Overall that is an excellent and neat report as well as coverage you did on AND at Kombo Klash Japan 
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Hi, I didn’t forget your questions at all. However, I must confess that I didn’t have enough time to talk about the future of KI and how Japanese players perceived it. Most of the talks I had were about where players came from, how and where they played KI and who their favorite characters are.
One of the question you had was about their top 5. Well, that was an interesting question as very few of the players actually played with what they felt were some of the best characters in the game: Jago, Spinal, Riptor, and Omen (lol). Everyone played the character they liked and that was reflected in the diversity of the chosen characters. For example, there was only one Orchid, and I was ensured that was also the only Orchid in the entire country: DragonSpits. He played an aggressive Orchid as you can see here:
Around the 46:00 you can see the Orchid: http://www.twitch.tv/ultraarcade/v/22346862
They gave me an opportunity to hang out with them at the “Black Eye”. There I will surely ask the KI players about the upcoming PC release and other competing fighting games. But also try to clarify the reasons behind their top 5 picks for the KI roster.
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I’ll really look forward to that! Thanks for the cool write up! Very interesting! Also thanks for tagging me to make sure I saw it 
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Cool, thanks!
In addition to questions about top 5 and all that, which are interesting, I’m pretty curious about “why” they’re playing KI (why KI? why not other Japanese-made FGs? what in particular about KI is enticing to you, and do you think it can be made more popular among other Japanese players? what do you like about KI that other fighting games don’t seem to give you?). So any question you can think to ask that helps get at this “why” topic, I’m interested in hearing the answer to.
This is fantastic. Well done! It sounds like a cool event. Good luck at Black Eye. Looking forward to hearing more.
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This is so great! I’ll share it on twitter!
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Which is something that I respect a lot. There could have been more, but I remember only one player (Ogty) doing a counter-pick switching from Hisako to Maya. I would have to look up and analyze the tournament footage. Anyway, thanks for enjoying the article.
@Infilament I will ask them for sure.
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Ahh this is a really great post, it’s great to get some info on the KI players in Japan, and just the general scene as well.
I asked him “why Riptor?”. I got a surprisingly straight answer: “Riptor is cute. Look at her. Don’t you think you so?”.
This was by far my favorite part haha. What a good answer. I look forward to seeing this guy play more!
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When he said it, I had absolutely no response and I remembered mumbling something like “yeah, yeah”. I was totally without words
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Thanks so much for going in-depth with this post! I’m really glad you made the effort to elaborate so much on the KI Japan scene. It was also refreshing seeing Omen as a serious contender.
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Awesome stuff BoJima.
Added to the front page: http://www.ultra-combo.com/community-blog-exploring-the-japanese-ki-scene/
If any other Community Members would like to feature their KI community or talk about it, be sure to reach out to me on twitter at @CEOJebailey so we can share it!
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Awesome seeing a Riptor main fighting for the glory of Dinosauria. Also, it’s awesome that KI is getting some exposure outside of the English-speaking world.
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LOL at this. To be honest, that is how I pick characters in fighting games. Oh, this character looks cute. Or Hey, this character is cool. I like his hair.
(Exception: Jago & Kim Wu, as I grew up with them during my childhood.)
Like I have literally chosen Rashid as my Street Fighter V main when the game releases, due to him having tornados, and a Scouter. Lol. So I totally understand him liking Riptor due to her cuteness.
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I have nucoren in my friend list. he seems like a cool guy and atm is playing halo5 and KI.
this game definitely needs more people like them.
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To all,
Thank you again for liking this effort. If you hadn’t shown your interest by way of answering positively in the poll then it’s safe to say that I wouldn’t have put in the time and effort. So thank you very much. Meanwhile, I also received a cool personal response from one of the main players featured in this report. I was happy to see that it also created a buzz on twitter among the local Japanese KI community. Once I find the time I will ask some of them to do an interview with me as a follow up to this article.
One last thing, over the past few days I have cleaned up the article and corrected some language and grammar errors to improve the overall readability. That’s all.
Stay tuned for more 
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That’s cool that you did this. Technically you can say single-handedly, you have helped the world know about the Local Japanese KI Community.
Let that sit in your brain.
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Totally agree.
As I am in Japan, I am looking into this and what I can do to help bridge the communication gap and facilitate this to an extent.
For example, there are regular (monthly) KI online tournaments open to everyone but invitations are normally sent from a Japanese streaming service’s (something like twitch) twitter account in the Japanese language. Ignoring timezone differences, it would be great if more English (foreign language) speaking players would/could join these regular open tournaments.
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To everyone, I am preparing an interview with one of the top players in Japan. I will post a poll later with some questions before conducting the interview…stay tuned.
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Here’s the follow up interview that @BoJima404 did Japanese KI scene: interviews with Ret(NUCOren) and Kappy!
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