2015 Pokémon World Champions Determined
The 2015 Pokémon World Championships wrapped up last weekend and the torch has been passed on to our new world champions. The story of the weekend was the resurgence of the Japanese showing the world why the country is looked upon with such respect when it comes to Pokémon. Shoma Honami (Viera) had a dominating season taking first place in the Masters division for the World Championships, Japanese National Championships, as well as the Japan Cup — the only three tournaments in the Pokémon Video Game Championships he played in this year. In the Senior division, Great Britain’s Mark McQuillan (Woopahking) improved on his second place finish from last year in the only way he could by taking the title and being the only player from outside Japan to win the video game title this year.
Congratulations to all the players who made the cut at the 2015 Pokémon World Championships! Please keep checking back on Nugget Bridge as we bring you reports and analyses from the event over the next month. In the mean time, don’t forget to check out Pokemon.com’s excellent coverage of the tournament including the top 8 teams from each division as well as information on the trading card game.
Masters Division
- [JP] Shoma Honami (SHADEviera)
- [JP] Hideyuki Taida (BIDcp)
- [JP] Yosuke Isagi (tonykuso69)
- [JP] Naohito Mizobuchi
- [JP] Daiki Moriyama (mor1yama)
- [JP] Daichi Kumabe (Scar3020)
- [JP] Hayato Takahashi
- [DE] Lajos Woltersdorf (Lajo)
Senior Division
- [GB] Mark McQuillan (Woopahking)
- [JP] Koki Honda
- [AT] Max Marjanovic
- [US] Kylie Chua
- [CZ] David Koutesh
- [TW] Chien-Chien Tsai
- [AR] Sebastian Escalante
- [US] Jake Skurchak
Junior Division
- [JP] Kotone Yasue
- [KR] Ryan Jaehyun Park
- [JP] Shu Harasaki
- [JP] Shuhei Tsukano
- [US] Cory Connor
- [US] Aiden McKinney
- [US] London Swan
- [JP] Yuma Yoshida
About the Author
Firestorm is one of the co-founders of Nugget Bridge and the Community Manager for eSports Tournament Platform Battlefy. He has been playing Pokémon since 1999, competitively since 2007, and attending tournaments since 2010. He lives in Vancouver, Canada with a degree in Interactive Art & Technology + Communications. You can follow him on Twitter at @rushanshekar.
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20 Responses to 2015 Pokémon World Champions Determined
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It was fun to watch the worlds, despite the fact that NA’s performance disappointed me and that we didn’t get that one unique niche pokemon on a good team this year. Aside from that, great job by everyone who made it to worlds and thanks to TPCi and the event organizers for putting these events together. Keep up the good work!
Shoma looks so over everything.
Can’t wait to see the teams for all day 2 competitors to be released.
Worlds was brilliant, even though the lack of diversity in pokes…. however the different moves per team made up for that and the master FINALS was great!
Congratulations everyone who made top 16 and above 🙂
Diversity be damned, the high level of play and effort exhibited by the top players in all age divisions was stunning. Can’t wait for next year!
Loved Seniors finals, so kewl. Any good job to the others though!
Naohito Mizobuchi is @penguin2142
Seniors was so much fun to watch. Those plays with Skill Swap were amazing!
Max Marjanovic is bissiges Bissbark n_n
Glad to see Mark and Viera win!
I wasn’t able to tune into the stream and haven’t fully watched over the VODs yet so I don’t know if the commentary touched on this, but this was actually an incredibly cool World Championships given the storyline following the three eventual champions and their opponents.
Kotone lost in top 4 back in 2013 and top 8 last season before finally taking it all this year, defeating Korea’s Ryan Park, who had been undefeated up until the finals. Reminds me of another Juniors storyline we had a few years ago… It was also really neat to see a Korean player not named Sejun Park perform well: with Ryan’s finish, Korea has been in the finals of all 3 age divisions.
Mark making the finals in back to back years is an incredible achievement in itself, but man, that was probably the most impressive finals performance I’ve ever seen in any age division. Similar to Kotone, he also top cut Worlds for the 3rd year in a row, finally taking home the win after losing the two previous years, and preventing Japan from a clean sweep. Seeing Machamp back in the finals was also really neat. He’s definitely left his legacy in Seniors, and honestly, I’d call him the greatest player of all time in the division. Can’t wait to see him compete in Masters.
Shoma’s been one of Japan’s top players for years now, and he finally got a chance to prove his worth once on the main stage after missing qualifying year after year by winning Japanese Nationals. BIDC isn’t too well known since AFAIK, he doesn’t interact with players like Shoma/Tony/Ryosuke as much and plays online much more than their offline tournaments, but he’s been around for a while too – he qualified for Japan Nationals back in 2013 and has been a top player online ever since. I enjoyed their set, especially since we haven’t had a game 3 since Ray vs. Matteo in 2011.
Congrats to Kotone, Mark, and Shoma.
I loved watching this year,even though my favorite players didn’t make it the event was still fantastic!
Congrats to Kotone,Shoma,and Mark the Ma-Champion.
Thanks for giving us the backstory on Kotone. And isn’t she the first girl to be VGC champion at any level? Also, do you know if Ryan is related to Sejun? I heard some conjecture, but no one I talked to seemed to know for sure – and Park is a pretty common Korean name.
You’re welcome! Kotone’s the first female World Champion, but we’ve had a couple of female Regional champions and Mackenzie Karouzos won US Seniors Nationals in 2014. Also, Ryan is definitely not related to Sejun.
I mean we got to see Machamp from Woophaking. That was pretty cool.
Altho I couldn’t the most of the stream live, but after rewatched it, i must say that Senior Final was hype! Master final was interesting due the fact they both had almost the same team, really intense matches and I am looking forward to next season!
Really happy for Mark and Lajo for doing so well at Worlds.
I had a pretty interesting weekend making it through day 1 and going 4-3 on day 2.
Finally got around to reading the article, a week after the event. So happy to see this live and so proud of the community. Got me excited to restart the season and try again 2015-2016 season to reach Worlds. San Fransisco or Bust amiright? I’m personally happy to see Woopahking being a World Champion. Him being my first opponent back during the Nugget Bridge Major 3(clean 0-2 failure on my end without a chance) and him helping me out gave me a good look at to what VGC was like and what high level play really meant. Still not as strong, but it’s a work in progress.
I also like seeing how the VGC Master’s crown passed hands. U.S. for 3 years, then Italy, then South Korea and now back to Japan after a 5 year drought; fitting, as Cali’s the next location(the article photo also put that in perspective). Having female World Champions, and all being so young, is a breath of fresh air. Who knows, in a few years, we may get our own Cynthia, how amazing would that be? I may not have as much experience, nor seniority in VGC, but I feel 2015-2016 is going to be an amazing season.
Congratulations to everyone who attended Worlds, both the main event and all the other side events. Congrats to everyone who made it to day 2 and who qualified for either day 1 or 2. Hopefully some new faces can bring a positive change to the circuit. Here’s to making the 20th Anniversary of Pokemon the best we’ve seen yet!
This year masters division was an overall disappointment in my eyes, every team had a lando-t and 6/8 teams had mega kang. Seniors was amazing on the other hand because it consisted of some pokemon that are not see much at all but it did have a lot of the common pokemon as well. Juniors I was happy about as well, I don`t why but juniors had me on the edge of my seat.
well bidoof i was gonna call him BabbyPark