2ND QUARTERFINAL MATCH PRE-GAME ANALYSIS

4th Seed Pyra (Xenoblade 2) VS 12th Seed Malon (Zelda: Ocarina of Time)

We’re never gonna get Pyra VS 2B in a tournament match, are we?

Anyway, Pyra has been on fire (pun not intended) since this tournament began, becoming the first girl in #BestVidyaGirlContest history to Double two opponents in a row. To put this in perspective, throughout the entirety of last year’s tournament we only saw a grand total of 3 matches (none of which involved Pyra) end in a doubling or more, so the Aegis girl is clearly out for blood after being screwed over by the bracket and suffering a heartbreaker loss in 2023.

Of course, Pyra’s opponent Malon has also pulled off some stunning wins, and 53% - 47% over 2B is a result even most Elite girls would struggle to replicate (Tamamo only broke 51% on 2B last year). That said, a lot of Malon’s most powerful weapons in her battle against 2B, especially her fertility and Tradwife potential, are pretty much nullified when going up against Pyra: Not only can the Blade girl have children, she canonically IS a Mother. Pyra is also a girl who cooks and cleans for her man *in-game*, who boasts bigger Milkers than Malon, and who to top it all off is ALSO a redhead.

Couple all of this with the fact that we have another all-Nintendo match on our hands, and all of the evidence seems to point to Pyra getting to deliver another SFF (Same Fanbase Factor) beatdown, of the kind that Rosalina suffered last round. However, there are still some points to consider: first of all, SFF blowouts aren’t inevitable just because two characters share the same fanbase. In the GameFAQs Character Battles, Cloud and Sephiroth have clashed many times, and those matches are usually decently close. If you’re sufficiently strong, it seems that you become much less vulnerable to the distorting effects of SFF, presumably because characters that powerful enjoy tons of intrinsic strength, rather than relying on their game, franchise or company for the bulk of their popularity. Malon may well be strong enough that this applies to her as well, given how she performed against Nero and 2B.

Furthermore, Malon is a Zelda girl – and among hardcore gamers, Zelda tends to be at the very top of the Nintendo SFF pecking order. Zelda characters don’t really get SFF’d, except by other Zelda characters, whereas Mario characters can be made to look deceptively weak by elite Nintendo opposition – and of course Rosalina, who got doubled by Pyra largely due to SFF, is a Mario girl, so her fate isn’t necessarily a good indication of how Malon will fare.

And finally, Malon might just have caught some of that Underdog meme magic that propelled Osaka to victory in the anime girl tournament – that certainly seemed to play a part in Malon’s shock win over 2B, as people found it hilarious how a relatively minor character from an old N64 game was humiliating THE most famous gaming Waifu to emerge for the past 10 years. If Malon is beginning to get an Osaka-type boost, all bets are off – hell, the ranch girl’s relative lack of relevance to OoT’s plot might even count in her favor, making her the one Normal girl in the tournament field, and even a sort of blank slate Waifu.

At the end of the day, I could see this match either becoming another nailbiter, or Pyra dominating. Pyra should be too strong for Malon to easily beat her even at full power, but if all the stars align for the milk maiden, she might just be able to squeeze out a narrow win.