The Kagaribi 8 tournament is a Japanese Major Smash Bros tournament, featuring the absolute best Japanese Smash players. This series of events has been running since 2012.
It’s one of the newest tournaments, but this one is a Premier tier event for Smash Bros. It’s part of the Smash Bros World Tour circuit, which only includes the very best tournaments in the world. While the Panda Circuit is still ongoing, the Smash World Tour is still one of the biggest circuits in Smash Bros.
This year’s iteration was looking very promising and it was due to bring some of Japan’s biggest players together to fight it out in Smash Bros. However, the tournament has had some pretty major setbacks. A big number of players have already dropped out of the event due to rising COVID cases in Japan, which raises concerns regarding the validity of the event.
The tournament is due to take place from July 30-31th. While there’s no prize pool there are Circuit points in the overall series on offer. The tournament is still taking place, but it’s had some major setbacks as the date has gotten closer. The tournament still looks set to take place, but it’ll instead have a diminished roster.
While most esports, like League of Legends and CSGO, have largely returned to in-person events, COVID cases are on the rise in Japan. The current number of cases is well over the last peak of the disease. Naturally, this has become pretty disruptive. Over 200 players out of the total 563 competing have been disqualified from the tournament.
This is a pretty major inconvenience. The roster of players in the competition isn’t going to compare to what was originally planned for the tournament. This might leave some weird match-ups.
With such a large and indiscriminate deregistration, some of the most anticipated players have already been DQed. With more than 200 disqualified, there are too many players leaving Kagaribi 8 to list. However, these are some of the most notable DQs:
- Acola
- Dio
- Earth
- Floyd
- Hikaru
- Huto
- Koma
- Lea
- Luminous
- Munekin
- MASA
- Nata
- Omuatsu
- Rido
- Tea
These are some big names stepping away from the tournament, including the current champion Acola. Earth missing the event is a huge disappointment, especially after the extreme hype that was built ahead of the event.
Tournament days however, still seem to be on schedule. That might change if these deregistrations continue to escalate. It’s possible that a few days before the tournament we’ll be looking at only half the players being actually in attendance. If the tournament still goes ahead with that sized roster, it’s going to be a bit strange to watch. As always, make sure to stay tuned as we’ll be covering the event throughout its duration.
