Bushin Festival

Bushin Festival (ブシン祭), also known as The God of War Festival (武神祭ぶしんさい)(WN) is a massive biennal swordfighting tournament championship hosted in Midgar Kingdom, where skilled fighters and dark knights from all over the world come to make a name for themselves.

Background
The Bushin Festival is an international tournament held at Midgar Kingdom that attracts fighters from other lands across the world that is held once every two years. Here the fighters display their skills and strength before the king and other powerful nobles attending as guests who watch how the fights will play out.

Besides the local fighters, there are also famed renowned knights from around the world come to participate. Not only that, Midgar Royal Spellsword Academy also especially has an obligation to send their representatives to the Bushin Festival by holding a qualifying preliminaries through a selection tournament to determine a students that will represent the Academy.



Apparently, the Bushin Festival superficially was for sport for all have different races, nationalities, and occupations as they nonetheless share a strange sense of unity and the common goal of wanting to enjoy the event. The winner is awarded a trophy.

Organization
For the tournament, the fighters use dulled blades. The preliminary rounds have a bracket elimination style tournament, where only the leader of each group proceeds. The primary rounds are head to head elimination.

Before the main festival, The Midgar Academy for Dark Knights has a special bracket to determine the students who will represent the school at the festival.

During the festival, the fighters register at the reception.

After registration the preliminaries begin. These matches take place in grassy fields outside the capital. They have very few spectators and the quality of the fights is low since they involve a large number of inexperienced fighters.

From the third round, the fights are held in the arena in Midgar.

Participants

 * Beatrix (First Champion)
 * Lutheran Barnett
 * Grease
 * Iris Midgar
 * Quinton
 * Goldoh Kinmeki
 * Gonzales
 * Annerose Nichtsehen
 * Claire Kagenō
 * Mundane Mann
 * Rose Oriana (Disqualified)
 * Kevin (Manga only)
 * Imatry Nottaloos (Anime only)

Trivia

 * According to all the public, the first Bushin Festival winner Beatrix has not made a public appearance for more than a decade.
 * It looks like this Festival may have been held for the first time around more than 50 years ago based on the Head Librarian's story.