For the Dragon Ball faithful, it’s been one of the most interesting and dramatic scenes to follow this year in competitive gaming. Players have gathered from disparate scenes from anime-style fighting games to Injustice to Super Smash Bros. to compete. Rivalries have risen from callouts and tournament grudges. And it’s one of the most eccentric scenes you’ll see, from trash moms and fursuits to piano-playing masterminds .

When the world’s best take the stage on Evo Sunday 2018, it will have been just over six months since Dragon Ball FighterZ was released. In such a short period of time, the game has seen titans rise and fall, metas broken open, and a whole boatload of Gokus.

In Dragon Ball FighterZ, competitors pick teams of three, made up of a list of Dragon Ball’s finest and, also, Krillin . While only two characters are actively fighting at a time, they can tag out to their other members or call them in for assist moves. Matches have a back-and-forth, my turn-your turn cadence, so players frequently look for opportunities to “open each other up,” or break their defense in order to unleash massive combos and take the wheel of the match. Finding the fighters who could dominate the field, either as a solo powerhouse or part of a larger gameplan, was the first hurdle in FighterZ.

Dragon Ball FighterZ started like any other good competitive game does, doubly so for fighting games: Players scoured the data and labbed tech to quickly find who was the biggest and baddest fighter on the roster.

But Evo means a lot more eyes watching than your average weekly, and like any long-running anime worth its salt, you might need a recap episode to know who stands where and how they got there. Well, think of this as your recap episode, sans the beach trip.

But it was the Saiyan Prince Vegeta who quickly rose to dominance, and would come to define the game for the next few months. He’s a capable fighter in his own right, with a surprising capability for comebacks in the right player’s hands. But it was his assist that was the real deal: a flurry of beam attacks, either putting on incredible pressure, or delaying an opponent’s offense long enough for the defender to recover.

Android 16 was immediately recognized for the devastating grappler he was. Goku Black had a solid assist and could hold his own, dancing in the neutral space between fighters, a ballet called “footsies.” One Saiyan, the adult version of Gohan, was potent in the hands of several players thanks to a super move that elevated his capabilities with every use. These dives into characters’ attributes, strengths, and weaknesses would lay the stage for competition moving forward, as the players who found what works best early on would have an advantage and get the chance to define the metagame of Dragon Ball FighterZ early on.

Dragon Ball FighterZ’s closest competitive relative is the Marvel Vs. Capcom series. Both series, unlike other fighting game series like Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, are as much about the team composition and interplay between the three combatants in each player’s corner as they are about the one-on-one playing out on the screen. Vegeta was the epitome of this mindset, a character many picked up solely because of how necessary his assist was. He was a character you could get by with in actual fights, but he made your team inherently better with a simple press of the assist button.

One of the earliest notable FighterZ tournaments, Winter Brawl 2018, vindicated McLean’s anti-Vegeta stance. After a quick 2-0 set dropped him into the loser’s side of the bracket, he battled back to take down Christopher “NYChrisG” Gonzalez in the grand finals using a team that lacked the short-tempered Saiyan Prince. In the midst of his post-match celebration, he donned a Vegeta Sucks cap . But it’s what came after that sparked one of the most significant rivalries in fighting games this year, one that continues today.

In early play, McLean feuded with popular names from other scenes like William Peter “Leffen” Hjelte , while also questioning the rampant use of Vegeta . Whether instigating or fanning the flames, McLean had reason to be confident in his ability and analysis. The fighting game fox has dominated multiple scenes, most notably games from NetherRealm Studios. But besides his Injustice and Mortal Kombat fame, McLean is also a Skullgirls player—skills that would come in handy in the team-based combat of FighterZ.

While McLean was busy dominating North America, Kishida was running the Japanese scene. A name you would have seen pop up in various Street Fighter matches, Kishida was every bit McLean’s perfect opponent. He was another multi-game master, coming from an anime-filled background including the famously punishing Melty Blood. But it was the way their playstyles clashed that set up the theme for Dragon Ball FighterZ’s first major weekend, and a series of bouts to come between the two titans.

Using a famous line from the series Fist Of The North Star, McLean was telling Goichi Kishida, also known by his hande “Go1,” that “you are already dead.” Kishida had called out SonicFox just a few days prior, and now McLean was answering in kind. A summons to the arena, from one of the game’s earliest champions to another.

McLean’s team at the time was defined by his impressively oppressive onslaught. He was, and arguably still is, the king of offense, and his use of unusual fighters like Dragon Ball Super's Hit, combined with the powerful piledrivers of Android 16 and Goku Black’s massive uppercut, wrought havoc on his opponents. Kishida, on the other hand, was the defensive master. His expertise in Melty Blood had taught him to deal with massive combos, and how to search for the perfect opening to slide in and steal his turn on offense back. It was the unstoppable force versus the immovable object.

The feud escalated over the time leading up to Final Round 2018, where the two would open the action in Atlanta, Georgia with a first-to-10 win exhibition. By the time each took the stage, the crowd—both online and off—was hanging in suspense. Who would emerge as the first major player, the man to beat in the global Dragon Ball FighterZ scene? As controllers were picked up and characters locked in, McLean took off his signature fox ears, a symbolic acknowledgement of the seriousness of the bout. Like Piccolo removing his weighted training clothes, McLean was going full power.

It started out a fairly even set, going three games apiece over the course of six. But the breaking point came in game seven of the grueling gauntlet. Fighting game players will sometimes refer to learning an opponent’s playstyle, especially their weaknesses, as “downloading” someone. You’ve internalized everything they do, every variation they can throw at you, and now like Neo in The Matrix, you can see through it all. By game seven, Kishida had downloaded McLean, and the tone had drastically changed. The exhibition went from 3-3 to 10-4.