In the past week, the FGC and other gaming communities have been hit with a wave allegations ranging from minor sexual misconduct to outright rape and Pedophilia. Specifically, though, many of these allegations have come from members of the smash community against many prominent commentators and players. Given the severity and descriptiveness of these allegations, along with the strong evidence on the part of many of the accusers, I wanted to take time this week to highlight these stories.
CaptainZack’s account of events with Nairo, a now former smash ultimate pro, who, according to Zack, took advantage of him during a 2015 tournament when he was 15 and Nairo was 20.
KTDominate’s story of how long time smash commentator D1 forced himself on her when she was 18 while she was drunk, and then afterwards proceeded to brag about it to others at Smash the Record, the tournament the two were located at.
Puppeh, formerly on the PGRU and ranked on the top 10 of the MDVA power rankings, was sexually abused by Cinnpie, a smash ultimate commentator from the same region.
Katie, who was a fan of top smash 4 player Zero, accused the pro of using grooming language in their conversations and asking for sexually explicit images despite knowing her to be underage, around 14-15 at the time.
Corrin accuses smash 4 player Pugwest of asking for sexually explicit photos of her, providing screenshots of their conversation to corroborate the allegations.
Aliylian discusses her interactions with commentator DJ Nintendo and his attempts to solicit sexually explicit images of herself when she was 16-17 years old.
While he has since locked his account, commentator Keitaro has also admitted to excepting the sexual advances of a then drunk 17 year old girl. His account of the situation can be read here.
While I have a lot to say in regards to this reckoning within the smash community, I feel as though anything I say here would only take away from the stories of the individuals abused. I encourage everyone to read the full accounts of each. While these are not all of the stories that have emerged over the past couple of days, they are important ones.
Considering the seriousness of the situation, I will not be attempting to monetize anything in regards to this post. Thanks for reading, and always be looking to make things better.
The early meta of “Super Smash Brothers Ultimate” was defined by a much different group of characters than what is popularly seen today. In the beginning of the game’s competitive lifespan, characters fell into two main groups based on their strengths. Either they had ridiculously strong combo games, such as Pichu and Olimar, or they rewarded strong fundamentals and game knowledge, such as Lucina.
Wolf falls into the latter category, and was indeed an incredibly strong character. He was introduced in “Super Smash Brothers Brawl” and has since been a fan favorite. His return in “Smash Ultimate” came with the support of nearly everyone.
Not only are many of his moves somewhat disjointed, meaning the hit-box of those moves is separated from the rest of the character, Many of his moves serve as combo starters, including his down throw, up throw, forward aerial, and many others. Wolf at his core rewards those who are aware of his advantages and know how to play the game on a more fundamental level.
This, in large part, explains his popularity among the competitive scene at the time. His reliance on fundamentals to do well made him easier to pick up, and his strong reward because of his easier combos and strong down smash used for reads made him well worth the relatively small time investment.
This lead to many top players, including Nairo, Void, MKLeo, and Zachray, to picking up the character as a secondary and many more to outright main the character. In fact, on the first PGRU, the official ranking of top smash players created by Panda Global, lists wolf five times, with most of his appearances in the top half of the list.
However, after the first few months of the game, many began developing the meta for other characters, most notably MKLeo rising in skill with his Joker, Nairo with Palutena, Marss with ZSS, Samsora with Peach, and Ally with Snake.
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Wolf also suffered from some compromising nerfs, which included a base knockback reduction on his down smash, and a increase in ending lag on his blaster. While he did get lots of other minor buffs, overall the character seemed to lose more than he gained.
Both of these things, combined with Wolf’s lackluster offstage options, lead many to abandoning the character. By the time the second official PGRU rolled around in the following fall, Wolf’s appearances went from five to just one in the form of Zachray, who only occasional played the character in specific match-ups.
While his popularity has certainly been at a low point, not all hope is lost for the furry villain. Many regions across the United States have a number of prominent Wolfs. Of these regions, SoCal stands out the most, who is home top Smash 4 player Larry Lurr, as well as rising star Charlie “Charliedaking” Haruno, the latter of whom recently made an incredible run at Genesis 7, getting ninth out of over 1,600 entrants and who almost beat current number six Maister.
Current number three Gavin “Tweek” Dempsey has also show much interest in the character as of late, using him most recently at Frostbite 2020 and getting third out of over 1,200 players. Even Zachray, who lost faith in the character fairly early on, has continued to use him sparingly in tournament play.
While it is hard to see the character’s widespread popularity returning anytime soon, his history in “Smash Ultimate” is interesting. At the end of the day, Wolf alongside others like Lucina felt a lot like characters that people were just messing around with while they got a feel for the game. Even despite the competitive scene’s strange online transition, it is possible that Wolf may see a minor return in the form of new and old top players.
Something a little different, this time around. I haven’t spent much time talking about competitive smash on this blog, most recently because pretty much all offline tournaments have grinded to a halt. However, I had a sudden inspiration and so this is the final product. Who is your favorite “Smash Bros” character? Let me know in the comments.
If you are interested in reading more from me, check under blog to read my most recent stuff, or look below for some related posts. Also, if you would like to support Animated Observations, consider donating on Ko-fi or through paypal, or pledging on Patreon. You can even support by just liking and sharing this post.
If you can’t, or just don’t feel like it, no worries. Thank you all for reading, and goodbye, for now, friends!
Well, here I am, back again with very little to report. I wish I could say I have been up to a whole lot, but I haven’t been. Anyway, lets get into everything I need to tell you all about.
Before that, though, I’ve decided to make my updates monthly instead of biweekly. I feel it will make for more interesting update posts when I have more things to report back on. If something comes up that requires an immediate answer to, I will just make a separate post.
Solidly Liquid
First up, if you followed me for my poetry/short stories, then I would highly suggest going over to my new blog, Solidly Liquid, as that’s where I will be posting that type of content from now on. As of right now I have been slowly re-uploading some older poetry, but I will get back to posting new stuff extremely soon.
Summer Anime Season
The summer anime season will be here within a matter or weeks, and I am definitely looking forward to at least a few of the new shows, so do expect to see some episode reactions coming soon.
A New Hobby Approaches…
If you all are following me on Twitter, than you probably know that I’ve gotten really into Smash Bros Ultimate since I got a switch. I’m still pretty bad, but its something I enjoy playing, and also enjoy watching a lot. At this point my goal is to get good enough to make it to Grand Finals at a locals, so hopefully in time I can succeed at that.
That’s all I have to talk about right now. Thanks for reading, and stick around for great anime content/discussion.
Welcome, weebs and authors alike, to The Aniwriter
On June 10th, 2014, in promotion for the then-upcoming release of Super Smash Bros for the Wii U and 3DS, Nintendo released an animated trailer for the reveal of Palutena and Dark Pit as two of the playable characters. At the time, the trailer by itself was enough to get people thinking about a Super Smash Bros anime. Of course, after the hype of the trailer died down and the game eventually came out, that conversation all but disappeared. However, four years have passed and a new Super Smash Bros. has been released, which got me thinking: Would Super Smash Bros. be a good anime?
Animated Trailer for Super Smash Brothers Wii U and 3DS
The short answer is probably no, but here is a much better explanation. The first point against it is that Smash Bros as a game has largely existed for the spectacle of it all. There is not much of a large overarching narrative when it comes to the Smash universe, even with Smash Brothers Ultimate’s attempts at expanding what story there is. As such, the finished anime would likely feel fairly a lot like the Rage of Bahamut anime, in that it feels like a fairly generic good vs evil story without much to it in terms of character dynamics.
All 74 characters in Smash Bros. Ultimate. Credit: VG247.com
Speaking of characters, though, there would be far too many. The promotion of Ultimate talked about everyone being in the game and it is not far from truth. The game currently has a roster of 74 characters, with challenger packs set to release in the near future which will potentially get that total closer to 100. From a storytelling perspective, trying to flesh out that many characters over a traditional 12 or even 24 episode time span while also having the main antagonist and other potential characters would be impossible to manage. Of course, if the show had as many episodes as say a show like Naruto, then it could work, but even longer running Shonen have a lot of characters that usually do not get well fleshed out.
Now, this is not to say that there would be nothing good about a Smash Bros. anime. Quite the opposite in fact. For example, assuming that the animation stayed relatively close to the quality of the trailer, that would definitely be something to praise. The music, assuming that it comes from the different franchises in Smash, would be really fun to hear in an anime about those characters.
Overall, a Smash Bros anime probably would not be bad, but it definitely would not be good either. There are just too many problems with the story and characters to make it a worthwhile adaptation.
Animated Observations 