With almost 7,000 attendees and a multitude of featured games, Evo Japan 2024 ended up much larger than last year with the help of some new arrivals and fan-favorite classics.
Like we previously did for Tekken 8, we’ve gone and gathered the final character usage stats for Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, The King of Fighters 15 and Street Fighter 3: Third Strike.
Granblue Rising saw most of its cast represented in the top 64 with 23 characters receiving main play, and 17 of them were used by at least two competitors.
Unsurprisingly, Nier and Siegfried were the most popular fighters although neither of them reached grand finals where the only repeat pick was Seox.
The only characters left on the sidelines were Vane, Lucilius, Avatar Belial, Vira, Eustace, and Ladiva while Anila and Percival were at least used as secondary choices.
Over 760 entrants came in to compete in Granblue this weekend, so the top 64 here includes the prevailing 8% of competitors that you can check out the full breakdown for below as well as the other titles.
• Nier – 8
• Siegfried – 6
• Seox – 5
• Djeeta – 4
• Lancelot – 4
• Narmaya – 4
• Cagliostro – 3
• Charlotta – 3
• Grimnir – 3
• Metera – 3
• Belial – 2 (1)
• 2B – 2
• Beelzebub – 2
• Ferry – 2
• Soriz – 2
• Zeta – 2
• Zooey – 2
• Anre – 1
• Gran – 1
• Katalina – 1
• Lowain – 1
• Vaseraga – 1
• Yuel – 1
• Anila – 0 (1)
• Percival – 0 (1)
• Unknown – 1
As for the King of Fighters, we ended up seeing a pretty nice number of 37 mains used in the top 32, and 26 of them were used at least twice.
Isla was by far the biggest standout with over one third of those featuring her on their three-man teams where she was predominately used in the anchor position.
That carried over to the finalists too with half of top 8 used Isla and Geese with all of those maining Mr. Howard reaching the final 4.
With 456 players signed up, the top 32 here represents the best 7% of finalists.
• Isla – 11
• Benimaru – 6 (1)
• Heidern – 6 (1)
• Geese – 5 (1)
• Chizuru – 4
• Sylvie – 4
• Ash – 3
• Athena – 3
• Iori – 3
• Kukri – 3
• Ramón – 3
• Rock – 3
• Shun’ei – 3
• Yashiro – 3
• Yuri – 3
• Clark – 2 (1)
• Ángel – 2
• Antonov – 2
• Blue Mary – 2
• Duo Lon – 2
• Gato – 2
• Goenitz – 2
• Maxima – 2
• Meitenkun – 2
• Orochi Yashiro – 2
• Ryo – 2
• Andy – 1 (1)
• Chris – 1
• Joe – 1
• K’ – 1
• King of Dinosaurs – 1
• Kula – 1
• Mai – 1
• Orochi Chris – 1
• Ralf – 1
• Shermie – 1
• Shingo – 1
Street Fighter 3 showed that while it remains a favorite among many players, the balance is still heavily in the favor of the top tiers.
We ended up seeing 11 different mains in top 32, but 20 of those spots were taken up by either Chun-Li or Yun.
Top 8 by itself was made up of five Yuns, two Chun-Lis and one Yang.
Interestingly, there were no Kens among the top cut at all though Ryu and Akuma made it far into the big tournament.
Similar to KOF15, Third Strike’s top 32 features the last 7% of competitors who made it the farthest in the bracket.
• Chun-Li – 11
• Yun – 9
• Ibuki – 2
• Makoto – 2
• Ryu – 2
• Akuma – 1
• Alex – 1
• Dudley – 1
• Hugo – 1
• Urien – 1
• Yang – 1
Note: Numbers in parenthesis represent secondary or side character choices.