Monster Arena Help

Going out on a limb here because I have already pretty much googled till my eyes bled and gamefaqs is a complete joke for walkthroughs and info for I+LM, yes there is a half arsed list of the japanese names for the creatures and their locations but in no way does it go into a solid in depth faq. let alone how to beat the cups or even how many there is or what you need to be lvl wise etc to take on this seemingly ( no joke ) brutal cups.

Been playing International for about 4 days now and have got a decent grasp down on what the menus are for the monster arena, in fact I have beat 2 cups by the looks of it and have Brother at lvl 18 ( he beat the first one around lvl 11 and second at around lvl 17 ), I gotta tell ya that giant jelly transforming block smasher was pure hell trying to figure out what elemental spells to use on it ( I cured it a few times and much cursing came after but it was a joy to finaly kick its arse! ), um it is hard to tell what items or things I am getting with the kanji!!!! text after beating the matches ( 3 I believe to become champion per cup ) anyway brother is still at story lvl 1...or maybe he only has 1 story lvl I have no idea.

Does anyone have some info that could help tackling these kinda brutal cups, because I am on the third one with everyone at around lvl 18-19 right now and I am getting my ass handed to me a few times.

Should these be done on a second playthrough or later on when many more GG and DS are there ?

I really need some serious help and info on this part of the game, starting to think that hardly any NA quality faqs even exist for this title, which does surprise seeing as it is a real FF game and I am sure there is enough NA peeps out there who have enough background in japanese to be able to play this and understand it, otherwise what little and somewhat decent faqs out there would not exist.

I dread to think about how nasty this 14 mil hp Emerald SOB is, he must make Trema look like a Iron Giant from besaid...but I kinda want to just cause well.

Thanks