Help get Neo out to Smash Con 2023!

Hey, I'm Hugh-Jay "Trade War" Yu, and I'm an anime FGC competitor and Smash Ultimate tournament organizer from Chicago. What's more notable about the last part, however, is that I play Corrin. And for many years, it felt like I was the only person playing the character.

But obviously, the Smash Ultimate landscape is very different now, and there's a certain Japanese player that caught my eye who I immediately became a fan of.

His name is Neo. You might not have heard of him - after all, he's only been competing regularly offline for a little more than six months now - but you've certainly heard of the people he's beaten.

[montage of his set wins against Shuton, Ken, Shogun, Abadango, Umeki, Shirayuki, etc]

Also, he beat Tea, but it was off stream, so I guess I'm not getting that footage.

Neo's rise has been meteoric. Whenever he's up to play, you can see YouTube chats light up with a single English word: MkNeo.

Last winter, I saw the successful efforts of the Granblue Versus community flying RQ out to Frosty Faustings, and this time, I wanted to take a stab at it and sponsor Neo for this August's iteration of Super Smash Con.

Here's the problem though: I'm a broke college student, and flying someone out across the world is not a cheap endeavor. I'm looking for your guys' assistance to help donate a little bit of money, and we should be able to get Neo to his first international tournament. By my estimates, we're looking at around ~$2500-$3000 dollars, split between the flight, the hotel, the competitor pass, and other flex spending like food and transportation.

But I'm not asking for your guys' money for nothing in return. You see, Neo's a bit of a content creator also, so to help do some fun stuff with him along with motivate donations, I'm setting some content stretch goals for Neo. Although I haven't finalized plans for this yet, I can list some of the early stretch goals:

$250 - I record an interview with Neo (question submission here)

$500 - I take Neo to post-bracket Canes and record his thoughts.

$750 - I ask Neo to VOD review one of my sets, telling him to be as mean as possible.

$1000 - A Duel of Birthright and Conquest: An Exhibition FT5 between Neo and SHADIC.

But yeah! Please help me get Neo out to Super Smash Con, and help let us show North America one of the world's most explosive rising Smash Ultimate talents!