ProtoBanham (プロトバナム) is a Super Smash Bros. UltimateMin Min and Lucina main from Japan who formerly used Inkling. He is widely considered the best Min Min and Lucina player of all-time, one of the best Inkling players in Japan in 2019, and the best player in Japan from 2021 to early-2022. ProtoBanham is currently an honorable mention on the LumiRank 2023 Top 100 due to low activity, and was also ranked 2nd on the old Experimental Smash Player Rankings.
On January 5th, 2021, ProtoBanham joined the newly founded Japanese organization Team Vrilliant (Vrilliant Owl X at the time) as their first Smash player, along Lea.
With both Lucina and Min Min, ProtoBanham is known for being extremely aggressive and utilizing an excellent advantage state. He uses Lucina's Dolphin Slash's intangibility during the beginning frames and fast startup to escape combos as well as an edgeguard (by hitting recovering opponents towards the ledge). He is well known for his Shield Breaker mix-ups, often catching opponents off-guard. ProtoBanham is famous for his incredible movement with Lucina, in particular being the only top player to heavily utlize wavelanding into his neutral game.
With Min Min, ProtoBanham utilizes her large hitboxes to accumulate damage by ledgetrapping and suppressing his opponent in neutral with the Ramram and Dragon. He is also known to go off-stage with Mega-Watt to finish off a stock, as well as using her up special to hit opponents above him and keep them in disadvantage.
A notable aspect of ProtoBanham is his unique creativity in both his playstyle and his gameplans. An example of this was during EVO 2019, where when grabbing his opponent, instead of the typical throws, he would instead grab release, opting for better positioning due to Lucina's lackluster throws. Another aspect of this is his counterplay game: he is well-known for switching his characters against his opponent even when winning games, either to switch up the tempo of his opponent or heavily utilize stage advantage.
ProtoBanham's signature look is his baseball cap. He wore a Le Coq Sportif cap in every major tournament pre-quarantine. Fanarts depicting Proto consisted of Lucina wearing this cap.
After the quarantine and his signing to Team Vrillant, he changed it in favor of a cap from his new sponsor. He also switched when he joined Crazy Raccoon.
ProtoBanham was able to place 5th at EVO 2019 despite suffering from kidney stones. However he dropped out of Super Smash Con 2019 to have treatment.
ProtoBanham was dubbed "The Iceman" by the community as he is often known to ice his opponents. However, ProtoBanham's "icing" is mainly due to his kidney stones, where drinking copious amounts of water is recommended.