Character The high schoolers 3 years ago

[Phantron]

What would they be relative to the current middle schoolers? The current generation of middle schoolers is said to be a once in a decade talent so it's hard to see that 3 years ago the overall talent was higher, so we can assume even their seemingly impossible talents is considered normal in 3 years time for normal guys. Of course some of the guys in the high school class is still top tier even 3 years ago, but on average it shouldn't be that amazing relative to POT's middle schoolers.

Oni/Byodoin/Ryoga

They'd still be cleaning up easy, though it seems like Oni is similar to Tezuka as the awesome guy in a school that never made it anywhere, since Byodoin doesn't know him and I think he was in the national champion school. Ryoga would be in another country and easily dominate there too.

Tanegashima

A slightly weaker version of Yukimura. He can return anything but he has yet to shown any offensive moves so he'd be reliant on just basic moves.

Duke (well, he'd be in France middle school)

Probably what Akaya is meant to be, a top tier destructive player that is surprisingly good at everything else too.

Kaji

Would probably be known as a genius like Fuji and someone lose to him will say that for all this talk about Kaji being a genius he's no match for the top players (which he wouldn't find out for another 3 years).

Omagari

A stronger version of Kaido

Kimijima

Roughly equal to Niou, without the illusion technique but his off the court moves are more potent.

Tohno

Roughly equal to Akaya. Good at hurting weak people but not particlarly awesome against strong players but can manage.

Ochi

A big serve guy.

Mouri

Roughly equal to the Big 3.

Yamato

Cannon fodder.

Tokugawa

See Kaji.

Irie

Probably half of Atobe and half of Niou, can be more or less effective than the sum of the parts depending on who his opponent is.

Nakagauchi

A decent player that thinks Oni is running away from him by having his school lose early.

Ban

He was selling coffins on Byodoin's team.

 

[Kaoz]

Agree with most of this, I think. I think the current generation is at a bit of a disadvantage against the previous one in the sense that nobody used multiball moves on the national level, so they didn't have any incentive to practice against them. I think it wouldn't be unreasonable for Yukimura to adjust to like 5 or 6 balls over the course of a match though considering he was able to return 2 on the fly. Possibly same for Sanada, although to a lesser extent.

Tezuka might be able to manage with Tezuka Zone (reuniting all the balls into one spot basically) and all the other moves he has at his disposal. I'm not so sure about Ryoma and Kintarou since I do believe they were beaten by 5 Ball Strike when they challenged Tokugawa and Oni for the first time, but if their stats were closer and they didn't have to go all out just to score a few points at the beginning it might be a different matter.

So I'd say due to circumstances the "old" top tier of Byoudouin/Oni/Ryoga is a bit stronger, but the gap is smaller than it might seem at first.

 

[Phantron]

Well obviously there's the whole '7 years ago there was a guy named Cell who almost destroyed the universe but he's no big deal because we trained hard in those 7 years' deal in POT where after you see someone insane you magically become even more insane. After all at the rate NPOT is going I'm sure by the end of the world cup some of the middle schoolers will easily be able to beat the best high schoolers which would mean the talent of the high school is much lower. So leaving both plot bailouts for middle schools to catch up and that high schoolers must seem unbeatable at first to hype them up, I think you can still draw some parallels. For example, Yukimura and Tanegashima are sort of similar (top tier players that both can nullify arbitary techs), but Yukimura should be rated higher since he's supposed to be top of his class versus Tanegashima who is not (at least Byodoin is ahead) and Yukimura's class is said to be the best talent of the decade. Now, just because you class is the best talent in the decade doesn't mean the top talent of another year can't be better, but it'd be pretty stupid to talk about the best talent of the decade if on average all your guys are inferior!

 

[Kaoz]

Well, yeah, but I was more so implying that the moves Oni and Byoudouin had in their final year of MS weren't so insane that it would be unreasonable for people like Yukimura etc. to catch up mid-match. You could probably compare Byoudouin to Ryoma at that time as well since both had an aggressive playstyle and a ton of special moves (World techniques vs Drives)? Although in that case Byoudouin would probably be rated higher unlike with the Yukimura - Tanegashima comparison.

 

[Phantron]

Byodoin strikes me as being in a school that's just very dominant and didn't even need him to play most of the time, otherwise it'd be pretty hard to reconciliate that nobody has seen a multi-ball technique before when both he and Oni can do it at H1 and unless they learned that exactly in that 1 year span it wouldn't make sense. It'd be like Yukimura how everyone knows he's way overpowered but very few players actually saw him play because it's rarely needed with the Rikkidai usually putting the game away before S1 (Shiraishi didn't play in the semifinals against Rikkidai last year I remember, so even against a strong school like that S1 was still not needed). Well, it says Byodoin is usually journeying around the world, so he might not even make it back to the tournaments back when he was in middle school.

 

[Kaoz]

Yeah, true, Byoudouin might not have gotten a lot of playtime. I think his personality's different from Yukimura's though, so if the opposing school had a strong player I could see him going into a lower singles just to get the match in. And yeah, Rikkai 3-0'd every team except Seigaku during Yukimura's time.