself writing this I am back in the US.

It's been a long and annoying trip home so far and yet still one that I have at least 8 more hours left to do (Seattle to Atlanta takes a while, go figure). I don't know if I'm exactly in the best place to write the reflection as I am now, but I think this is probably one of the times where I can say what I want to say without too much of a filter.

First things first, I would have to say that my time in Osaka was absolutely wonderful! I'll get into more of that a bit later, but to truly start my reflection of this event--- I have to backtrack a bit:

--- Frosty Faustings ---

The completion of Frosty Faustings brought with it great accomplishment for me along with an extra... something as well. I managed to successfully play my way through my bracket with close shaves over Zen (Enkidu) and Miller (Linne) before playing what I think even now is my best tournament set of UNI, beating Rikir 2-1 in Winner's Side Top 16 to qualify for Top 8. This lead me to a showdown with Redblade and his Wagner in WSF. It was a spot that I thought I would get to by nature of the level of play I thought I'd been playing at before the tournament--- though I didn't mention it to many people outloud.

I've had the fortune of being able to play Red a lot over the course of the Late[st] version of the game, as well as Sometimes Fendo from New York--- the two Wagners that I think make up the three best Wagner players in the entire World right now. The practice and preparation I'd come to develop has led me to relative success in the MU through a win over Eagle in our exhibition at CEOtaku and a positive record on every Wagner that wasn't either of them in tournament play.

Additionally, if there is anything that anyone who knows me well is aware of--- it's that I have pretty thorough countermeasures for individual players I have note of. By and large, I have a solid profile of the types of things that Redblade likes to do, but among the MOST important things to know about him is that you have to make sure that Redblade doesn't get comfortable in his cues and offense early. With this in mind, I knew that I couldn't make too many mistakes and needed to start fast.

If one looks at the footage/pictures of the group of us in Top 8, I think it's easy to tell how tense I was, lol. It was my first time playing on a stage like that in front of everyone, first time coming through a large tournament from winners against a player I knew I had to work really hard against. To say that it overwhelmed me wouldn't be incorrect, but I think it'd take away from Redblade and Shaq (unist player)'s play throughout the top 8. Needless to say, I went home a respectable 5th.

At the same time though, I was having doubts about how much further I could really go. It's a fact that I shouldn't try to get caught up too much in results and the like, but one of my big motivators are my peers and how I do against them. Redblade and Magnets in particular have been difficult for me no matter what I've done for a while, so the doubts, excuses and frustrations really set in internally (and externally, lol).

"Is this my character that's holding me back?" "Why am I working so hard?" "Is it because their characters are really strong?" "What am I missing that everything I'm doing isn't paying off?" These thoughts are increasingly ironic to have, I know, as I'm managing to improve even in my own internal metrics. But even so, I was ready to drop Akatsuki in the time between Frosty and Michigan Masters.

--- Michigan Masters ---

I ended up going through Michigan Masters and finishing in the Top 16, losing to Karuda (Yuzuriha) and White Beast (Vatista)... again respectable losses. By themselves, I don't think that I felt too bad about those losses. However, the money matches that I did with Squish (vs Akatsuki) and Clim (vs Pho and Merkava) revealed both my improvement, how close I felt like I was getting to the top levels of play in NA--- and yet how far I still had to go. Kind of lost, I was so frustrated that I ended up crying on the way home.

It was liberating in a way being able to vent that way, but what loomed truly over where I might want to go in UNI was this trip to Japan. It was equally for leisure, since I had finished up a pretty tough semester for school, as well as for playing UNI and testing myself. I knew from my games up to this point that there was no point in putting large expectations on myself to "do well". So; I wanted to avoid going 0-2 in bracket, learn as much as I could, play some of the players I'd been able to come to get to know in Japan and finally see if I wanted to abandon Akatsuki for the rest of the year in lieu of Orie or Nanase.

--- KSB ---

The trip from Columbus to Osaka was a long one, taking me from Columbus through Minneapolis and Seattle to Japan. I prepped a lot, just to be safe. Brought melatonin, a neck pillow and other odds and ends for that 11 hour trip from Seattle to Osaka--- but no matter what, I just couldn't stay asleep for long. This ended up being a consistent theme throughout the weekend, 3 hours here, 4 hours there... but never a "full night" of rest until the one day after tournament where I stayed up for the meetup. I'm still a bit worried actually about normalizing my sleep schedule once I finally stop in Columbus as well. Nevertheless, I got in and had a good dinner with some friends from Ohio Smash and set up in my hotel in Nippombashi to netplay in Japan--- another consistent theme of my trip.

I'm thankful to Clearlamp for setting up a meetup for console and PC UNI alongside the arcade on Wednesday, but I think that if I hadn't been able to netplay in the comfort of my hotel room, I wouldn't have gotten acclimated as much as I had for the tournament day. I had a blast being able to play Tsumo, Kyou, Trista, Cool and Sweet and others while resting from day trips and exploration and I also got to try to apply countermeasures to some of the stuff I saw players doing and prepare how to change my offense to match it.

I didn't win a lot while I was playing--- especially in the early parts of the week and change I was there, but it was certainly valuable experience. Being able to match faces to names and voices I'd seen on twitch chats and in footage is extremely precious to me. My Japanese is extremely weak, but everyone was very patient with me and seemed generally excited to speak and play with me. It was especially fun being able to meet and spend time with Peke, tuna+, Libekichi, Umakool, Hachi, Trista and LENee. I was happy to be able to see Senaru and Clearlamp. It was extremely fun being able to talk with the players from North America as well. The experience of being able to do match reports, see what everyone else is up to, speak about each other's thoughts and share information in a foreign place is honestly a really unique one.

But I suppose I should go into the nuts and bolts of my tournament experience, huh?

--- Tournament Day ---

Well, my first opponent was a Wagner player named Shiratama, who seemed relatively new to UNI. We had ended up playing in casuals in the morning after being let into Misono Universe. I ended up winning that set 2 to 0 without anything of particular note happening. So, my lone goal for tournament played had been achieved. I was not going to go 0-2. I also managed to win my first round of Koihime Enbu 2-0 against a character I'd never seen before. So that was 2/2 on not going 0-2, yeah!

However, in UNI things were going to immediately get more difficult. My next round opponent was set to be ARIA, a Yuzuriha player who I had been able to play on Wednesday night at the meetup. I think I went something like 2-6 against them and I didn't feel very comfortable with that MU at all--- but he ended up being busy so I got a DQ and moved on, oop lol. 2-0 (1-0).

My next opponent was one that I and everyone who watched my early streams in Japan were familiar with--- Kyo Gordeau. I'll put it pretty bluntly, I got fucking sauced up emphatically by this man as bad as Nishine was cooking me and unlike with Nishine, I didn't have any sort of gameplay nuances to lean on that I felt comfortable with. His movement, move choice and positioning was very much unlike anything that I had seen since Hiari and his Gordeau (vs Squish in Sweden). I spoke with some of the guys and figured that this set was an auto loss so fuck it, let's try out Orie. The first round actually went pretty well, but I spaghetti'd a kill confirm that would have ended the first round and he ran me back from there. What little confidence I had with Orie was gone, so I was just gonna pick my shit and die trying to gain as much as I could with Akatsuki. He made short work of me and I was sent to losers, no harm, no foul. 2-1 (1-1)

After that, I had a bit of a wait as losers was resolving itself. I ended up losing my round two Winners match in Koihime to the 2018 EVO champion eda, in a Gakushin mirror and then was eliminated soon after that by Kei.

As it came to be, my first loser's match was going to be Needle (Vatista). There's a small story to this one too. So, much like Orie, Vatista is a matchup that I have relative pride in. I'm very experienced in it and I typically do well against Vatista players that I play as well. After watching Needle play squish in casuals, I asked squish to hop off so I could play him. I ended up not adjusting very well to how he played Vatista and lost 0-2 in that casual set, but I was salty and felt like it was pretty winnable. As I was getting up, Needle turned to me and said "ganbarimasu". I'm sure that he meant nothing by it and I ended up just smiling and saying thank you, but I was smoldering, lmao. Nevertheless, I sat down, put my music in and started the set with Needle in Losers. I don't remember too much about it, but I do remember losing the first game and then locking in and winning the next two with clean jumps and play. Ultimately, I won the set 2-1 and sent Needle out of the tournament.

Later, when I sat down to play him in casuals, he said something akin to "Again? No...!", so I have to say that I was pretty vindicated. "I'll try harder next time for sure~ : )" - is something I'll keep in my heart and in this blog, of course.

In any case, my next round opponent sat down soon after I had defeated Needle. I'll admit that I initially didn't even know who it was, between not formally meeting or playing them and being so locked in. I won the first game quickly in two rounds against this Phonon I wasn't too familiar with and... then I noticed that a crowd was surrounding me. So, after losing a close game 2, I went back to character select to take a quick breather and change the song that I was listening to. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a song that immediately stuck out to me on shuffle or through searching and I could tell that mateokk was waiting for me to hurry up so I just picked a song. I think I threw myself out of my element or maybe mateokk figured out the wavelength I was on, but I ended up sputtering out and losing 1-2 to finish at 25th. I came to later realize that mateokk was the #1 Phonon in arcades. So, my losses were to 1st and 7th place--- and the respective top ranked players of their characters. Not that bad, lol.

After that, I stuck around to play casuals and watch the conclusions of my NA friend's tournament runs before I went back to my hotel to take a nap to prepare for the big meetup at night. Admittedly, I passed out during Grand Finals, so I didn't see Kyo's win in full until I watched it on the ANIMEILLUMINATI channel when I woke up on Saturday. As far as the meetup went, it was extremely fun! I can't sit very well cross legged or anything like that, so after a while of playing it was pretty uncomfortable but aside from that it was a very chill environment.

Everyone sat around drinking, eating, talking and playing various games. People were playing Samurai Kirby, some Melee was happening, old Melty, old Blazblue, some Exe: Late, Mario Party and Cart. I got to play a lot of players like shimazaki, crow, notes and ouhittou. I think the only player I didn't have a chance to play against was Hishigata, actually. Nevertheless, tired and happy I packed up my stuff and headed to the station at around 5am, lol. Got a full 9 hours of sleep that night, the best sleep I got my entire time in Osaka.

--- Cyclops ---

The last sort of tournament report I have is for the Cyclops meetup. I met up with LTP earlier in the day on Monday to grab some lunch and then we went back to my hotel in order to--- you guessed it, play some netplay. It was actually super fun to watch the players online try to deal with LTP's Phonon. I wish that I would have organized a meetup with some of the other players to watch and talk with them while we played netplay in Japan. In any case though, Osaka got it's first bad rainstorm which convinced most of the regulars to stay home. LTP and I also basically flipped a coin on whether we would go or not, but eventually decided to go. I took my recording setup as planned with me to Cyclops and saw Arslan playing some of the Japanese players in Tekken too!

My first round in the Cyclops weekly was yet again--- a Wagner player. I was pretty surprised though, as I got cooked in the first game and went down 0-1 quickly. But, I made some adjustments and ended up pulling that one out 2-1. After that, I played LENee who I learned from RAL days before is a pretty notable netplay Yuzuriha. I was dreading it already considering my luck against Yuzu throughout the weekend, but I think I did alright in my Winner's set in spite of losing 0-2. I had some ideas about where I wanted to approach and what I wanted to do to bait certain reactions out of him.

My next round was against Muon, who would have been my opponent to attempt to qualify for Top 16 had I beaten mateokk. In casuals with him, I had done pretty well. I think I won our first casual set 2-1, so I had a general idea of how I wanted to approach how Muon played as well. It ended up working too, as I won our set in losers 2-0. I was pretty excited about that too, as I think historically Eltnum has been a really difficult matchup for me as well. This set up a rematch with LENee that went a lot better than the first set that I had with him. We went down to the wire in game 3 and he clutched it out to move back into Grand Finals to face LTP who had beaten him before. LTP ended up winning the tournament from winners and I got third, not too bad I think.

Finally, that brings me to the closing thoughts and observations from my time in Osaka on the UNI side.

--- Final Thoughts ---

I can't say for sure that I won't ever have feelings about dropping Akatsuki, but I think for now there is no reason for me to drop him. He's by and far my best character, I believe more in my ability to play him at higher levels, though I know that the top of the top levels of play are still a ways to go for me. I enjoy playing Akatsuki a lot too, which is arguably the most important thing!

The key takeaways that I have from this trip are: 
- That I can play well against strong players in North America or abroad.
- That I can do it while playing Akatsuki by himself.
- That I can make the necessary adjustments to varying play-styles.
- That I can continue to trust in the process that has gotten me this far AND in my ability to distill down new information to use.

Some of my observations about how Japanese players play are: 
- That they are very good about proximity control. They generally have well informed decisions about what buttons to hit and the spaces that they are the best to hit them at. Long distance dashes will see players move forward to meet with fast attacks or hanging back and checking greedy movement with things like 5C.
- That they almost never give up obvious assaults or overheads. You really, really have to put some sort of information on the table that forces them to have to second guess anti-air OS. Or to simply block your high attacks.
- Almost everyone has a strong fundamental understanding of their character/your character's options. This much is probably obvious because they have had access to the game for a while.
- Generally have worse raw damage combos. I think maybe because the nature of arcade/console that the average player hasn't optimized their routing or anything. Even the stronger players had combos that I felt were lacking at times. The top level players generally have things optimized, but I think players generally stay in their comfort zones in regards to confirms.

Well, that about wraps things up for this one. Thanks for reading.

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