Someone made a comparison and timed it with all 8 pair. Go check them out
https://youtu.be/U3M9CnoBrOM

I really like how Grindstone didn't apologize for every mistake they made,  they only did effective communication.

Now compare GrindStone with Aki-Ayame. GrindStone gave us a top tier sweaty gamer experience while Aki-Ayame gave us blessing 20 minutes full of laugh.

Kaela: you merely adopted ping issue, I was born in it, molded by it

The amazing thing is, the Grindstone is still shackled by Ping Problem, but rather than blaming it, they adjust their play with that Ping in mind, such as making sure Kaela jump first, and make Kaela keep hopping. Some of the 'Backseater' Chat that didn't knew about it keep saying that "Kaela's hopping make them slower", when it's the fastest way for them with that kind of ping.

Also the funny thing is, on their first day of training, the Grindstones spend a hour going through the 'Normal Route', thinking that it's just a 'Fun Game'. But then, one of the chat told them that "Botan pair is gonna do RTA route", and both of them had their "Sweaty Gamer Switch" turned on, then spend five hours practicing RTA Route. Seeing their training stream, the other pairs then trained like hell as well, with most of them also doing the RTA route (Mainly Towa-Chihaya and Peko-Niko pairs. Zeta-CC also try doing it, but skipped most of the hard shortcut)

The biggest Irony is, Botan pair is not even their main threat.

The main difference between the two runs was consistency. During Grindstone's practice stream, we've seen them constantly reset the checkpoint to clear obstacles 3 times in a row and adjust their strategy to find the most consistent solution. The spinner after the pipe slide is the perfect example: speedrunners jump over it as it is the fastest way to clear it, but Grindstone experimented so much that they found a slower, but more reliable way to get across. Towa and Chihaya went for the riskier skip and ended up having to recover multiple times in a row. The laser jumps before the train were routine work for Grindstone, while Towa's team made a few mistakes with the timing. For the pipe skip, despite taking the harder variant, Biboo made the jump both times, just got ping'd on their first attempt. Then of course there was the spike skip where the way to achieve consistency was so complex that they explained it in detail after the run.

I hope when Grindstone are in one place, they try this again. to see how far they can go without ping issue.

9:42 beejoe wiggle

EN and ID mems knew how formidable Grindstone was but JP mems didn't know they are up against the sweatiest dou of hololive.

The grindstone ping is so bad,  Kaela need to jump first slightly so she can pull biboo to jump further or higher

Interesting points:
Towa-sama is such a veteran streamer, she's still casually talking while focused on the run.

And Biboo and Kaela evidently practiced this so much and in sync with each other despite the ping issue that they essentially using one word communications

All members from the three branches know that when Kaela gets serious about a game, she'll know most of the meta strats and that Biboo is cracked at every game if she have enough prep time to adapt... Well, EN and ID know that together as GrindStone, it makes them hella broken, they're basically like Batman, but JP members didn't know that. They know they're individually great at games from their own experiences with each one of them INDIVUALLY during collabs, but I don't think JP girls have ever seen them together because there haven't been any case where Kaela and Biboo together did a collab with JP senpai/kohai due to language barrier

And language barrier also means all the GrindStone collabs where they just brute force their way to finish games are lost in translation for JP members and audience, outside of clips here and there (there are still very few JP clippers who made subbed clips of EN/ID members, unlike how subbed clips of JP members are common thing for us). The Chained Together race was, I think, the first time ever that GrindStone as a duo was exposed to JP members and audience. That's one hell of a re-debut.

I like how in grindstone when either of them making mistake they didn't even 'react' to their mistake. Just reassuring comment like "it's fine. Keep going. I'm ok" and then go full silent again

the intense Biboo gamer face was the key to victory

Kaela relly born for this 😂 10:43

They are literally neck-to-neck up until 10 minutes mark. That’s insanely exciting

I guess Towa and Chihaya dont get to practice much on the later half section, cos that's when they did the most mistake.
Kaela and Biboo said they atleast reach the elevator, which mean in their practice run, they already go past that, so they practice for all the skip they can in 20 minutes run.
I kinda want to see them speedrun the whole game now.

Nerfed by ping but still won is insane

Wow you can see how much the the ping issue hold down grindstone speed when seeing it side by side. We all know it would be an issue but i didn't think it would affected them that much until seeing this side by side, even just running slow them down so much. It's really amazing how they can sync almost perfectly to do the speedrun strat with that much delay when even their running speed is vastly different.

Playing with kaela ping is crazy