User blog comment:B214/General discussion/@comment-27180505-20151226021459/@comment-24742995-20160203053913

“Touka lost to yudaii who has the same fighting style as kuraudo except with a spear. She loses against ranged opponents who can spam attacks and kuraudo is exactly that."

To start off, Yudai is a master tactician and Kuraudo isn't. Then, Yudai's strength is keeping people at spear range, whereas Kuraudo's ranged attacks are nothing compared to his melee attacks(his ranged attacks lose speed, that's why he shrinked Orichimaru's size before using Yamata no Orochi). Kuraudo's ranged attacks only serve as a means to force a swordsman to attack him up close, where he excels at. Yudai's Spear Zone is where he is the strongest at. Considering how Touka's ranged techniques can even overpower Shizuku, if Tohka and Kuraudo have a long range fight Touka would be winning. If they have a close range fight, then there's Raikiri. If you seriously think Kuraudo is like Yudai(which I don't, like I've said above) then there is all the less reason to believe that he can take on Raikiri head on(which remained undefeated until Ikki came in). Kuraudo can win only IF he is able to trick Tohka into using her Raikiri while outside the range, but she has reverse sight and Kuraudo was never a tactician to begin with.

I'm talking about rivalry, because Ikki and Stella have an ongoing rivalry since the beginning of the story, and the story makes it fairly clear much of the story is dedicated to the rivalry between them. It was just as big as their romance, if not bigger. After Ikki's confession Ikki and Stella promised to fight each other in the finals, before the Tohka his promise was the biggest motivation for him, and there was so much dialogue about Ikki's thoughts about Stella, how he would get mixed feelings, how he is filled with anticipation seeing how much stronger she got, how he wishes to become even stronger to match her, etc. and vice versa. I can't even count the number of times they almost killed each other. Stella literally said “If this attack kills you, I will still love you always".