The results are in! You chose Vivi Ornitier as the greatest Final Fantasy character. The little guy was introduced to the world in 2000’s Final Fantasy IX and he burned his way into the hearts of millions around the world. Vivi handily bested Aerith Gainsborough, FFVII’s flower-selling, planet-saving girl next door.
Meanwhile FFVI protagonist Terra triumphed over Kefka, the terrifying villain of the same game to win 3rd place. Here are the full results:
| Finals | Vivi Ornitier (FFIX) | 22 | Aerith Gainsborough (FFVII) | 13 |
| 3rd Place | Terra Branford (FFVI) | 16 | Kefka Palazzo (FFVI) | 11 |
I also made a few charts looking at trends as the tournament progressed. Let’s take a look at how characters from each game fared:
| Top 64 | Top 32 | Top 16 | Top 8 | Top 4 | Finals | |
| FFI | 3 | 1 | ||||
| FFII | 1 | 1 | ||||
| FFIII | 1 | |||||
| FFIV | 5 | 3 | 2 | 2 | ||
| FFV | 3 | 2 | 1 | |||
| FFVI | 13 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 2 | |
| FFVII | 8 | 6 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| FFVIII | 5 | |||||
| FFIX | 8 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| FFX | 6 | 6 | 3 | 2 | ||
| FFX-2 | 1 | |||||
| FFXI | ||||||
| FFXII | 3 | 1 | ||||
| FFXIII | 2 | 1 | ||||
| FFXIV | ||||||
| FFXV | 2 | |||||
| FFXVI | 1 | |||||
| FF Tactics | 1 | |||||
| Stranger of Paradise:FFO | 1 |
Not surprisingly, most of the qualifying nominees are between entries FFIV-FFX, when many Avocadoans would’ve been teenagers or slightly older. Interestingly according to Wikipedia FFIV and FFX released exactly ten years apart. (Reminisces about a time when a Final Fantasy game was released about once every two years). Here are some other notes:
- Poor FFVIII had all five of its entrants knocked out in the first round.
- FFXI and FFXIV were the only mainline games to not have any qualifying nominees, despite the huge popularity of the latter.
- If you’re confused by FFII and FFIII each having one entrant, that’s because those games introduced Chocobos and Shiva, respectively.
Let’s look at how characters fared by gender:
| Top 64 | Top 32 | Top 16 | Top 8 | Top 4 | Finals | |
| Male | 41 | 19 | 11 | 5 | 2 | 1 |
| Female | 17 | 10 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Non-binary/Undetermined | 6 | 3 | 1 |
Despite having some great female characters, the FF tends to focus on the men.1
- The last two entries had no playable female characters at all! ↩︎
So it’s no surprise the male characters dominated the early brackets. Only one non-binary character, Quina (FFIX), qualified for the top 64. Monsters like Chocobo and Tonberry don’t have a specific gender as far as I can tell.
Thanks to everyone who participated! I’ve had the idea for this tournament kicking around in my head for years and I’m happy to finally bring it to fruition. I don’t have immediate plans for another tournament, but I do have a few ideas kicking around in my head.