Anathema's performance at the five largest events he has entered since returning to offline play at InfinityCON 2021. Click to expand.
Anathema attributes this success to a change of personal mindset and developing a new outlook on the game. “Pre-quarantine I kinda had an okay mindset,” says Anathema. “It wasn’t as bad as some of the other players in my region, but I would often complain about certain things and get annoyed a lot.”
Anathema owned a 75% win rate entering InfinityCON 2021, his return to offline play. Since then, he is 79-17 (82%). Click to expand.
Despite not making a major splash in competitive Smash until Ultimate, Anathema has actually been competing since he was 10 years old. His first tournament was a Project M event at SuperCon, a pop culture convention held in Miami Beach. This experience influenced him to invest even more time into Smash, searching for how to perform wavedashing and other tech he could find on YouTube. As soon as Smash 4 came out he began to take competition more seriously, “I was very competitive with my friends online, so I would play online a lot and try to get better with them.”
His focus shifted from Smash to OSU near his sophomore year of high school, where he grinded his way to Rank 5000. Smash would eventually find its way back into Anathema’s life, when one of his friends who was already in the scene suggested he make it out to an offline Smash 4 tournament. From there he was once again hooked, and with Ultimate just on the horizon, Anathema decided to grind it out and learn as much as he could before a new era of Smash was here.
The transition to a new game didn’t come easily. In the beginning Anathema struggled with settling on a main, making the decision before the game’s release to transition away from his Smash 4 main Pikachu. Unfortunately, nothing he found attractive about the character remained in Ultimate. Quick Attack cancels were a thing of the past and his neutral-air was now completely different.
So why R.O.B.? Anathema isn’t quite sure himself. “It’s not one of my most prominent memories,” Anathema recalls. “I don’t remember clicking on R.O.B. and being like ‘This works for me.’ But I do remember I had a decent amount of experience with him, and I do remember one day showing up with my friends (saying) ‘I have a new main, guess who it is.’ And then I clicked on R.O.B. and they were like ‘What the?? That’s so weird. That’s nothing like Pikachu.’”
Fast forward to September 2019 and the tournament Anathema attributes as a turning point for his competitive career: VSGC SSBU Arcadian 2. After placing 5th, he got the attention of regional talent like Juanpi. His quick progress only made the transition to WiFi that much harder to accept. Before online tournaments became the new standard, Anathema knew online wouldn’t be a good fit for him. “I didn’t play WiFi at all because I knew it would deter my play because I’m a very reactionary player. I feel like R.O.B. specifically is a very reactionary character because he has some of the best out of parry options in the game.” During quarantine, playing friendlies with trusted friends and studying VODs were his only means of practice.
The time spent away from offline competition gave Anathema a moment of reflection. He was able to reevaluate his relationship with Smash Ultimate and came out with a cleaner mindset. “Over the course of quarantine I just decided to take the game for what it's worth and look at how it's designed and accept everything that happens in the game,” says Anathema. “So now I just realized I like the game a lot and I don’t have a bad mindset anymore. I’m pretty sure that’s why I’m doing really well right now.”
, 
and 
, all of whom have gone on to enjoy success since locals have returned.
player making major waves in the post-online era of competitive Smash Ultimate. Despite entering only three online tournaments throughout quarantine, Anathema has been disrupting the Miami area by placing first at numerous high profile locals. With wins on players such as 
, 
, and 
; he’s proven himself as a player with real potential. 
