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 ---
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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