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Tidus survived a match the writeup saw as having real upset potential because of his unpopularity and Claire's stronger-than-expected position. His Square affiliation was enough to carry him through, but the performance gave little confidence before facing Sonic.

Sonic beat Tidus more comfortably than some upset-minded observers expected and remained an elite contender. The writeup attributes Tidus's ability to avoid a worse defeat largely to his Square affiliation despite his personal unpopularity.

Ganondorf survived a surprisingly strong Tidus comeback after Board 8 had largely treated the matchup as a lock. The match became especially important for popularizing dedicated update topics and exposing the gap between hardcore board expectations and the broader bracket field.

Tidus won the contest's first heavily debated matchup, taking control early enough that Shadow's later resistance never became a real comeback. The writeup says the final closeness overstated the drama but still gave both characters credit for holding up outside their expected voting periods.

Mega Man demolished Tidus far more decisively than most of Board 8 expected, vindicating Heroic Mario's unusually confident prediction. The writeup treats Tidus's collapse as one of the contest's hardest results to explain.

Tidus won comfortably, but the writeup turns the King of All Cosmos into a running joke while arguing that Tidus still performed too poorly to beat Kirby. The result became another strike against Tidus's old reputation as an elite-level character.

Kirby decisively beat Tidus after the board had once treated Tidus as the overwhelming favorite. The writeup sees the result as both a major Kirby validation and another humiliation in Tidus's long decline from his 2003 reputation.

Squall crushed Tidus in what the writeup calls an SFF beating through and through. The result further buried Tidus's old reputation while briefly making a later Squall upset of Snake seem plausible.

SFF: The writeup explicitly calls the result an SFF beating, with Squall suppressing fellow Final Fantasy lead Tidus far beyond what their ordinary statistical gap suggested.

Pikachu beat Tidus far more easily than years of Pokémon contest weakness had led people to expect. The writeup debates several possible explanations for Tidus's underperformance but ultimately treats the match as another major step in Pokémon's rise to legitimate contest strength.

Leon won comfortably while Pikachu capitalized on the divided Square field to advance again. The writeup presents Tidus and Vivi as holding each other back and turning Pikachu's favorable draw into another survival.

LFF: The writeup says Vivi and Tidus split Square support badly enough that neither could catch Pikachu, allowing the outside Pokémon entrant to take the second advancing spot.

Weighted Companion Cube turned a heavily debated Tidus-Donkey Kong match into another joke-character success, while Tidus narrowly secured the other advancing position. Donkey Kong's failure added another chapter to his contest reputation for disappointing.

Mega Man and Weighted Companion Cube advanced in an anticlimactic match whose outcome settled almost immediately. The Cube now looked less like a volatile joke rally and more like a stable, legitimately dangerous entrant.

The writeup treats Tidus as chronically overrated and views this as another supposedly winnable matchup where he never seriously threatened. Sub-Zero's performance is presented as part of that larger pattern rather than a surprise of its own.

Tidus erased a large early deficit, took the lead, and nearly completed one of the contest's biggest upsets before Missingno recovered in the final stretch. The cheating revelation immediately spoiled what had looked like a heroic Tidus near-win.

Rally · Cheat: The writeup reports a small Reddit rush for Missingno in the final hour. It also quotes SBAllen saying anti-bot measures caught vote stuffing at roughly a two-to-one ratio favoring Tidus.

Donkey Kong demolished Tidus in a matchup built around two characters with long reputations for choking. The writeup attributes the result to Donkey Kong's renewed relevance, broader Nintendo momentum and Tidus's continued decline.