If you missed the live stream from Japan Nationals yesterday, you missed the most professionally produced yo-yo contest broadcast in history!
Live comments from some of the best players in Japan, and clips from each players’ preliminary round and previous contests freestyles made this a very enjoyable contest to watch, even if NicoNico’s video quality was not quite on par with Ustream.
On to the results, where we had heated battles between the World’s greatest players!
In 1A, in a somewhat unexpected — but not at all surprising — outcome, 5A World Champion Takeshi Matsuura beat last year’s champion Akitoshi Tokubuchi to claim the title! This makes him the unbelievable winner of three different divisions in the history of Japan Nationals, including five 5A titles and the 2010 3A title! Third place in 1A went to Yusuke Otsuka, who had a great freestyle at the EYYC Open division earlier this year.
World Champion Takuma Yamamoto won the incredibly strong 2A division this year, with a smooth freestyle, finishing over 10 points ahead of Shu Takada. Third place went to Ryo Yamashita, and just to give you a glimpse of how strong the division was, it also had Hiraku Fujii, Yasushi Furukawa, and history’s biggest World Title winner Shinji Saito in the final round. Shinji had a strong preliminary round, but was unable to go as cleanly in his final routine.
In 3A, Hajime Miura showed solid improvement over last year’s 8th place, and took the title with unquestionable confidence and skill. In the words of Drew Tetz: someone should tell this kid that 3A is supposed to be hard!
Rei Iwakura won 4A with a jaw-dropping routine, finishing 15 points ahead of Kazuaki Sugimura. Rei once again showed us what makes a great stage performance without sacrificing technique! Like at Worlds last year, some of the favorites had some yo-yo changes and ended up with low scores, like Futoshi Maruyama (3 drops, -9) and Naoto Okada (4 drops, -12).
The fiercest and most expected battle was in 5A, where Takuma Inoue and Takeshi Matsuura once again made us wonder if there’s any limit to their skills, with both players finishing over twenty points ahead of the third place. This time, an unfortunate yo-yo change by Takeshi meant Takuma Inoue finished ahead to claim his third National Title!
On to the results and winner videos, courtesy of C3yoyodesign!
1A
- Takeshi Matsuura
- Akitoshi Tokubuchi
- Yusuke Otsuka
- Shinya Kido
- Tatsuya Fujisaka
- Shion Araya
- Reiki Sekiya
- Ryota Ogi
- Yamato Murata
- Izuru Hasumi
- Masahiro Terada
- Iori Yamaki
- Tsukasa Ryu
- Toya Kobayashi
- Atsunori Tanimoto
2A
- Takuma Yamamoto
- Shu Takada
- Ryo Yamashita
- Hiraku Fujii
- Shuhei Kanai
- Shinji Saito
- Tomoyuki Kaneko
- Shunsuke Kawakami
- Yuzo Okada
- Yasushi Furukawa
- Toshiaki Onuma
3A
- Hajime Miura
- Takumi Yasumoto
- Mizuki Takimoto
- Minato Furuta
- Tomoya Kurita
- Kyohei Hosono
- Ken Takabayashi
- Ryosuke Ito
- Taiichiro Higashi
4A
- Rei Iwakura
- Kazuaki Sugimura
- Yohei Kagawa
- Futoshi Maruyama
- Takumi Yasumoto
- Tomohiko Zanka
- Naoto Okada
- Shinya Muraki
- Yuzo Okada
- Yuki Uchida
5A
- Takuma Inoue
- Takeshi Matsuura
- Hideo Ishida
- Sora Ishikawa
- Naoya Takeuchi
- Takayuki Kuriyama
- Yoshihiro Abe
- Ryota Torigoe
- Yasuhiro Uchida
