Recette Lemongrass
| Recette Lemongrass | Gallery |
Recette Lemongrass is the protagonist of Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, a dungeon crawler / business simulation game developed by Japanese doujin-soft company EasyGameStation. A somewhat air-headed but sweet and caring young girl, Recette runs a house-turned-store in order to pay back an enormous debt her father left her after he decided to "become a hero" and go out on an "adventure". It falls to Recette to pay off her father's loans using her home as an item store, making increasing costly weekly debt payments over the course of five weeks.
Recette made her debut as a contestant in the Queen of /v/ 2021 tournament, the very tournament she would end up winning as the #113 seed. To this day, Recette remains by far the lowest seed to be crowned champion in a 4chan character tournament.
Tournament History
Recette's championship run began from the first round when a drawfag created a series of simple MS Paint drawings that depicted her shopkeeping duties and replying to anons, which helped her overcome the #16 seeded Jill Valentine by 10 votes. This OC was made at a consistent pace, and as the event progressed more fan art involving Recette was created, especially her round 4 match against Gebura from Project Moon whose fans are also known for producing quality contest-related OC. Recette's heavy thread presence, combined with a /v/ oldfag appeal and her series' light-hearted nature, became the key factors in the shopkeeper's unprecedented tournament win -- proving anons that proper campaigning for your girl CAN help her win a popularity contest.
Recette ended up winning the tournament by a fairly close margin of 19 votes againts RPG Maker icon and fellow Indie gal Madotsuki, making her the lowest-ever seed to win a character tournament from any of 4chan's boards. She is notably also the only Champion to date to have been nominated past the second nomination thread her winning year (coming from the seventh).
Because of Recette's wholly unpredicted one-shot low-card winning performance she's often seen as the quintessential and truest underdog tourney champion. Also because of this, her reputation in succeeding years has been mixed. While her underdog status is celebrated (perhaps by the majority at the time and long afterwards), she has also garnered criticism from those who see her as being a weak crown-holder among the otherwise more conventionally "strong" powerhouse winners of /v/. In these succeeding years some have also accused her win of being primarily caused by hype for her underdog status, though this claim is somewhat unfounded as there were next to no posts during the Queen of /v/ 2021 threads themselves actually referring to her as an underdog or discussing her low seed even after her win; most discussion about her win around the time it happened instead focused on her strong campaign, with some pointing specifically to crossover with PMfags as a contributing factor to her success due to a prominent storyline during the tournament involving Recette joining the Ensemble from Library of Ruina. Nonetheless Recette's inspired continuous meta debates about character voting and popularity for years.
Much of the mentioned criticism of Recette's victory stems from the now common knowledge that her prime drawfag campaigner was a rather seedy and extreme lolicon fetish artist, a fact generally unknown during her tournament and somewhat damaging to the wholesome image her campaign rode on.
Recette's win also marked a "merchant" victory as opposed to Madotsuki's "schizo" status, which kicked off the merchant vs. schizo alliance faceoff of that years King to essentially avenge Madotsuki, causing Recette to be sometimes linked as a starting point of King /v/'s years long schizo influence.
Since 2021 Recette has become highly notable in tourney lore, perhaps more so than any other /v/ winner. This includes her close friendship with her finalist opponent Madotsuki, as depicted in many pieces of fanart featuring the two paired together made during 2021 (and even in 2023 as a part of Madotsuki's own campaign) in contrast to the fierce rivalry and general shitflinging between the two finalists of the year prior. Other tournament hijinks over the years include her fujoshi/cuckquean yaoi fantasy obsession of pairing her king The Batter with his fellow schizo Grimm, also being a stereotypical merchant and spendthrift sponsor of other characters, being DIMES/DIMELESS, being assaulted and even killed by other characters on several occasions (including in her notable rivalry with HUNK), and being turned into a Peruvian (4chan tourneys nemesis nationals). Prior mentioned controversies and meta perhaps contribute to the continuous presence of Recette in tourneys.
Results
| Queen of /v/ | |||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 - Seed 113 | |||||||||||||||||||
| Round | Opponent | Series | Votes | Pct. For | |||||||||||||||
| Round 1 | (16)  Jill Valentine
|
Resident Evil | 517 - 507 | 50.5% | |||||||||||||||
| Round 2 | (80)  Naoto Shirogane
|
Persona | 771 - 464 | 62.4% | |||||||||||||||
| Round 3 | (81)  5-Volt
|
WarioWare | 797 - 415 | 65.8% | |||||||||||||||
| Round 4 | (32)  Gebura
|
Lobotomy Corporation | 606 - 526 | 53.5% | |||||||||||||||
| Quarterfinals | (9)  Shantae
|
Shantae | 931 - 548 | 62.9% | |||||||||||||||
| Semifinals | (4)  Marisa Kirisame
|
Touhou Project | 709 - 549 | 56.4% | |||||||||||||||
| Finals | (31)  Madotsuki
|
Yume Nikki | 575 - 556 | 50.8% | |||||||||||||||
