 How's it going everybody? Dato Doi here, and in today's Dragon Ball Fighters video, we're going to be discussing how Yamcha, a character that most would consider around mid-tier, ended up winning the biggest Dragon Ball Fighters tournament so far. The footage we'll be looking at today is the grand finals from the first stop on the Dragon Ball Fighters World Tour. For these players, the stakes are high because the person who wins this tournament is guaranteed a spot in the final event. The players competing for this prize are none other than Goichi and Kazunoko, two very good and most importantly very experienced players. I'm bringing up their experience because I really want to emphasize these players and how much it takes them to crack on defense, and I'm also going to show you multiple examples throughout this video on how Yamcha is able to help Kazunoko break through Goichi's defense. Before I get too ahead of myself though, I do want to say if you want to watch the grand finals in its entirety, make sure to go do that on Bandai Namco's official fighting channel. The link of course will be in the description. Before we go too in-depth on Yamcha's role in the team, I think it's important that we take a step back and really take a look at Kazunoko's entire team, why he runs the characters and the way he does, and what the overall goal of his team is. Throughout the grand finals, Kazunoko opted to run Kid Buu in the point slot, Adult Gohan in the mid slot, and then of course in his anchor we have Yamcha. Now already his team does look a little off because we're more used to seeing Adult Gohan be in that point slot. But I think what's happening here is that Kazunoko really doesn't value Kid Buu's assist as much as Adult Gohan's when they're in the middle of the stage. In fact there are multiple points throughout this grand finals where at the beginning of a match Kazunoko is able to land a hit with Kid Buu, have Yamcha keep them block, go for the Kid Buu mix up and have Gohan come in and cover for him just in case the opponent tries to click a button. This is something you really wouldn't get with Adult Gohan on point because Kid Buu's assist does have a little bit of startup time. So now that we know why he runs the characters in the order he does, we can start to get a better picture of what the goal for this team is overall, and that is to put the opponent in a state where they have to block and just eat a mix up. This strategy is at its best by far when Adult Gohan is on the field with both Kid Buu and Yamcha alive. If Kazunoko has you in the corner with this setup available to him, you're not leaving that corner for a long time and you're going to have to eat a number of mix ups before you're able to get out. You can see as much in this clip here. Another thing demonstrated in this clip is Yamcha's ability to allow Kazunoko to get a little more flexible on his offense. Because Yamcha holds his opponent in this state of block, Kazunoko can opt to continue pressure, stagger his pressure, or even just try to change sides on his opponent. Really throughout this entire set, Yamcha was really holding him down. Yamcha's job and what he does well is hold that opponent down and Kazunoko is taking full advantage of that. In fact, as crazy as it is to say, even though Yamcha's a core part of his team and what he's trying to do, the dream is for Yamcha to stay in the back, mind his own business, only come out for assist and when he needs to DHC to try to take an opponent down. You can see here in this clip when he guard cancels out from Kid Buu into Yamcha, he very quickly after only a short period of time, very quickly guard cancels back into Kid Buu. He really does not want to be playing as Yamcha if he doesn't have to. Yamcha simply gives too much value to his team when he's in the back as an assist. Another area where this assist was essential to Kazunoko was right after Super Dash. Again, throughout the entire set, Kazunoko would jump in the air, stagger his Super Dash, go for it. Even if he missed or Goichi blocked it, he would still click that Yamcha assist button and have Goichi have to block that as well. And again, because he's busy blocking Yamcha, that means Kazunoko gets to land on the ground, get his feet right, and then continue his offensive pressure. It really isn't saying how much pressure Yamcha's assist was putting on during neutral. So just the short recap of everything Yamcha's assist has been bringing to this team so far, he's been able to throw it out in neutral after Super Dash to pick up on conversions. He's been able to use the assist to make sure Goichi keeps blocking, so that he's able to get mix-ups with both Adult Gohan and Kid Buu respectively. And the final area where Yamcha's assist was incredibly useful was picking up conversions for combos. Multiple times throughout this grand finals, Kazunoko would land a hit and then use Yamcha's assist to make sure that he could continue that combo to the point where it would knock out a very important character on Goichi's side. In a three-on-three game like this, every knockout is a critically important step to winning the game. So the fact that Yamcha is able to contribute so much to each takedown is a fact that adds massively to the value he brings to the team. Of course, there are going to be times when Yamcha has to come out on his own and actually be the main star of the show. Usually after a level three with Yamcha when he has him down in the corner, you don't really just want to switch and give up that pressure. So that's where you're going to see Kazunoko stay in with Yamcha, and there are actually a lot of benefits to doing this. If Yamcha has Kid Boost still alive, for example, the mix-ups are actually insane. You see here in this clip he goes behind with the Wolf Fang Fist, jumps over, crosses him up and kicks him. Boom, seals the deal right there with the Dragon Rush Tournament over Kazunoko wins. Speaking more on the Wolf Fang Fist, even without any assist, Kazunoko is still able to keep him in this Will He Won't He situation when he decides to back up and then jump in to cover his jump out with a jumping medium kick. It allows Yamcha to feel like such a threat on offense, even when he's really not doing anything too dangerous. And I think with that, that really sums up everything I thought Yamcha really brought to this team and how he took the win in the first stop at the Dragon Ball Fighter's World Tour. And I really don't even think it's too much of a stretch to say that Yamcha was the MVP for Kazunoko. He really allowed characters like adult Gohan and Kid Boo to come in and show why their mix-ups are so devastating. Yamcha's assist almost acted as a pseudo cornered, locking Goichi down so that his options were limited on what he wanted to do on defense. And when you have to just sit there and block for so long, eventually even the most experienced players are going to crack. And that's what Kazunoko set out to do from the beginning. And that's what he did. Thank you so much for watching this video. Let me know what you thought of it down below in the comments. While you're down there, if you like these videos and want to see more videos like this one from the channel, make sure to hit the like button and subscribe. I'm Dato Doya. I'll see you in the next video.