I mean, I'm sure what I'm about to describe is a trope, I'm just wondering if it has a(n) (un)official name. I'm kind of too lazy to search all of TV Tropes and I wouldn't even know where to start, and hopefully if this does have a name, someone recognizes it.
So, you know how whenever there's a tournament (usually martial arts or fighting) the two most important and usually most powerful characters (usually the protagonist and antagonist) will never face off against each other until the finals. Like no matter what, regardless of all the possible pairings, these two won't fight until the final match. While this is pretty unlike and unrealistic, it does serve to heighten the drama. I mean, if the hero and villain - the two most powerful character - face off in round 1, the rest of the tournament is going to be boring. Or maybe this is done because the hero isn't yet strong enough to face the big bad and needs more experience and training in the beginning matches.
I've seen this theme in a numbers of stories, mostly anime. Like in Yu Yu Hakusho, Team Urameshi doesn't fight Team Toguro until the finals, and even then, the leaders of each team don't fight until the last match of the team fight. And in Dragon Ball Z, after Cell is defeated and Goku is in other world, there's that tournament where he fights Pikon in the last round. Like, they set Pikon up pretty early as this powerful equal or even superior to Goku, and while they both fight in the tournament, they don't face each other until the finals (to obviously increase the drama and excitement).
So yeah, this sound like anything familiar, or is a yet unnamed trope? If so, I want to be the one to name. I want to call it the Super Dr. Epic Fighting Tournament Trope.
I had a great idea for a tournament story where the hero and the rival join, and proceed to lose every single match, finally culminating in a final battle between the two as the lowest ranked competitors, and each one is trying not to be in last.
__________________
New World: What's it about? Fencing Fighting. True Love. Strong Hate. Harsh Revenge. A Few Giants. Lot's of Bad Men. Lot's of Good Men., Two or Three Beautiful Women. Beasties Monstrous and Gentle. Some Swell Escapes and Captures. Death, Lies, Truth, Miracles and a Little Sex. In short, it's about Pokemon.here
Sounds a lot like one case of The Only One Allowed to Defeat You .
Nah, I don't think that would apply here... This refers more to... like bad guys or rivals joining with the hero to defeat some other threat so they can beat some other bad guy... or something like that.
Actually, I don't think this has a name yet. Or... any subversion I can think of. Though, naturally, the final battle has to be in some kind climatic, if the tournament gets finished, that is.
The page for the Tournament Arc trope seems to (sort of) cover your example in one of it's paragraphs:
...Tournaments are almost always single-elimination; the hero will not face the same opponent more than once. Proper seeding will be entirely ignored, and yet even so the hero will always find himself facing tougher and tougher opponents every round. His final opponent will probably be The Rival or a Big Bad or Dragon.
The 'Tournament Arc' trope itself is fairly broad however your example could be considered a specific subset of it.
__________________
"Bea is dead. In an alternate future she would have borne your son. In the future past of Space Quest IV, your son would've saved your life. But she didn't, so he couldn't -- therefore you aren't."
- Space Quest V death scene
When reading this thread, I get a www.heresy-online.net password query. Does someone host an avatar image there or something? People were discussing the popup in a thread, and it seems like it might be caused by that.
This is probably a combination of tropes. First, the tournament. That's a very common trope / story element in certain types of works. Second, the opponent being the hero's equal, and more capable than the last enemy the hero defeated, is probably a separate trope.
Last edited by endoperez : 10-07-2012 at 02:30 PM.
Answer to the heresy online thing can be found here .
__________________ IMPORTANT: Back, after a long absence. Apologies to everyone I left wondering where I was.
Quote:
Dumbledore is dead but had a horcrux so might still be alive to it being fake and him dead but not stopping her from using the having a horcrux on you letting you live from a killing curse.
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Glyphstone
Epileptic monkeys. Boxing gloves. Typewriters. That is all.
Sorry guys - that popup message was due to the images in my sig (seems Heresy-Online has gone on the blink). I've removed the offending images so shouldn't happen anymore.
Quote:
Awesome! Then I'm the trope namer for this.
Hmmm, well my post was actually intended to suggest the opposite of that, namely that the broader Tournament Arc trope already covers your example (and even has a paragraph which more directly relates to it which is why I quoted it) - your example is essentially a Tournament Arc with a final battle involving The Rival/Big Bad/Dragon/whoever-the-final-opponent-is at the end. All you're doing is taking that specific circumstance and trying to spin another trope off of it.
But hey, if you feel strong enough about it whack it up on TV Tropes and see what happens.
__________________
"Bea is dead. In an alternate future she would have borne your son. In the future past of Space Quest IV, your son would've saved your life. But she didn't, so he couldn't -- therefore you aren't."
- Space Quest V death scene
But hey, if you feel strong enough about it whack it up on TV Tropes and see what happens.
I might just do that. And everyone will think "The Super Dr. Epic Fighting Tournament Trope is the perfect name for that trope and isn't misleading at all."
I might just do that. And everyone will think "The Super Dr. Epic Fighting Tournament Trope is the perfect name for that trope and isn't misleading at all."
Not too argue too much against it but I still wonder if this is indeed a universal trope or if someone can name a subversion that's not due to a aborted tournament.
Not too argue too much against it but I still wonder if this is indeed a universal trope or if someone can name a subversion that's not due to a aborted tournament.
It's actually a pretty common (well, at least a couple of time) subversion on sport manga, of suddenly making the main character fight the supposedly strongest character. I can think a few of it at least.
Maybe fighting the ultimate rival early isn't that common, but I think fighting the supposedly strongest participant in the tournament is pretty common.
A few is from Eyeshield 21, when the seeding make them fight the supposedly strongest team on kanto tournament, Shinryuji Naga, as first match (it was supposed to be a HUGE surprise).
They also fight their ultimate rival, Oujo White Knights (and their last fight ever, in fact), in semi final, and fight a previously completely never heard team for the final.
Another one that I can remember is in Slam Dunk, where they also fight the supposedly strongest team and the winner of the previous tournament early in the interhigh.
Wow, all these links to TV Tropes and not a single:
Warning: TV Tropes is Highly Addictive, Enter at your own risk
But yeah, that does seem to be a pretty standard trope, and I think that's a wonderful name for it
__________________
Quotes:
Spoiler
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hashmir
When I die, I donate my body to the cause of whatever ******* finds it first.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bloodgruve
Really though, how effin scary would the beach be if an octopus could launch itself outta the water at a 200' move speed every 6 seconds. I'd never go to the beach again... I thought flying sharks were scary...
Blood~
It isn't necessarily unrealistic depending on the tournament format.
There are several forms of single elimination formats.
The first is a fixed bracket. Examples include the tennis grand slams and the U.S. college basketball tournament. In these, the bracket is created before the tournament begins. These can be seeded or unseeded. In a fixed bracket tournament, half of the competitors aren't in your half of the draw. So, even without seeding, there is a 50-50 chance that you won't face the most powerful opponent (assuming neither of you lose beforehand) until the finals.
The second is reseeding after every round. The examples that comes to mind are the National Hockey League playoffs and, to some extent, the National Football League playoffs. In a reseeding tournament, the competitors are reseeded after every round. So, if you are seeded the lowest, you'll have to face off against the highest remaining seed every round. This format is toughest for low seeds.
The third is a random draw to determine matchups after every round. The FA Cup in England does this.
Normally, you will face tougher opponents as you advance. Remember, weaker competitors are being eliminated every round. In addition, in a seeded tournament, if you have a good seed you'll naturally face tougher opponents (assuming the favorites win). Conversely, if you are seeded poorly, you'll likely have an easier second round than the first round (unless it is a reseeded tournament).
In a totally random seeded fixed tournament, you'll still see enemies get progressively tougher in general, and there's a 50-50 chance that the most powerful opponent will not be in your half of the bracket.
Even in a random draw, it is certainly plausible that due to random chance that you avoid drawing the toughest opponent until the final. Again, enemies will, in general, get progressively tougher as weaker enemies are eliminated by fellow competitors.
It isn't necessarily unrealistic depending on the tournament format.
It's not so much "The last fight is the toughest" that's the trope. It's "The last fight is the most climactic." As in, if you have any major rival in the tournament, you will fight them in the last round. If there's someone you hate even more (say, the Philadelphia Cacti are your friendly rivals, but the Cincinatti Octopodes burned your hometown and killed your coach), you will fight the rival on the second-to-last round and the villain on the last one. That's unrealistic. Particularly in sports, since rivalries usually form between teams that can't face each other in the finals (eg, in US football, rivalries tend to form between teams in the same division, while the Super Bowl is fought between teams from separate conferences).
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winterwind
Mewtarthio, you have scared my brain into hiding, a trembling, broken shadow of a thing, cowering somewhere in the soothing darkness and singing nursery rhymes in the hope of obscuring the Lovecraftian facts you so boldly brought into daylight.
It's not so much "The last fight is the toughest" that's the trope. It's "The last fight is the most climactic." As in, if you have any major rival in the tournament, you will fight them in the last round. If there's someone you hate even more (say, the Philadelphia Cacti are your friendly rivals, but the Cincinatti Octopodes burned your hometown and killed your coach), you will fight the rival on the second-to-last round and the villain on the last one. That's unrealistic. Particularly in sports, since rivalries usually form between teams that can't face each other in the finals (eg, in US football, rivalries tend to form between teams in the same division, while the Super Bowl is fought between teams from separate conferences).
Actually, in some sports you can face your rival in the finals. For example, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal in many tennis grand slam tournaments*. In addition, some tournaments don't have the early rounds by divisions or conferences. Granted, you can't have a Red Sox/Yankees or Cardinals/Cubs World Series or a Giants/Cowboys Super Bowl. But you can have a Manchester United/Manchester City FA Cup Final or a North Carolina/Duke NCAA Basketball tournament final.
*This is probably the closest real life analogy. Federer and Nadal have faced each other ten times in grand slam tournaments, eight of those ten were in the finals.
RSS Feeds: 
So, is this a trope in fiction?
