orion, theres a big difference between stating it as the opinion of one guy based on a feeling with no reliable facts to back it up, (which is fine) and stating it as some inexcerable, undeniable fact that has been proven over and over. It hasnt, so trying to put it forth as such is ignorant. I think you can agree to that too.
I didn't know it was necessary to clearly label something as my own opinion in order to not have it confused with facts. Since you've seen yourself that I'm quite obviously talking about my own opinion here [based on the lack of facts as you figured yourself] I don't see how it's even necessary? Not that it surprises me that people are naturally assumed to be stupid in this thread but - believe it or not - I *can* be serious if asked.
[collapse="Some facts:"]
Sweet Pea is 4th-5th best MK in Japan [Otori, El and either Akira or Shikkoku are better] and he places 13th at Apex. Additionally he's tied for the highest placing Diddy Kong even though he's again "only" about 4th in Japan with that character [Gano, Nagahari and Tige being better]. Obviously, I'm not asking you to take these results completely at face value [I'm not claiming that Sweet Pea's Diddy is as good as Gne5] but you can definitely draw some conclusions from that:
Their MK and Diddy players are most likely at a similar level to the US players of said characters with about the same amounts of MKs on that level and *more* Diddy Kongs.
Their second best Pit has handily placed in the top 20 as well losing to @lly and - well - Sweet Pea. The "best" US Pit at that time [who uses much more MK anyway] did not make it out of pools. That's not to mention that they have a Pit above Earth's level [Masashi] and about 2 on a slightly lower level [Mao and Kokeiro]. Needless to say, their Pit's are not only "better" than the rest of the US but also to an extent where they are an actual tourney threat.
I'm not even going too deep into the Brood argument since stuff like "he lost to J@sh and Ch1bo gtfo" is inevitable. Point is that their second best Olimar has beaten your 2 best players in tournament - I don't even know to what level you have to go down in Japan to find a Snake who gets two stocked by him and solidly beaten on his own CP. Why don't you watch what Shu does to him with Snake? Hell, even Shogun does better than him and he's far away from being one of their better Snake players. Brood also consistently loses to Yui...
Of course you can break this down into little mini-quotes and argue how this and that is wrong and how X did Y to Z and therefore is better but if you look at the *sum* of what we know and add things like their Diddy Kongs being able to Naner lock infinite people [and still barely scratch top 20 anyway] into account or Rain hardly doing better there in tournament than at Apex [despite only a fraction of its entrants in japanese tourney] then it's hard to deny that they're ahead of us. Their MKs and Diddy Kongs are most likely equal to ours, while their Snake are [or at least used to be] just flat-out better. Falco on a similar level, Fox, Olimar and Pit beyond yours and don't even get me started on ICs.[/collapse]
