World Tour Grand Finals 2018

**yoass** · 08:07 AM

Originally Posted by Dan

This should be one great final! Before the final heres a bit of Harimoto singing haha!

Lovely. He’s a shy boy and barely dares to speak, let alone sing, but he bravely does, holding back all the way. But you still see the enjoyment of the song and its singing, and the warm flow of emotions it bears. Even while barely daring, he’s still singing and I for one admire him for it. This is not easy, people, for those not necessarily comfortable in the floodlights.

So I’d clap rather than laugh at it, but I trust that’s not what you meant by that, Dan.

**NextLevel** · 09:21 AM

Originally Posted by Junting

That is true. And the previous copy of Ito Mima was Zhang Rui. For your interest, here is a list of main opponents' copies released from wttc 2017. Hope you can read simplified Kanji.

BTW, to some previous comments, this system is not as evil as what you think. One becomes a copy of others only in a specific period of time, e.g. Olympic and world championships. One does not have to be the copy of others forever, only if he or she plays well in the following world tours to prove themselves. After Asian championship last year, Hirano Miu had 4 copies, and 3 of them, WMY, CXT, and SYS, had made great improvement last year.

Only one person said it was evil and it is because he hates the word "clone" (hopefully he is not as allergic to the word "copy").. I was actually pointing out that it is likely the reason that He Zhuojia is improving and getting more opportunities. Thanks for bringing more information.

We may find out later that LGY made major improvements cloning Boll.

**FunnyBunny** · Posted 12-16-2018

hey, what do you mean 'clone'? it's just imitation.

SYS,CXT, WMY imitated Hirano before Wttc2017, are they hirano clone?

...

**zeio** · Posted 12-16-2018

Every reason to be mad about those terms, when the said "clone" or "copy" is better than the original. What an injustice!

To be precise, the term "模仿" should've been translated as "imitation" instead. Clone and copy both mean "複製", but the former is more commonly transliterated as "克隆" in China than in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

**Xylit** · Posted 12-16-2018

Are you still discussing about that nitpick? How boring...

Important question: Why does that ******** stream not work once again?

**NextLevel** · Posted 12-16-2018

Can anyone see anything on the ittf website? This is ridiculous.

**Atas Newton** · Posted 12-16-2018

Originally Posted by NextLevel

Only one person said it was evil and it is because he hates the word "clone" (hopefully he is not as allergic to the word "copy").. I was actually pointing out that it is likely the reason that He Zhuojia is improving and getting more opportunities. Thanks for bringing more information.

We may find out later that LGY made major improvements cloning Boll.

no need to politely say "one person", when that person is participating in the conversation. Btw that one person has posted an old video of He Zhuojia, where she was supposedly a different player. I challenge you to go through that vid and find me a single chop block where she wasn't out of position, good luck with that.

Now, I don't say it's evil, because the rumored practice doesn't exist, therefore isn't evil. What Junting posted differs drastically from what the article you posted tells. There is no "many Waldners and Samsonovs", which main CNT players "play against every day" - direct citations. There are players, who happen to play a somewhat similar style to some other player. Example: He Zhuojia and Ai Fukuhara. They are then asked to mimic them during preparation for major tournaments. That's the bit confirmed by Junting.

Then there's the notion that they keep the style and even benefit from it and go through the ranks. Again, watch that old video and find any differences from today's He Zhuojia. Wang Manyu clones Miu Hirano and is suddenly a top athlete? One, their gamestyles are nothing alike. Two, she was two times world champion in juniors before there was Miu Hirano. Her breakthrough, much like that of Chen Xingtong, didn't come suddenly, as if caused by the supposed change in style, it was a long and steady progress. The only real suspicious case would be Sun Yingsha, who plays very similarly to Hirano. But then again, she was on her way to the main team long before Hirano. She was in Super League from very young age.

Finally, of course they do pick up whatever JNT or any other team comes up with. Shovel serve? Check. Banana flick? Check. Strawberry? We've even seen Zhang Jike practicing it. But when people label that as cloning, copying or whatever you wanna call it - that's straight bullshit. Literally everyone in the sport incorporates all these things in their play. If someone invents a style that's succesful, it becomes public domain and you see others adopting it. No one calls that cloning. You don't see people saying "Ishikawa is a CNT clone", which she very much is by your standards. But saying Sun Yingsha is Miu Hirano 2.0 is fine for some reason. I won't even go into how nonsensical it is, that CNT has "cracked" Miu Hirano and rendered her style useless against them, but at the same time Sun Yingsha and Wang Manyu, merely clones of Hirano, continued enjoying success against their teammates. It just makes zero sense but people will still repeat "oh there's a million clones of Ito in Chinese provincial teams now, her days are numbered".