Now things are getting serious! The next two weeks will see who ends up this year's Elite Four, and then another two weeks after that will see a Champion.
Welcome back:
MATCH 1: Precocious
MABEL PINES
I picked Mabel Pines for this competition because, as an upcoming article will detail, I recently fell in love with Gravity Falls. And wouldn't you know it? My two favorite characters on the show happen to be arguably the two most popular, rife for inclusion into my little self-indulgent annual tournament. To me, Mabel provided the show with a solid majority of the laughs but also much of the heart.
One of the harder aspects of putting this competition together is finding a picture that encapsulates the character in question, but truly this screenshot from the show's opening sequence tells you all you need to know about Mabel.
ANAKIN SKYWALKER
I picked Anakin Skywalker for this competition because, well, after Jar Jar, Yoda, and Sebulba, he was next in line on my Favorite Star Wars characters list for inclusion in the tournament (next year's SW entry will be farther down my list of favorites). Additionally, while the Darth Vader half of his character is widely known and loved (even winning Star Wars.com's "This is Madness!" one year), historically little attention has been paid to the Anakin half or the character as a whole. In my eyes, Darth Vader is a cool-looking but relatively one-note and uninteresting villain, Anakin Skywalker is a relatable but off-putting hero, and it's the entire character arc and journey from one to the other and back again that makes him one of my favorite Star Wars characters and worthy of being the arguable protagonist of the Saga in general (a flawed, tragic one). Put another way, I find Anakin slightly more interesting than Vader, but neither of them would be in my Top 10, let alone Top 5, if they weren't the same person.
It is for this reason that I am ambivalent about how much I root for him in this year's contest. On the one hand, like Yoda, he's gotten so much recognition as Vader that I feel it should be another contestant's time in the spotlight. On the other hand, as Anakin he is criminally underrated (to put it mildly), so he does deserve to win AS Anakin.
***
MATCH 2: Kingdom of Monsters
TORIEL
I picked Toriel for this competition because I fell head-over-heels in love with Undertale when it was first released, and I had hoped enough time would have passed with last year's Tournement of Losers that I could use Undertale characters without it being a spoiler. I still felt bad including any information on my choices, and could not choose my aboslute #1 favorite character this year because of it being the most spoiler-riffic of the game (for those who have played the game, I feel similarly about that character as I wrote about Anakin above).
Of the remaining characters, Toriel is definitely at the top. I made it a point to put her in the Right Bracket, hoping a lot of people agreed with me as the only time the Right Bracket even came close to taking the final prize was the tie in the very first tournament. Though by waiting this long for the mass Undertale hysteria to die down, I may have shot myself in the foot.
GODZILLA
I picked Godzilla for this competition because I wanted to see the Godzilla/King Kong match play out on Geekdom Madness. There was really no other reason, I thought it would be cool.
Naturally, being a huge fan of both dinosaurs and dragons, Godzilla was who I was rooting for in that particular match-up. That he got this far is a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.
***
Final Verdict
Usually as we head into the Quarter-Final, there's at least one character I hope doesn't make the Elite Four. Not this time - Any of these Quarter-Final matches are Elite-Four-worthy on their own.
As always, make sure you're viewing the WEB version of the site and vote in the
polls on the right-hand side of the screen. Polls close Friday at 5:00 p.m., and
results posted on Saturday. Feel free to discuss your picks in the
comments below.
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