# (10)KOS-MOS vs (2)Aqua 2018

_source: (10)KOS-MOS vs (2)Aqua 2018 (revid 84035)_

## Ulti's Analysis

What, you thought TheStupidRaptor was finished embarrassing himself and proving why he was by far the worst user of 2018?

Think again.

"Aqua is a beautiful, strong character with a relatable personality. She has many cool moments in her game where her character shines through. The video game IP from 2001 she is from is highly successful well known and relevant, having an extremely hyped over a decade upcoming title coming soon. Said game is made in Japan, is an RPG, and has characters from Disney Movies and Final Fantasy games, of which very few people are not familiar with. And for the shallow folks out there, she has a slim waist, large breasts, stockings, and is showing her bare back. She's pretty without it detrimenting the other aspects of her character.

Kosmos is literally just a sex doll with no personality from a dead, irrelevant game no one's ever heard of.

Even taking into account Gamefaq's skewed biases due to being run by weebs, Aqua checks all the boxes for "victory" around here. An attractive woman from an old game that's 17 years old, an RPG, made in Japan, and with characters from other IP's that everyone loves. Her game is even actually relevant unlike the other one. It's sad that characters from video games that aren't made in Japan seem to automatically lose here; if this was any other website, Ellie would've won. Literally every character in this tournament should beat Kosmos. But Aqua? She SHOULD have this in the bag.

So what BS reason is going on this time that Aqua isn't winning this "tournament"? It makes no sense, no matter what type of logical system you use."

"Kingdom hearts has no side games; each game is completely relevant to the story."

"Low status?! Of all the Kingdom Hearts games that aren't 1 2 or 3, Birth By Sleep is considered the best. And with all the Kingdom Hearts collections released in recent years, you can't NOT bother playing most of the games in the series (by the way, there are no KH spin offs, every game is relevant). You play as Aqua in the final and secret episodes of birth By Sleep, so she definitely stands out in that game. Aqua's also like the only playable female in the whole series. She's even playable in BBS 0.2, and will have a big role in Kingdom Hearts 3. Said game has been hyped for over a decade, and even more hyped over the past 5 years. How can anyone be apathetic to it?

Any if everyone's being shallow and we're going by attractiveness, Aqua is a million times more attractive than Kosmos the lifeless sex doll. Aqua has everything going for her, she should be winning in every sense.

What other reason could there be huh? Is it the Disney characters? Disney characters are some of the most nostalgic characters you can imagine; and I thought blind nostalgia always wins on gamefaqs. Does gamefaqs hate Disney movies because they're made in America? Does the existance of American characters and IP's somehow make Kingdom Hearts "less weeb"? And only the weebiest of the weeby weeby characters win on gamefaqs? Please tell me this isn't true; I knew gamefaqs has no credibility, but this is just absurd."

"Kosmos is NOT more well known. The game she's from is obscure and niche and exclusive to one old console. Aqua is from a game series that built up quite a reputation and presence, and games from the whole series are on so many consoles. I've knows of Kingdom Hearts and Aqua for many years now, but I've only heard of Xenosaga a few months ago and only due to some annoying nostalgia blind fanboys. Saying that "Kosmos is more well known" is absurdly wrong on so many levels. If it's not cheating, there must be another reason."

"Kosmos looks so much like a generic anime girl. Nothing about her stands out. If no one told me that is Kosmos, I literally would never recognize her; that's how plain she looks."

"I'm like the only person in the whole world that doesn't like Super Smash Brothers, so I don't give a shit; but I know for a fact that if Waluigi didn't make it, a nobody like Kosmos has no hope of that either.

There are no Xenosaga characters in that game, what garble are you on about?"

"That is never going to happen in any timeline. If Xenosaga was ever going to be rereleased, it would've done so by now. You know why? Because Nintendo, Namco, and Monolith Soft know nobody will care. It did poorly when it was still relevant; it's never going to get itself out of that hole."

"Obvious tasteless trolls are obvious."

"Where are all the Aqua fanboys? I think all the people hating me don't even like Kosmos, they just want to be contrarian."

"So, no reason then huh? Aqua lost just..... BECAUSE right?! I could stomach American video game characters losing and dismiss it as gamefaqs just lacking all credibility. But THIS?!....... this is just idiotic. If lifeless sex dolls are really the only kind of women people on this site want in their games.......... sigh; Kosmos lost in everything that really matters, remember that.

So I'm just going to go with gamefaqse hates Disney movies and characters because "non Japanese cartoons are trash because they're not WEEB, I need muh weeby weeby anime bitches, reeeeeeeee". Is that true? I guarantee like 85% of you grew up with Disney, but whatever; contrarianism is the life blood of gamefaqs right?

sigh......"

And here we all thought this was the worst fourpack of the contest. Nope.

## Lightning Strikes' Analysis

**What happened?**: Aqua disappointed a bit here, looking worse than Ellie. KOS-MOS also looked very frontloaded again, declining from over 60% at the start. She also did very well in Europe which is novel but significant.

**What could this mean?:** Aqua's not bad but I think KOS-MOS has looked her best in some time. I do legitimately think Xenoblade 2 is a big part of that, she has almost Nintendo-like trends and Xenoblade's good in Europe while Xenosaga is not. I think she will outperform both Lloyd and Shepard against Ryu next round.

## Safer777's Analysis

This result is strange. Based on this that means that Ellie beats Aqua. How many people would pick that before the contest? Nobody I would say. Seems that KH boost wasn't real. When Sora loses to a human Pokemon character well you see how things are. I know KOS-MOS from the Project X Zone games. She is a hot android with big tits! Yeah sorry about that but I don't know about the Xenosaga series. Sorry again! But man KH sucks. Hope KH 3 comes soon. But even then it will boost the characters for like 1 year and that will be. Still nice win for KOS-MOS. Nice to have such characters winning. Also this is the first time that KOS-MOS reaches Round 3. She faces Ryu next and he has beaten her before so that is for her without a rally. Still she reached round 3 at least!

## Tsunami's Analysis

Here, have a quote from KOS-MOS's Contest History page.

*What in the world happened to KOS-MOS? After two years in which KOS-MOS was a middle of the pack character, she went out against Luigi in a match that she had a decent chance to win and completely bombed.*

*After Xenosaga 2, no less. KOS-MOS's disappointment paired with Albedo turning out to be cannon fodder in Spring 2005 confirms what many already believe, which is that the popularity of Xenosaga is likely gone for good. Either that or Luigi boosted beyond belief.*

That's from her 2005 contest run, one and done. Luigi would end up losing the very next round to Tifa, and normally a character putting up 66% in a match that was supposed to be debatable would lead to massive overestimations but Tifa's Round 1 performance literally saw her get a better percentage on Vyse than *Cloud* did in an earlier contest so Luigi was still the underdog. I bring this up because her two "middle of the pack" runs only granted her one win. She's since made it to Round 2 via the awfulness of the female bracket and via Blizzard SFF allowing her to easily come out in second place in a match with a clear winner and three characters of similar strength fighting for second place, but this is her first trip to Round 3. Even though her games proper are over a decade in the past, and she only maintains any relevance via a consistent string of guest appearances. (Play Super Robot Wars OG Saga: Endless Frontier.) This, however, probably is one of the reasons that this site gets ridiculed. There's a perception that we're stuck in the past and that characters/games are worthless until they can be viewed through nostalgia goggles. Sure enough, KOS-MOS finally breaks through to Round 3 only when placed in a fourpack with three characters from the 2010s.

Of course, it should be noted that this was only the second contest where that was *possible*, because nominations for Character Battle VIII were in December 2009. Compare this to the six contests in as many years that she was in after her game came out (yeah, she's still too young to have been in CBI).

KOS-MOS was actually one of three characters that made the vote-ins but not the main bracket in 2010 that reached Round 3 this year, along with Wario and Bayonetta. We were guaranteed at least one before Round 2 even started because of Bayonetta's 2nd-round opponent also qualifying. The rest of the vote-in field did fairly decently, too. I'll put them all together, even the ones I already mentioned.

Round 4:

Aerith Gainsborough (Made 2010 bracket as a 14-seed)

Round 3:

Wario (Missed 2010 bracket) Bayonetta (Missed 2010 bracket) Sub-Zero (Made 2010 bracket as a 13-seed and reached Round 3) Tails (Made 2010 bracket as a 15-seed) Mega Man X (Made 2010 bracket as a 13-seed and reached Round 3) KOS-MOS (Missed 2010 bracket)

Round 2:

Lightning (Made 2010 bracket as a 16-seed) Chun-Li (Missed 2010 bracket) The Boss (Made 2010 bracket as a 15-seed and reached Round 2) Simon Belmont (Made 2010 bracket as a 15-seed) Pac-Man\* (Missed 2010 bracket) Frog (Made 2010 bracket as a 13-seed) Lara Croft (Missed 2010 bracket)

Round 1:

Spyro the Dragon\* (Missed 2010 bracket) Scorpion (Missed 2010 bracket; apparent final cut) Ridley (Made 2010 bracket as a 16-seed) Peach (Made 2010 bracket as a 15-seed) Godot (Missed 2010 bracket)

\*Lost to another name on this list.

So that's 19 characters in this bracket who were in the 2010 vote-ins--9 who missed the bracket entirely--and those 19 characters went 14-5 in Round 1, with a perfect 19-0 impossible because two were facing each other--the nine that missed entirely going 6-3, with, again, a perfect 9-0 being impossible because two of them were facing each other.

Now you might also notice that two of the three listed as being 13-seeds made it all the way to Round 3 in 2010. That's no accident. Frog had the misfortune to run into Bowser in Round 1 in 2010, but the other three 13-seeds that came out of the vote-ins all went to Round 3, and 14-seeds also went 2-0 in Round 2. The four 13-seeds that were direct entrants into the bracket, *plus* the full set of eight 11- and 12-seeds? 1-19 in Round 1. That one actually *was* a 13-seed, oddly enough--Ken Masters' tight win over Albert Wesker. But the point is, the 13-15 seed lines were generally stronger than the 11-12 lines that year (not the 10's; they had some absolute monsters. In fact both of those 14-seeds that made it to Round 3 lost to 10-seeds). The reasoning was obvious: a lot of good characters have trouble with nominations due to having to fight other members of their own series, but those characters easily rise to the top in vote-ins. The other low seed lines can often be filled with all sorts of weird fodder that got a rally.

In fact, here's my newest stupid idea: for the next contest, have the *entire* field decided by a series of vote-ins. If you want to speed them along, break out the old 12-hour format for those; you can whittle down 280 characters to 128 in only two weeks that way. Obviously, make sure to use an actual S-curve when grouping the characters for vote-ins, so the \#1 nomination-getter would be in a poll with \#56, \#57, \#112, \#113, \#168, \#169, \#224, \#225, and \#280, etc. (It doesn't have to be 280; I just threw that out there so that the vote-ins would cull more characters than it kept and we'd have a multiple of 70 so it could be an exact number of weeks.) The top characters would *still* get their high seeds, most likely, but the characters who are forever plagued by that little clause where nominating too many characters from the same game/series will get your ballot thrown out can finally get the seeds they deserve. (Due to being a series with a new set of characters in each numbered game, Final Fantasy suffers from this a lot, especially secondary females like Aerith and Rikku.) Yes, the vote-ins will likely become tedious, but it should produce an extremely strong field. Now that I think about it, that's not a stupid idea at all!

Finally, it must be noted that this particular result is not an upset. Yes, the prediction percentage is only 23.29% which is too low to even possibly make her the favorite this early in the contest, but that's residual upset effect. KOS-MOS's Round 1 prediction percentage was only 41.48%, which means that 56.16% of brackets that had her in this match had her winning. Not a great percentage, and well within the range where it's possible that brackets that had this particular match-up favored Aqua slightly since she herself fell a little short of 2/3 prediction in Round 1, but it's definitely a decent amount, and while I don't believe that "bracket votes" make a huge difference, it can't be denied that Ellie outperformed Aqua against KOS-MOS and that this effect was even more pronounced among registered voters, which might suggest that the plurality of casuals had Ellie winning this match. (And yes, "voting your bracket" when you've already lost your pick for a match does often mean voting for the one that broke it, especially given those prediction percentages. Pre-match, it would be entirely likely that an Ellie bracket would see that Aqua was a bigger favorite than Ellie in their Round 1 matches and assume that more brackets would be busted by KOS-MOS \> Aqua than by Aqua \> KOS-MOS--which isn't necessarily false, because even if Ellie \> Aqua is the most common pick, if the second-most common is Aqua \> Ellie rather than KOS-MOS \> Aqua, Aqua could have the second-most brackets anyway.)