What other candidates have the same level of evidence? Do you see other songs being copyright taken down relating to other characters? Do you see content of them missing from this game? Do you see anything pointing to them?
- Sora has *NOTHING* going for him but being popular. He also has Disney as a massive roadblock. If only 1 SE rep, he also has Geno in his way, though I doubt that's much of a problem as SE could easily have 2+ if they wanted.
- Crash was heard and his recent reboots were put on Switch. Crash has also been massively requested, but outside of insiders hearing about him, there's no actual evidence in his favor. While I do think his chances are very high, he doesn't have any evidence.
- Dante is basically Sora too. His chances spiked because of the DMC twitter's dates. Still no evidence.
- Master Chief is purely because of Microsoft and Nintendo being cool. He's probably in, but again, no evidence outside of insiders hearing things.
- Steve ^. Besides Verge saying "Minecraft content" since the game has been out, literally nothing else going for him. Also has to get by Master Chief, who I personally think will take the second Microsoft spot over him.
- Lloyd is requested too, but has little going for him as well outside of the trademark and that new icon.
- Hayabusa isn't nearly as requested, but that one insider kept saying he was #5 for sure. No evidence.
- Arle actually does have some evidence, but in the form of her NSO game getting in over Kirby's Avalanche. Seems weird considering that's been there since E3(?) and she's still not in though.
- (edit) 2B I haven't been following at all, but there's no evidence there at all AFAIK. She even has a strike against them with Mai being unable to show up with Terry's stage.
^ these are the front-runners according to fans btw, none of which (to my knowledge) have any major evidence going for them outside of insiders saying things. To say any of these characters have a higher chance over one with, again, legitimate evidence, is nuts. Geno's chances are through the roof right now. Is he guaranteed? Of course not, I'd never say that until he gets his splash screen, but again, his chances are higher than everyone else here based purely on evidence and not hearsay.
I would say that Reimu has pretty good evidence for her too, and while she's not a frontrunner, she's not that far from it. I mean:
-The doujin leak from November, about Touhou music coming to Smash. It was a 22 tracks playlist(too much for just a prenium Mii costume)not listing some themes that would obviously come with Reimu as a fighter(none of Marisa's theme, despite being Touhou deuteragonist, with the biggest ammount of themes to herself in the series).
-The March interview where ZUN said he would be ok with Reimu in Smash, that did not become public until much later for some reason.
-The fact that Touhou and Reimu are incredibly popular in all of Asia, especialy China, where she could make Switched and copies of Smash sell by herself (Touhou's popularity in China is also a great irony).
-Indie games were given a gradualy bigger place into Smash Ultimate, and what better Indie to make the first Indie playable in Smash than the oldest one of them all, who pretty much popularised and inspired doujins and indie games in Japan and the rest of the world (notably Undertale).
-Sakurai said that he became a game developper thanks to smhups, and with Touhou being a smhup, what better way to make his Ultimate creation complete than with the poster girl of what inspired him to starts this crazy ride?
-There's rumors of ZUN and Sakurai being drinking buddies.
-Most insiders wouldn't know about rumors about her joining Smash, since she would be very Japan centric.
-Nintendo also directly supported Touhou fan circles in the past, and is even having many Touhou fangames on the Switch, with a port of AoCF, an oficial game, confirmed. Plus, in the early E-shop, GensoWanderer, a Touhou fangame was dominating downloads in Japan.
Now, don't interprete me wrong. I'm not saying that any of this is against Geno, but Reimu got quite a lot going for her too.
