Akuma? Guy? Evil Ryu? Sodom? A ninja?
This is where my brain is begging me to just give up obsessing over this stupid Street Fighter V image and numb itself with a cold beer.
Once again, Capcom is giving us a symbol on the character’s chest to work from. And like with the Guile picture, I can’t place where it has shown up before. My first thought was it was one of the two Final Fight alumni, Guy (Street Fighter Alpha 2, Ultra Street Fighter IV) the urban ninja, or the whacked out Japanophile Sodom (Street Fighter Alpha 2, Street Fighter Alpha 3). But, again, it doesn’t show up in either character’s artwork.
There’s the suggestion of a hood, which leads me toward some of Akuma‘s (Super Street Fighter II X: Grand Master’s Challenge, Ultra Street Fighter IV) alternate costumes in the Street Fighter IV series, or possibly Evil Ryu (Street Fighter Alpha 2, Ultra Street Fighter IV), but another detail is bothering me about this picture. The face features a straight plane, almost like whoever this is is wearing a mask.
Also, if the character is wearing a gi (Japanese martial arts training uniform), they’re not wearing it like any of the other Shotokan characters in the game. It’s nice and tight. A lot of the karate-based characters in Street Fighter wear their uniforms loose.
I’m stumped. I’m going to go the lazy route and just place my bet on this being a brand new character.
Mike Haggar? Alex? Darun Mister?!?
This is the most generic and least descriptive silhouette of the six. The body shape, build, and eye line suggest a bulky … or squat … masculine character. They’re wearing a boot of some kind that is either knee high, or they are wearing a knee pad. The planes and shape of the upper arm suggest a shoulder pad.
Alex fans are also claiming that this is proof of his addition to the game. But I don’t see it. The stance this character is taking doesn’t fit his visual design, and we’re missing his luxurious blonde locks.
Mike Haggar (Final Fight, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3) seems like a better guess, but he would also have to have suffered from serious hair loss in order to fit this silhouette.
One very wild stab in the dark is Darun Mister (Street Fighter EX 2), the obscure wrestling character from the Street Fighter EX series. I may be seeing this, however, with a similar lens as the Alex people, just because I wish Capcom would tap into some of the cool character designs of that series. I mean, come on Capcom … at least pull out Skullomania!
The stance, however, reminds me of E. Honda (Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, Ultra Street Fighter IV), which is throwing me off even more. Maybe the Japanese sumo champion gave up his original wardrobe for some boots and knee pads? I doubt it.
Adon? A new female character?
The final image is the one with the most interior detail, but those details are a bit of a jumbled mess of lights and darks. I seem to be staring at someone’s back, from an angle.
The flat plane of the top of the head has some people suggesting Adon (Street Fighter Alpha 2, Ultra Street Fighter IV). I certainly can see that. The stance, which sees the rib cage angling back and the shoulder mass leaning back, is a pose I can associate with that character as well.
The thing is, I also associate Adon with his shirt off, showing off his freak-of-nature, zero-body-fat physique. I also don’t remember Adon’s headgear dangling in the manner suggested here. The light and shadow shapes overall in that area are a tad confusing.
My very first impression when I glanced at this image was a new female character, but I realize now that the hips, or as much of them as I can see, aren’t wide enough in proportion with the upper body.
Conclusions?
It seems like a silly thing to spend so much time analyzing, but at the same time, I totally understand why fighting game players obsess over these details. These are characters that players wind up devoting a lot of personal time trying to master. They can easily become reflections of the type of player they are.
With all that time and personal investment, people don’t want to enter a whole new game without the characters they’ve been devoted to. So although, in the end, we should all learn to play new characters … we also secretly want the security of the characters we’re familiar with.
I think Ono is going to screw with our heads as much as possible before release. So it’s not worth getting too worked up over this (although it’s still fun to analyze and make predictions). The one thing I know for sure about future characters is that if that’s not Guile in that picture, then I am eating my imaginary hat.