Does anyone else feel like every 1A freestyle looks extremely similar? I get that the current meta means everyone needs to include certain tricks or elements to score high, but are there any routines that scored well and are very unique? Last ones I really loved were Hajime’s 1A stuff from 2023.
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I think people feel this way mostly because tricks go by too fast now.
If you take Mir Kim’s routines for example they’re very different, very creative. But it’s difficult to spot. Only when you break it down and look at a single element you’ll see that
Slow tricks just look more impressive. Jacub had a slow tricks set at the start of his routine. That was joyful to watch.
The only thing I don’t like about freestyles nowadays are the X.0 Hooks. They take away the flow on the music and its just not pretty to watch.
I wonder if you play the routines in slow motion you still think they look similar.
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A lot of them do…a lot of them don’t. Currently Jakub Dolesj and Chandler Steele’s routines stand out from the crow for me. As does Jonathan Sitangang. And there’s a few others.
It’s a sport where certain technical elements can be trained to be very consistent and they always score. So they’ll be used.
That’s just the nature of the technical score beast.
If you want to see some stuff that varies more, look at the more freestyle based competitions like Stargazing, Asia Pacific (where technical was only 50% of the score instead of the usual 60%) or the very recent “King of Kings” competition that was organised by YYF and Mowl.
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those same element scores very well out of countless tricks to be made, and theres a collection of them that are accessible to larger part of player. Which somewhat ease the work of the judge, less pressure to create new tricks. Originality and creativity is rarer
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I thought so too at first, but now that I’m slowly learning some of the tricks they’re using and am able to at least identify the ones I can’t, I appreciate their routines a lot more. 75% speed for certain throwers when needed helps as well.
I feel like the concept of absolute elements really can’t be understated for homogeneity of certain aspects of comp. Hooks are a good example of an absolute element where there’s no ambiguity to it. You know each the judge will see it and score it in the same way every time.
Beyond that I think you’re just speaking more broadly to competitive things as a whole. Yoyoing is more optimized now, it’s more competitive, there’s simply less room to not play the game as presented and focus purely on presentation and weirdo tech.
But like was also previously mentioned in this thread, there’s plenty of other contests that score differently and reward different things. If you’re only looking at IYYF sanctioned contests, then you’re only looking at contests with the same rules that reward the same things.
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I get it. Every time I watch someone throw all I see is someone throwing a yo-yo around. Just once… I’d like to see someone use live animals instead. Maybe a chicken 
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I did feel the same way watching Worlds this year, but there are some yoyoers which stand out. My favorite players which regularly place high and have unique styles would be Sora Uchihashi, Ryuichi Nakamura, and Jonathan Sitanggang
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