A super busy day awaits players and visitors tomorrow in Tokyo, as over 200 players will be competing in the preliminary round! The full list of competitors can be found on the official website.
The competitor list is a lot more diverse on the second day, as a lot of players come seeded from their respective national contests, and it’ll be quite interesting to see how the difference in styles play out on stage.
In addition to all the players qualified from the wildcard round, we have some top-notch players in this round:
There are still 95 players in the 1A division, including some strong contenders for the world title, including Yusuke Otsuka, Ryota Ogi, and Christopher Chia, and crowd favorites Palli Gudmundsson, Evan Nagao, and Riccardo Fraolini.
In 2A, the most expected performance is from Hiraku Fujii, and while the wildcard round was almost exclusively Japanese, the preliminary round gets a healthy number of foreigners, including four Korean players, a very welcome sight from one of the traditionally less represented countries in a World Yo-yo Contest.
3A gets the addition of World Champion Minato Furuta for the preliminary round, along with seeded players from Taiwan, Singapore, China, Korea, Malaysia, and the USA.
The second largest division in this round is 4A, with 33 players still fighting for a spot in the semi-final round. The wildcard round winners are joined by big names in this division, including Tsubasa Onishi, Jeon Ji Hwan, and Futoshi Maruyama. Tough competition for sure!
The highlights for the preliminaries in the 5A division are some of the world’s most technical and entertaining players, like Bryan Jardin, Sora Ishikawa, and Ryota Torigoe. And with both Hiroyasu Ishihara and Shingo Terada coming from the wildcard round, this division should be a delight to watch!
Tomorrow we also get to see the new “Over 40” division, with both yo-yo dads and veteran players competing at the main stage.
The Iron Mod contest, a tradition from the Orlando era, is also back this year, and will be held on the first floor for all to see! In this time-limited live mod contest, two teams of modders will need to come up with the best possible mod that includes a secret ingredient that will be revealed tomorrow! This time we’ll have Team USA vs. Team Japan, with mod experts Rob Tsou and Kyle Weems representing the US, and custom yo-yo god Shinobu Konmoto and Yuumi Shiga (The Mod Rangers) as Team Japan!
Be sure to catch the live stream starting at around 9:40AM Japan time! (12:40AM GMT)