SiIvaGunner is a youtube channel that uploads "high quality video game rips", which is to say, edits of video game music. They operate under a bait and switch effect, so you'll click on what looks like a song from Undertale only to discover the melody has
been swapped out for a Queen song. Stuff like that. It's a funny prank on the surface, but once you get past that it becomes a really good mashup channel? They're really good at running jokes; you'll find a lot of Meet the Flintstones or Snow Halation going through their uploads, on top of like a bajillion other songs. And like, some of these get layered. It gets. Really stupid.

SiIvaGunner for the most part is real memey, but don't let that fool you. They're skilled at the craft, and just as capable of putting out genuinely emotional music as well. Like, it's seriously impressive just how much range this channel has.

In case the music on it's own isn't enough to keep you coming back, SiIvaGunner is constantly running channel events and the like where for a while the uploads will be themed. For example, there's Bootleg Day
where all the rips were related to bootleg games, the Spore 16th Anniversary event where they uploaded rips of the Spore franchise, or the Harlem Shakeover, where Ajit Pai took over the channel and posted nothing but Harlem Shake mashups for an entire week and a half.

For that last one Ajit also took over their twitter and was made a bunch of in-character tweets, which is the kind of thing SiIva loves to do, injecting a lot of personality into what would otherwise be a list of themed uploads. They do a lot of character and story stuff as well, there's almost always something going on storywise. Like, in February 2025 Stingy from LazyTown took over the channel and was claiming
sources as "mine" for the month until being booted, before forcibly returning later because the month of June belongs to him.

SiIvaGunner is really cool. I think they're cool.

The King for Another
Day Tournament

Here's how the tournament would have gone if I got to choose all the votes.

I have this spreadsheet for my hypothetical KFAD do-over! In this hypothetical, I'm doing the whole tournament myself, like all the votes, the arrangements, the balancing and even rigging the starting seed so the contestants I like do well. It goes without saying that that's a way overambitious idea, but like, that's why it's a spreadsheet instead of half a youtube playlist. Go look at it if you're interested!

The Hypothetical KFAD Spreadsheet

The King for Another Day Tournament was an event SiIvaGunner held in late 2019 where 32 contestants competed in a bracket style competition for the chance to take over the channel for a day. Each competitor represented a type of music from a different origin or genre, and during the tournament they had arrangements uploaded to promote their sources. Over the course of about a month people would vote on each matchup until a winner was declared. King for Another Day was a sequel to the original King for a Day tournament, which was a smaller version of the same concept that happened a year earlier. It was a lot more memey than its successor and pretty clearly built on smash hype. KFAD2 takes this kinda unserious event and turns it into a really well executed celebration of music as a whole, and even though it only lasted for a month, before I was even around to experience it, I can't stop thinking about it.

Anyway. Below is a list of all the contestants, in order of how much I like them, and a bunch of words about them. Go nuts.

(Keep in mind this whole section is WIP as all hell)

Daft Punk ft. Pharrell | Original placement: 5th

Daft Punk win in my book mostly because of taste. I'm fond of electronic and what I've had described to me as "repetitive" music, so they're very up my alley. I like the inclusion of Pharrell as source of variety, giving them access to some music outside of their niche as well as Despicable Me because why not I guess, and they made a healthy use of him during their run. As much as I would have loved for them to make the finals, I think 5th place is a fair placement. MissingNo and especially K are expected losses, and I don't think there was a wild card overpowered rip they could have pulled out to pull through. Maybe if they'd been on the other side of the bracket. Oh well. I do think their first loss to DJ Professor K is fitting, given how similar their sounds are minus K's sample heavy style.

Nico Nico | Original placement: 20th

Nico Nico, I think, is the closest to a YTP rep the tournament has. There's Robotnik and Jack & Elmo, but they're both limited to YTPs featuring themselves. Terebi-chan claims a way broader chunk of the YTP space, that is MADs and sources popular on Nico Nico. I really enjoy the messy and abrasive YTP tone Terebi-chan brings to the tournament, but the language barrier really doesn't help her very middling performance. Like, she lost to Johnny Bravo? Huh? I guess it makes sense, but it sucks to see. KFAD has actually gotten me into Nico Nico a bit! It's been fun exploring that area of the internet, a lot of what I find is from like 2008 which is when the site itself was at its peak. Nico Nico definitely wasn't likely to get far, but I definitely think she deserved to.

DJ Professor K | Original placement: 1st

Given the demographic of who was voting in KFAD, it makes a lot of sense that DJ Professor K won. Like, if there's anything SiIvaGunner fans love, it's video game music and mashups. Hideki Naganuma has a really sample heavy style of music and being able to pull from any Sega game is, frankly, a ridiculously good source. Of course this was gonna happen. Also notable is his immediate loss in KFAD1, being eliminated before his first arrangement, so the tragic backstory certainly helped. The win is deserved, though, the Naganuma style is just really versatile and really really good. This is not a hot take by any means.

Rhythm Masters | Original placement: 7th

Rhythm game music is a guilty pleasure of mine. I love my obnoxious loud dubstep and my fast as hell electronic stuff, and even that description leaves out a lot of what's a really loose genre. So having Rhythm Masters as highly placed as they are feels hard to justify, they kinda ride on the genre with not much more. But I think they're cool and that's all that counts. And the KFAD voters seem to agree, like they cracked the top 8 which is impressive and unexpected? The most notable thing about their run I think is in the first round when they lost to Jack & Elmo by 20 votes, which I think mostly came down to being at the start of the tournament before either were established.

Dr. Robotnik | Original placement: 13th

"Weird Al" Yankovic | Original placement: 8th

I've always been a fan of Weird Al. As a kid I had almost all of his music saved to my DS, and I treasured it. So placing him this highly is largely personal bias, but I think he deserves a high placement anyway, in no small part thanks to MJ's heavy lifting. Weird Al's discography, while full of range and personality, is really unfocused, so having the king of pop brings some much needed focus. An oddity in his sourcelist is "rips featuring songs Weird Al has parodied", which I'm sure is just poor wording, but on technicality he gets literally any song as long as Al has a parody of it. Lol. Lmao, even.

Mariya Takeuchi | Original placement: 2nd

Mariya is definitely the sleeper pick of the tournament. In my experience at least, it takes a bit to warm up to her sound, but once you do she's a total top tier. You can see this in her results; she had a lukewarm reception entering the tournament and lost to Jack Bros in round 1, but once she got a chance to show off she swept the loser's bracket and got all the way to the finals.Like, turnaround of the century. I think final match against K is really fitting for Mariya, the choppy and jumpy nature of her future funk contrasts well against K's heavy sampling, and their similar paths through the tournament(s) lends them a finale that's interesting narratively as well.

Jack & Elmo | Original placement: 10th

I think Jack & Elmo have a lot of missed potential. Like, if you've heard any of Tenacious D's work, or really any movie lately, you're familiar with Jack Black's style of comedic dad-rock. It's really something that isn't in KFAD otherwise, but for the most part it doesn't get used. There's Gravibus Octanguli which is like the ideal of what J+E can be, followed by nothing even similar. They focus on the YTP angle, which is fine, and "rips related to edutainment games" which does nothing for them except being an excuse to rip Pokemon Typing Adventure. It just incentivises making more arrangements of assorted video game soundtracks, which KFAD really isn't lacking in, instead of letting Jack Black fill his niche. Elmo really doesn't bring much to the pair, but the muppets are great, so I give him the pass.

Metal Ajit Pai | Original placement: 21st

Ajit Pai sucks so bad. Like look at him. He's Ajit Pai. He's so shitty I can't help but love him. He was in the first tournament, sucked, got outvoted 3:1 on the first round and straight up died. So when the second tournament rolls around the next year, they bring him back as a gundam? Gold. Ajit Pai isn't a good contestant or anything. Mecha related rips are a decent route for giving him a fighting chance, but unless you're a gundam nerd you're there for his Harlem Shake. Normally running one song into the ground is a bad strategy, but when you're as shitty as Metal Ajit Pai it goes from annoying to really really funny. Speaking of, notably Ajit Pai was the first KFAD contestant after K to get a takeover. The Harlem Shakeover was glorious, all because it really really sucks. God bless.

Eminem | Original placement: 31st

Eminem might be the biggest upset in the tournament. Not only did he place second last and lose in the first round, but even after that he was just kinda forgotten about. Like, he got 8 arrangements total. That isn't nothing, but it's a pittance in comparison to everyone else, which is a shame, because he represents such a huge genre of music that doesn't have a presence anywhere else in KFAD. I think a big reason he did so poorly was the salsa angle. It seems like SiIva team found it funnier than their audience, and the "songs in a salsa, flamenco or mariachi style", in contrast to Eminem's whole deal, is a miss tonally compared with the rest of KFAD. Some of the arrangements he did get were a highlight of the tournament, too, so it's a shame the votes turned out the way they did.

Jack Bros. | Original placement: 9th

"Rips featuring music for Atlus games" is a real nothing burger of a source on paper, so for that to be their only source is a really ballsy play. Luckily, Atlus is really good at injecting their games with personality, I think, each of the Persona games have such strong, unique identities, and I think it comes through in their arrangements. The fact Jack Bros are placed this high is as impressive as it is baffling, but it just feels like the correct placement, you know? It feels like cheating for such an empty sourcelist to be as cohesive as it is, but it works really well.

The Jazz Cats | Original placement: 6th

Pitbull and the Aliens | Original placement: 28th

MissingNo. | Original placement: 4th

MissingNo is a great example of a character-based contestant. Like, MissingNo's defining "character" traits are being glitchy and scary, which lends itself to the glitch hop genre as something that makes it stand out as a contestant. It works so well, even, that I wonder if it came about the other way around; they had the idea for a creepypasta contestant and MissingNo was the best mascot for that idea they could come up with. It's really good and cohesive, and as a result MissingNo stands out from the rest of its competition by, like, a lot, in its music as well as its presentation in general.

Men in Black | Original placement: 29th

I feel like Men in Black got done dirty. People sleep on Will Smith's music outside the two or three movies he did songs for, which, fair enough, but he has a very fun and kinda cheesy backlog which, alongside having Lil Uzi Vert who I admittedly know nothing about, makes him stand out a lot among the other contestants. The trouble, though, is that Howard brings rips featuring aliens, which totally overshadows Will's stuff. It makes sense this would happen, since KFAD's audience of VGM fans took the excuse to make rips of just any game they liked. Like. I know the bad guys in Bubsy are aliens. I know that qualifies Bubsy for their source list. But I really don't feel like it should, you know? I feel like such an overly broad source drags MiB down a lot and takes away from what makes them unique.

Johnny Bravo | Original placement: 11th

Nintendo Power | Original placement: 19th

Off the Hook ft. Paruko | Original placement: 25th

Adam Levine | Original placement: 30th

ZUN | Original placement: 22nd

HOBaRT | Original placement: 32nd

It's not a surprise to me that HOBaRT placed last. It's a character-based contestant, one that works significantly less because the character in question is mostly just an in-joke between the SiIva team. It isn't really representing anything in particular, its sourcelist is a list of things that are tangentially related to a mixer named HOBaRT, as well as Lil Jon for the meme. I'm quite fond of HOBaRT regardless, though, partly because I'm Australian and partly because that mixer is real funny, but it has a reputation as the joke contestant for a reason.

Donkey Kong | Original placement: 14th

KFAD has a problem with what I affectionately call "Nintendo slop", which is to say there are just SO many generic video game music reps, way more than there ever needed to be. Not that Nintendo music is bad, the "genre" is as popular as it is for a reason, but Zelda, Kirby, Banjo Kazooie, and the rest of them aren't different different enough from each other to be split between 7 different contestant slots. And, to be fair, most of these characters are holdovers from the first tournament where they had different priorities for picking contestants, which is why Donkey Kong's addition as a newcomer surprises me. Having the DKC cartoon at least is a good step to escape that label, but his addition is so. Redundant.

Mr. Krabs | Original placement: 18th

Wario Partners, LLP | Original placement: 16th

Papyrus | Original placement: 15th

Undertale is good and has good music. Everyone and their grandmother loves the Undertale soundtrack, so wanting an Undertale rep makes sense. But, Papyrus has nothing going on in KFAD. Look at his sourcelist, like rips about pasta? Skeletons? These are super meaningless sourceless, neither have literally anything to do with music at all. Puzzle games are a marginally better source but still unfocused. I think the crux of it is that there just isn't a vision here. Papyrus doesn't have a musical identity to build off, so when putting him in the tournament they just kinda list off a bunch of related items. Honestly, I don't think there's a way they could have done it better, Papyrus just doesn't have much going on. And, like, do we really need an Undertale rep?

King Dedede | Original placement: 17th

Dr. Piccolo | Original placement: 12th

I really want to like Dr. Piccolo. Just as a premise, it's like, sure, Dr Piccolo, whatever, why the hell not. He went to medical school, awesome. Alas, I know literally nothing about shonen anime, so beyond just enjoying the sounds it's hard to appreciate the unique stuff he brings to the tournament. On paper his sourcelist is subpar and uninteresing, but I think the Shonen Jump influence adds such a unique flavor to his arrangements, and medical practices are the perfect scope for a secondary source to contrast the energy of his main focus. I dunno. He's cool.

Quote | Original placement: 26th

I don't think you can just put anyone in KFAD and have it work. Ideally, in my opinion, a good contestant is there to represent a type of music, a genre or at least music from a background with a strong musical identity. Saying this, respectfully, who the hell is Quote. Dude has, like, nothing going on. Nicalis and Studio aren't at all known for their music, and while sure indie platformers are great and have good music, there's 0 cohesion. The concept of a 2010-era "indiepocalypse" rep isn't bad, but Quote isn't there for that, he's in KFAD because the MAGfest crowd voted him in, and they had to work a sourcelist around him. Even as someone who's personally very fond of that Meat Boy era of indie games, I'm really not surprised Quote performed as poorly as he did.

Thanos | Original placement: 24th

Thanos is the only veteran to get a downgrade between tournaments; in KFAD1 he was more like a 2018 memelord, on top of the Marvel source he gets Fireflies and (this might just be ambiguous wording but) Fortnite. In the second tournament he becomes a Disney shill instead, exchanging the Fortnite source for Disney, Pixar, Star Wars, and the theme parks. This is bloated as all hell, Thanos has a bajillion IPs to pull from but there's no real identity between them. I do really like this as a commentary on Disney, but if you're trying to win a music tournament it is not at all in your favor. There are still inklings of that shitposty Thanos, in his art he's just standing there with his boobs out, and Crank Dat Lion King is an all-timer. But in the transition between tournaments, Thanos lost the vision.

Solid Snake | Original placement: 23rd

Geno | Original placement: 27th

Law & Disorder | Original placement: 3rd

I don't get Law and Disorder. Like at all. They have the most nothing sourcelist next to Papyrus, like, music related to court cases? That's not a kind of music? Mystery is way too broad of a source to be interesting at all. Like, look at Who Let the Dogs Out?". The fact that their sourcelist lets them get so far from the spirit of their premise, as funny as it is, is a pretty big weakness. They also get Danganronpa and Ace Attorney, because like obviously, but I don't think either franchise is really known for its music? I just don't get why these guys in particular got in over literally anyone else, and I REALLY don't get how they made 3rd place as effortlessly as they did. Were there just that many Danganronpa fans out there voting irresponsibly? I don't know. I just really don't get it.