Baiken
| Baiken | Gallery |
Baiken is a character from the Guilty Gear series, known for her samurai aesthetic, defensive one-armed sword fighting style, gruff persona, and of course, her enormous and prominently displayed rack (canonically the largest of all the girls in the series). Missing both her left eye and right arm, Baiken stows additional weapons in her empty sleeve while relying heavily on counters in her playstyle.
She first appeared as a secret fighter in the original 1998 title, Guilty Gear: The Missing Link, and has returned as a regular fighter in either the base roster or DLC additions of every subsequent generation of Guilty Gear titles, including the most recent entry, Guilty Gear Strive (2021), where she joined the roster as part of the first season of DLC.
While not one of the main characters story wise, Baiken endures as one of the most popular characters in the series and a prominent sex symbol in fighting games (particularly after the debut of her new highly bouncy walking animation introduced in the Guilty Gear Xrd generation of releases).
Tournament History
Baiken's tournament history was rather inauspicious until recently, failing to qualify a single time until 2023, where she lost in Round 2 in an extremely close match to Beatrice of Umineko no Naku Koro ni. However, she finally had a breakout year in 2024, going all the way to the Elite Eight for the first time. During the tournament, Baiken became known for appearing at the start of new Queen of /v/ threads with various queries, ranging from questions about anons' nominees or tournament histories, to requests for specific types of official artwork or fanart, down to general inquiries about video games. These queries were compared to memetic edited videos of Jonathan Frakes as the host of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction, which tend to tally up the various questions he would ask as part of setting up a segment, humorously devoid of any context.
During the tournament, Baiken swept past her first three opponents in dominant fashion; Star Fox's Krystal, Blaster Master Zero's Kanna and Splatoon's Marina. In Round 4, she came up against a strong opponent in former Elite Eight member Cirno of Touhou, with several pieces of OC playing off Baiken's fighting game origin. In a twist, Cirno had supposedly been "cursed" by a GET post ending in the number 9, and in one of the closest matchups in the tournament, Baiken prevailed indeed by precisely nine votes to enter the Elite Eight for the first time. While her run would end there with a loss to eventual 3rd place winner Hex Maniac of Pokemon, Baiken would net the most votes in the 5th-8th place contest and wind up in 5th place for 2024, sharing the place with King of /v/'s Raiden, a fellow brooding katana wielder with missing body parts.
She will next be eligible for nomination in 2026.
Results
| Queen of /v/ | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 2023 - seed 126 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Round | Opponent | Series | Votes | Pct. For | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Round 1 | (33)  Monika
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Doki Doki Literature Club | 611 - 494 | 55.3% | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Round 2 | (61)  Beatrice
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Umineko no Naku Koro ni | 587 - 591 | 49.8% | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2024 - seed 79 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Round | Opponent | Series | Votes | Pct. For | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Round 1 | (42)  Krystal
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Star Fox | 610 - 380 | 61.6% | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Round 2 | (111)  Kanna
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Blaster Master Zero | 621 - 492 | 55.8% | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Round 3 | (38)  Marina
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Splatoon | 580 - 446 | 56.5% | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Round 4 | (56)  Cirno
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Touhou | 590 - 581 | 50.4% | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Quarterfinals | (11)  Hex Maniac
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Pokémon | 434 - 552 | 44.0% | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 5th-8th |
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