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
Robotnik is supposed to be KFAD's big YTP rep, and while that's made apparent all over his character and the way
he's portrayed, I don't think it comes through in his music. Like, the YTP arrangements are there and they're great, but for every
one there are another two more unremarkable arrangements of retro Sonic music. And I love retro Sonic music, that's part of why he's
so highly placed, but it does blend into what everyone else is doing. I think this is why he lost to Mr. Krabs in round 1; he hadn't
shown off the good stuff yet. Robotnik would probably have a more interesting sourcelist if given modern Sonic music, like the full
of attitude vocal tracks from Sonic Adventure onwards, but admittedly the retro source is a lot truer to his YTP roots.
"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 Mariya's Achilles' heel is that she gears just a bit too niche, as good and
cohesive as her stuff is, most voters are hard pressed to name a city pop song that isn't Plastic Love.
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 idea
to 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
The amount of effort SiIva team poured into this contestant is ridiculous. I think a jazz rep necessitated an OC,
picking someone from culture might have trended too niche, and it's really impressive how much worldbuilding went into the Jazz Cats,
to give the audience a reason to care about them. Their sourcelist is concentrated to a tee; rips with jazz giving them a unique
styling and rips about cats to give them a through line to play off. It's the bare bones of what I think makes a contestant worth
voting for, and that simplicity gives them a lot of room to just, do whatever. Because their sourcelist leaves so much room for
interpretation, they can do dual arrangements so easily, which is to say it's so conceptually easy to make a jazz version of whatever
song you like.
Pitbull and the Aliens | Original placement: 28th
It would have been so easy for this contestant to be "music by Pitbull" and leave it there, but instead they take
full advantage of his Latino heritage, pairing him with the aliens well known in that part of the world and letting the team
encompass the genres of music they're associated with. It really lets Pitbull and the Aliens shine as the international rep, in a
tournament filled with mostly American and Japanese contestants. They're just a really fun to listen to, and the greater focus helps
them to dodge the pitfall of "alien contestant" that Men in Black fell into.
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
Putting a Cartoon Network rep in the tournament is an obvious idea, enough so that despite not winning Johnny got
2 takeovers. In fact I'm surprised they didn't do a Nickelodeon equivalent as well. Saying that, Cartoon Network is a pretty
insubstantial source, there isn't really a through line between the CN shows' music. the Hanna-Barbara source is a bit better by
virtue of being old, but it's not the focus of the sourcelist. A major missed opportunity, in my opinion, is that they didn't give
him Elvis as a source. Like, come on, Johnny's whole schtick is that he's an Elvis impersonator, and having rock and roll would do so
much to set him apart from the competition.
Nintendo Power | Original placement: 19th
Among the rest of the generic Nintendo contestants, Nintendo Power feel a lot more mellowed out to me. As much as
their sourcelist is just a long list of IPs, having Animal Crossing and the Wii franchise is remniscient of the calm, all-audiences
era of gaming the Wii was so known for. Of course, Xenoblade and Zelda are nudges away from that cohesiveness, but there's definitely
the framework of a narrower, more focused contestant.
Off the Hook ft. Paruko | Original placement: 25th
The most notable thing about OtH's run is their immediate first round loss, in contrast to their 2nd place finish
in the first tournament. The cause for this is pretty simple, it just stopped being 2018. The hype around Splatoon 2 was a major buff
for their KFAD1 performance, and a year later they just didn't have that momentum anymore. They didn't see any real buff either,
which is a fair decision considering their previous results but it really stopped them from keeping up. It's a shame, too, because
the Splatoon franchise is so full of personality. There are so few games out there with as clear an identity as Splatoon, and so the
music really graduates above the rest of the Nintendo contestants to be its own thing. I would love to have seen Off the Hook do
better.
Adam Levine | Original placement: 30th
This guy is the tournament's nepo baby. Like, transparently so. Chaze the Chat, founder of SiIvaGunner, is
famously a big Maroon 5 fan, so the band has a large presence on the channel, and thus KFAD as well. His presence is welcome, though,
the inclusion of some real world musicians brings a lot of much-needed diversity to the roster. 90's alt-rock is the type of source
that a lot of contestants lack, a through line that identifies an arrangement as Adam's even if you don't know what the song is.
Maroon 5 isn't groundbreaking music by any means, but just by virtue of standing out Adam is one of the better contestants.
ZUN | Original placement: 22nd
Between the iconic instrumentation and the way ZUN puts notes together, Touhou has a very recognisable sound, so
on paper ZUN has a lot of potential as a contestant. But in practice, he mostly blends into the cohort of generic franchise reps. I
like Touhou which puts him on the higher end of this category, but a lot of his arrangements blend in with the others. Having music
from other bullet hell games is nice, but it's a bandaid fix on a pretty broad issue, and "rips related to alcohol" is more of a meme
than anything. I dunno, I feel like there's a version of ZUN that's a lot more interesting than what we got.
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
Mr. Krabs is a bit of a mixed bag. The calm, tropical tone of Spongebob music is so aesthetically different from
anything else in KFAD and is a really good source, but the rest is kinda just filler. A bit of filler is sometimes a good thing,
though; "rips about pirates" hearkens back to sea shanties and the like which very much fits the tone, and a Mr. Krabs that doesn't
get rips about crabs would be incomplete. "Rips about money" is too non specific to be interesting, though, and while it isn't in the
sourcelist I think there's a memey vibe to Krabs that kinda clashes with everything else.
Wario Partners, LLP | Original placement: 16th
These guys lean real heavily on the popularity of the franchises they represent. If you happen to not care about
Mario spinoffs, then there's absolutely no reason to vote for Wario Partners. They only have an aesthetic through line so much as
Wario has an aesthetic. This is an issue a good handful of contestants have, but for Wario Partners, the sourcelist's only substance
is "Do You Like Mario Kart". It might be a hot take but I think they're the most uninteresting contestants in the tournament, and
being uninteresting is possibly the worst thing a contestant can be.
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 even need an Undertale rep?
King Dedede | Original placement: 17th
At first I was gonna complain about how Kirby music is a mediocre source and unwise to rely on as his only
source, but what I think is more interesting is that Dedede was the most requested contestant in KFAD1. Like, of all the possibile
options, him? I guess it makes sense considering how important the Kirby franchise is to the SiIvaGunner channel, but on the other
side of the same coin, there was never a shortage of Kirby music on the channel. There really isn't much to say about his sourcelist
without repeating myself; all his eggs are in one basket. If you aren't a Kirby fan you have zero reason to vote for him.
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
Snake is the contestant I always forget is there. And, frankly, so did everyone else. He's just such a nothing
contestant, like, his main source is music from Hideo Kojima games? That's a wild source, like, Metal Gear and Castlevania have good
music, sure, but Kojima isn't a composer, he's a director, why should he be the center of a sourcelist? And his other source,
box-related rips, is like, laughably bad. Snake, I think, has the Geno issue of being in KFAD just because of Smash hype despite
lacking substance, but at least Geno is cohesive. Snake is just. Here.
Geno | Original placement: 27th
Geno has nothing going on. "Music from Mario RPGs" is such a narrow source, and a subset of Wario Partners'
sourcelist. Like, they get all the Mario spinoffs, except the RPGs. Geno is debuffing them just by existing. It's not like he makes
up for it with his other sources, either, no disrespect to Yoko Shimomura but her body of work isn't a coherent source unless you
really want Kingdom Hearts arrangements. Geno has the same issue as Quote in that he just isn't interesting enough to compete, he
doesn't really represent anything besides Smash hype. Because that's why he's here, the first KFAD was so massively built on Smash
hype, and everybody wanted to see Geno in Smash. I honestly can't help but feel bad for Geno. Guy never had a chance.
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.
