The fourth and fifth weeks of the LJL bring similar narratives to past weeks -- but luckily for Japan, it also brings in some fresh air as the dream may be achieved. That is - A wildcard region with actual competition making the mid teams better fast enough to possibly challenge the top teams to get better as well. For the upcoming week, LJL doesn't have any games, but games will resume on the 24th.

Set 1: BE vs DFM 0-2

After a certain point, there’s only so far anyone can go when it comes to building any sort of narrative around the bottom team being the underdog when they spent two weeks  against DetonatioN FocusMe getting destroyed. DFM had two perfect games against BE back to back, not including kills from confident overcommitments that got DFM objectives. That’s more than BE can say, since in two games back to back, they failed to get a single tower and a single dragon.

While it still holds true that BE can grow from their amateur status, for now they will be relegated to be the Velocity eSports of the LJL. Velocity, who only won 5 games out of 28, was almost the laughingstock of the NA LCS -- or they would have been had they not beaten CLG twice in the regular split.

Set 2: Unsold Stuff Gaming vs Rascal Jester 2-0

With both USG and CRJ holding shaky records and performances across the duration of the LJL, there couldn’t be a more “middle of the pack” match at this point in time as these two. This match is no less fascinating due to CLOCKDAY, once again, bringing out the Zilean Mid. While other midlaners in other regions have had varying success with the famous chronokeeper, CLOCKDAY controlled the map and the midlane with it. Another pick to keep an eye on was apaMEN’s Quinn.

Quinn is a champion that’s begun to see a lot of play in the top lane because she can handle a 2v1 situation, destroy a 1v1 situation and roam with her ultimate across the map at high speeds. The main issue with Quinn is finding her relevance and strengths from the mid to late game. The initial spike in Quinn’s popularity was because Quinn can destroy early game -- but once Fiora hits two items, there’s no one who can best the Grand Duelist 1-on-1. Quinn is chosen by both USG and CRJ; regardless of winning or losing, Quinn is not a factor in the victory, with poor KDAs and poor map presence. That said, Quinn still has a 59% win rate across all leagues in the 2016 competitive year as up to the 15th of February, but the pick hasn’t shown to be domineering yet in Japan.

Unsold Stuff Gaming, fresh off the first win against DFM is looking to take off with more and more solid play. The games against Rascal Jester show that as they look more decisive than earlier weeks, and CLOCKDAY is really coming into stride with his Zilean and Lissandra play. LJL should be looking out for this newly put together team in future weeks.

Set 3: 7h vs Rampage 1-2

Rampage, for the 2016 competitive season, has had consistently shaky early games but very solid mid to late game execution amongst the Japanese teams, with the exception of Detonation FocusMe. Even though the set goes 2-1, it’s more telling of the strengths and weaknesses of 7th Heaven moreso than Rampage. The first and the third game of this set tell similar stories regarding the matchups of Rampage vs. any of of the other LJL teams -- but when 7th Heaven wins? That’s where the real story is.

It’s not a new story for League of Legends, but it’s the progress of 7th Heaven that is both optimistic and worrying in which they can pull out an early lead and hold onto it confidently. In almost every iteration of this matchup, you’d find 7th Heaven taking an early lead over Rampage due to overconfidence, or a poorly coordinated gank, or towerdive; then, they’d lose that lead to a team who was just better than them and had more confidence in the midgame.

This didn’t happen in this game, even though 7th Heaven constantly outdueled Rampage. They were up a lot of kills but even in gold, due to Rampage’s farm and objective control. Rampage is finally solidifying their early game, but 7h is now able to go blow for blow with the powerhouse team - and it wasn’t for another 25 minutes that 7h finally came out ahead against them and ended the game. It was a fast-paced game with a lot of aggressive moves that were honestly impressive after watching NA LCS teams, whom lately would just rush a baron call and throw the game right then and there.

It’s a comforting ray of light shining through for the wildcard region if competition between the teams are actually generating better games for them because it means they’re learning rather than just getting destroyed, and learning nothing if the other team throws.

Round 5

Set 1: DetonatioN FocusMe vs Rascal Jester 2-0

The more things change for the draft of Rascal Jester, the more things remain the same for the shogun of Japan: DetonatioN FocusMe. While HW4NG tries out Cassiopeia, Ceros is finally returning to his roots. While CLOCKDAY was the first to bring out Zilean in 2016 in Japan, it was Ceros who was the original master.

It may have taken him a bit to pick him back up again after the change, but his performance was second to none in Japan, landing perfect stuns left and right in teamfights and showing great patience with his ultimates. Yutapon also brought out Sion and led the charge several times against an unsuspecting Rascal Jester. Despite being on top, DFM continue to shake things up with Catch just destroying everyone in the jungle. If anyone’s going to take down DFM by the end of the split, it’ll be Rampage -- but even then, that’s very difficult to see unless there’s some sort of dramatic meta shift shaking things up.

Set 2: 7th Heaven vs BlackEye 2-0

Given the nature of BlackEye games, it’s only worth talking about the second game where BlackEye, for the first time in their competitive career, took a lead against a team in the beginning of the game. Arford’s Top Nautilus and alps' Twisted Fate play took full advantage of both Destiny and Teleport to outmaneuver and punish aggressive moves from 7th Heaven.

Unfortunately for the challenger squad, that didn’t last as long as they’d like. 7h took back the gold lead and began winning fights, but this marks hope for them if they want to prepare to fight for their spot come the beginning of the Summer Split. 7h’s play was unable to shine when taking on such a low level team, but it’s shaking out to be that all the mid-LJL teams are equal level in terms of understanding how to move around the map. It may be the effect of the Korean infrastructure that several teams have brought over from Korea, but things look bright for the league.

Set 3: Unsold Stuff Gaming vs Rampage 1-2

Within the context of the entire report, the same story is told here as it was between 7th Heaven vs Rampage in Round 4. The same flow is presented as well, where Rampage drops a game because the team they’re up against is able to take advantage of their weaker early game; but otherwise, Rampage is just stomping both USG and 7h. To compare dominance from Rampage to DFM, Rampage most similarly characterizes itself by the older TSM rosters, where their flaws are obvious, but the talent across their roster just takes care of business like usual, even if teams exploit that weakness time to time.

DFM, on the other hand, looks more like Fnatic’s dominance where they’re not really ever exploited and just look more solid across the board than Rampage. But what can be said for Unsold gaming is that Zilean is now a very consistent ban against only CLOCKDAY, despite more and more LJL midlaners picking him up. It’s safe to say that USG is on the rise, and it’s very possible that the top three will be DFM, RPG and USG. Future weeks will have more in store as the teams have more time to adapt and then compete for who’ll represent Japan at the Wildcard tournament in Brazil.

If you enjoyed this feature, follow the author for more content on Twitter at @StevenNoogs.