Miðgarðsorm

It was Zangief's "projectiles analysis" in the SF2 Animated Movie fanbook, although its general tone was not very serious and it showed the characterisation of its time. 18: Zangief's 1: great projectiles analysis 2: Watch the secrets of the projectiles I examined! 3: New move that vanishes projectiles! 4: Vanishing Flat!! 5: Ryu's Hadōken 6: A lump of natural energy. No worries about public damage. 7: About the same of the standard body temperature. 8: Its damage doesn't vanish immediately after hit, but it lasts in your body for a while. 9: Air Slasher 10: A whirlwind which cuts everything. 11: If it hits, you hear music. I swear. 12: Being a wind, the same of atmospheric temperature. 13: Ken's Hadōken I don't know if it's because he trained less than Ryu, but it's smaller than his. 14: Not much power, but it hurts like hell. 15: Neither hot nor cold. 16: The great stupid analysis of professor Zangief! ¹ 17: Can we really trust him?! 19: Kikōken 20: An improved version of the qìgōng² energy used to heal. 21: It did hurt, but it healed my stiff shoulders. 22: About the same temperature of a warm bath. 23: Ryu's Fire Hadōken 24: He adds his own energy to the natural one. 25: If it hits, it feels like boiling water. 26: Not enough to burn your clothes, but hot enough to hurt. 27: Sonic Boom 28: A wave attack produced by both arms going over the speed of sound! 29: Colder than Russian winter. 30: Feels like an impact with a wall. 31: Yoga Fire 32: I don't understand Yoga's secrets. Someone explain them to me! 33: If it hits, it feels like you eat spicy curry. 34: Seems the same temperature of boiling curry. 35: Tiger Shot 36: A materialisation of Sagat's evil heart. 37: If it hits, it leaves like a fierce beast's bite. It's freezing cold, like Sagat's heart.³ Yes, there was more in the same page about the game chronology and Ryu and Ken's friendship, but I didn't have the time and desire to translate it, too long. Anyway, at least there is a source for that claim. How much still reliable is all that regarding the present characterisation is up to debate, though... ¹ Although it was one of the first instances of Zangief being presented as a learned character, it wasn't treated seriously like nowadays. ² Remember that 気功 kikō is just the Japanese reading of the Chinese qìgōng, the same characters. ³ Of course Sagat is not like that anymore. Characterisation marches on!

Kinu Nishimura's drawing for the Capcom/Tezuka collab in Takarazuka. LOL, I'd never thought about Princess Knight's Friebe for this, even though she was one of my favourite characters from Tezuka's works, her minor character status notwithstanding. Obviously she has in common with Mika just the hearts on her breast(plate)s, but still a nice pairing (pun shamelessly intended).

I think you may be looking for this. Hakan's hair colour was... just based on a wordplay. Basically, since turquoise etymologically comes from the French pierre turquoise, "Turkish stone", and in Japanese is even more immediately evident (トルコ Toruko = Turkey, トルコ石 toruko ishi = turquoise, literally "Turkish stone", again; トルコ人 torukojin = Turkish man) ... yes, they gave him turquoise hair... made of stone...

And written where? Because in the story everyone including you saw, Necalli jobs to everyone and then vanishes. It's not that just because everyone could've thought of a better story, then THEIR story "was the true story Capcom wanted to tell".

According to whom?

Why should Necalli devour Bison? 🤔

Not only that. I know, gameplay and story segregation and blah blah blah, but whoever fights a man with a baby on his back is an asshole. Imagine G doing a nice backbreaker to Akuma: "WHOOOPS...". You couldn't do that, come on.

True, but there's a reason lions have entered European mythology and jaguars have not. It's because lions were known to European cultures, for millennia. Before AD 100, lions still lived as far north as Greece and Spain (lion itself is a word derived from the Ancient Greek λέων leon). It wasn't complicated at all for the Romans to find a lion for their circuses, during a period when lions lived almost everywhere around them except north. England imported many traits of its culture from Ancient Rome first and later from France, both places where lions had already entered mythological status and were everywhere in fables, tales and general culture. Heck, the Vikings knew what a lion was, and they likely never saw one in their lives. By the time of Richard the Lionheart (12th Century), the lion was already a symbol of courage in all the world known to christendom after centuries the animal itself had already gone extinct in Europe (also, the French were the first to give him that nickname, quor de lion, during the Third Crusade: so "Lionheart" came from a translation from Norman French). Similarly, South Asian cultures knew lions (because they lived as far east as India and Bangladesh, and India spread its culture everywhere in the East with Buddhism), leopards and tigers. Japan is no exception, as neither lions nor leopards nor tigers live in Japan, but they nevertheless knew them through Buddhist culture passed through Chinese illustrated texts and characters: 豹 hyō (leopard), 虎 tora (tiger), 獅子 shishi (lion). Jaguars weren't known to anyone except Native Americans (the word comes from the Old Tupi îaûara and the Guarani yaguar, "wild beast, jaguar") until late 1500. It makes sense for someone like King from Tekken to reference a jaguar, because he's Mexican (and his original inspiration, being Japanese, obviously referenced a tiger). Not so much for Adon. The reference I was talking about comes from, as always happens, a manga. Because manga and anime were the things SF developers read and watched when they were young. Akira Yasuda explained: "Back then I felt that Thailand was home to the strongest fighting techniques in the world. After being inspired by a certain manga, I thought to my self what if an evil organization used their funds to create a fighting empire of sorts?" The original Japanese wording is その当時はタイこそが世界で一番格闘技が強い国なんじゃないかと思っていたからです。そういう漫画を読んだ影響ってのもあるけど、悪い組織が資金力を使って格闘帝国を作った、というのがいいんじゃないかと思ったんです。"Back then i thought that Thailand was the country with the strongest fighting techniques in the world. Of course I was also influenced by that sort of manga(s), but I thought: wouldn't it be cool if an evil organisation used their economic clout to create a fighting empire?" That sort of manga(s). The Japanese language only rarely specifies a plural. Because there were various works using Thailand as the "country with the strongest martial arts" to build up a direct enemy the Japanese protagonist had to beat. All works by Ikki Kajiwara. If we talk about the most widely known, it's obviously Karate Baka Ichidai, which also was the main inspiration since SF1. But there are also other less known mangas by Kajiwara, most notably Kick no Oni and, above all, Kurenai no challenger, all of which reiterated some of Karate Baka Ichidai's main concepts (Kajiwara loved self-plagiarism and constantly repeating the same tropes and characters, just to hammer the point home... and also because he was lazy, lol) while introducing many more things Street Fighter series reused. Karate Baka Ichidai (1971-1977) was divided into two distinct parts, each with three story arcs, cleary distinguishable because drawn by two diverse artists. The first part (1971-1973, the first three arcs) was drawn by Jirō Tsunoda and depicted the heavily fictionalised story of the real-life karateka Masutatsu Ōyama. The second part (1973-1977) was drawn by Jōya Kagemaru and focused on Ōyama's disciples, particularly Yoshiji Soeno, and featured what many in the FGC already know as the primary source of inspiration for SF1: the never happened confrontation between Soeno and the fictional Rēban (NOT "Reiba", that was a typo of the first review appeared on the net which everyone kept parroting), that inspired Ryū and Sagat. But Sagat wasn't inspired only by Rēban; rather, he was a mashup of fictional Thai fighters who appeared in Kajiwara's mangas. All those mangas had a common point: Muay Thai was always presented as a fearsome art, the most terrible in the world, whose champions were regarded by the local population more as gods than humans (a frequent scene was the mothers overjoyed if the champion touched or carried their newborns, which was thought to bless them for life); also, Thailand's exotic locations were constantly shown, and those all ended up somewhere in SF backgrounds. Before Rēban, even Karate Baka Ichidai's first half already had Ōyama fight a Muay Thai champion, "The Emperor" (帝王 teiō) Black Cobra. Yes, "Emperor" ALSO became Sagat's title... It wasn't just Rēban, every Thai champion (and not only them... more about this later) in Kajiwara's mangas held that title LOL. Like Rēban after him, Black Cobra had a scarred eye (but no eyepatch). Kajiwara simply loved handicapped badasses as rivals or mentors of his protagonists - think of Danpei Tange in Tomorrow's Joe for example. Black Cobra ALSO had a bullet wound on his chest, which for a second Ōyama considered to attack but changed his mind as it was an obvious weak point, so it would've been a cowardly tactic. That's the first step towards Sagat's chest scar... Notice how Black Cobra cradles a child to bless him. Before the match, Ōyama also visits Wat Arun in Bangkok and the reclining Buddha... Which is actually in Wat Lokayasutharam, located in Ayutthaya Historical Park, 80 km north of Bangkok. Capcom wasn't the first to mix locations... Kick no Oni ("the demon of kickboxing", 1969-1971, drawings by Kentarō Nakajō) even preceded Karate Baka Ichidai, and is the heavily fictionalised biography of the Japanese kickboxer Hideki Shiraha, better known as Tadashi Sawamura (1943-2021), THE kickboxer who popularised the style in Japan in the Sixties, a period when they clearly wanted to establish the superiority of the style over the original Muay Thai and as such there was a lot of enmity between them: remember that "kickboxing" is a word coined by the Japanese promoter Osamu Noguchi (1934-2016) in 1966, who created the style by fusing karate and muay thai, and he was so hated by the Thais that when he opened a "kickboxing" gym in Bangkok in 1972 he was forced out of the country by overwhelming protests and death threats. Noguchi himself appears in both the manga and the anime, which apparently was a hit in Brazil with the title "Sawamu, o demolidor". Anyway, the plot is the same as always: the Thai champions are revered as gods (there's still the scene of the child blessing), Sawamura is a karateka who loses a match against a Thai champ but then decides to do kickboxing after being recruited by Noguchi and wins again, nothing to see here. Of particular interest are Sawamura's special moves, 真空跳び膝蹴り shinkū tobihizageri ("vacuum jumping knee kick", if you ever wondered "why shinkū hadōken?") and 垂直2段げり suichoku nidan geri ("vertical two levels kick", a jumping double kick), both techniques reused by World Heroes 2's Shura (also by Joe Higashi with different names). The anime opening featured also clips of the real Sawamura, who left a lasting legacy in the Japanese pop culture: remember that the Pokemon Hitmonlee is Sawamurā in Japan. Kurenai no chōsensha (1973-1975, "Kurenai the challenger" drawn by Kentarō Nakajō) was the work where Kajiwara let himself loose as it's all fictional, and also the most interesting about Muay Thai for a number of reasons. The protagonist is the promising young footballer Toshiya Kurenai, who watches a muay thai tournament while in Thailand and is star-struck by GARUDA, the champion revered as a god in Thailand and who makes short work of his opponent, sending him out of the ring at Toshiya's feet. Unlike Karate Baka Ichidai's Rēban, Garuda is tall, imposing and has a Garuda tattoo on his chest... The only things he lacks to be Sagat are the eyepatch and the baldness, which indeed came from Rēban. Garuda is immediately compared to a yak, the guardian demons of Thai temples we know so well for Vega's stage. Notice also how in the cover of the first volume, where he has white hair, Garuda so closely resembles Urien, complete with a bindi on his forehead... Long story short, Toshiya becomes obsessed with beating him, and leaves football to practice muay thai under the tutelage of Ikki Ōtone, a karate champ whom Garuda had crippled during a match and who is now an alcoholic living in a shack, consumed by his desire of revenge. Again the theme of karate (=Japan) vs muay thai (=Thailand) and the tensions between the two styles... With a lot of racism thrown inbetween, but let's not delve into that. And again the handicapped mentor... By this point, the only person who still supports Toshiya is his close friend Yoshio, who then becomes his cornerman. Soon after his debut, Toshiya befriends the Japanese kickboxing champ, Hayato Kenmochi, who is a blatant Sawamura expy (to make him even more exaggerated, he uses the真空三段げり Shinkū sandan geri, a TRIPLE jumping knee kick, obvious fusion between the two Sawamura specials) and, incidentally, is also the older brother of Miko, Toshiya's love interest. Toshiya even goes as far as to voluntarily enroll in Garuda's own gym in Thailand, 蛇の巣 hebi no su ("Snake Pit") ¹, where he undergoes the usual hellish training Kajiwara so loved. Too bad the coaches are all too loyal to Garuda and take the opportunity to torture him as punishment for a misdeed Toshiya didn't commit, but Garuda finds out his men dishonored him and beats them mercilessly, admonishing everyone to treat Toshiya like a normal student. Amongst the unnamed coaches, there's a strangely familiar face... Oh, hello, Adon. Obviously Adon didn't come just from this character, rather from a mashup of diverse "secondary Thai rivals" scattered in Kajiwara's works, all with spiky hair (see also Sawamura's opponent above), but the pointy nose and chin of this one in particular strongly remind of Sagat's cocky former disciple. After Garuda saves Toshiya from his coaches' lynching, he proceeds to tell everyone a story from his childhood. Garuda was born in a poor fisherman's family, but his sister was such a beauty a high-ranking (and corrupted) buddhist priest demanded her for his personal lust when Garuda was just a kid. Enraged, Garuda attacked the priest, but was quickly subdued. Since the priest couldn't kill him because of an imperial moratorium on capital punishment (if he did, he would've been stripped of all his privileges), he tortured Garuda and left him for dead in a wasteland, while Garuda's sister committed suicide. When Garuda opened his eyes, he realised where he was... So he swore before Buddha to become more than human to get his revenge. He trained hard and became the national champ, and ultimately succeeded. During an official dinner with the Thai emperor, Garuda recognises the priest (who obviously doesn't recognise the already grown up champ) amongst the guests, and proceeds to reveal him who he really is, then denounces his crimes to everyone before killing him in front of the emperor. Hayato challenges Garuda in Japan while Toshiya is still in Thailand and helplessly watches the match in TV, and Hayato even manages to actually down Garuda once for a count of seven with his Shinkū sandan geri. Too bad Garuda KILLS Hayato in retaliation with his super-secret move 空中ギロチン Kūchū girochin, "Flying guillotine". So for Toshiya it becomes PERSONAL. Garuda tells Toshiya he's now a graduate from his gym, and Toshiya resumes his career to challenge his former master. Toshiya fights many odd rivals, including a Bruce Lee clone who uses jeet kune do. Toshiya's first special move was the オーバーヘッドキック Overhead Kick, directly brought from his football past. The second move Toshiya creates is 紅十人げり Kurenai jūnin geri, "Ten Kurenai kick", where he jumps between the ropes so fast it seems there's ten of him (lol) and then... missile dropkick. The last move is created by accident, when Toshiya exploits a dodged punch and rolls forward in the air kicking his opponent (and hitting even the referee in the process by mistake). Ōtone dubs the move 人間風車キック Ningen fūsha kikku, "Human windmill kick". THIS would become Adon's Jaguar kick in SF1, when it was still named simply 回転キック Kaiten kikku, "rotating kick", Adon landed almost horizontal with his body AND THE FIRST FRAME OF THE MOVE WAS INDEED A WHIFFED PUNCH. By the time of SFZ, the finalised Jaguar Kick wouldn't resemble the original move anymore, but this was its start. Also, Bison's Double Knee Press / Scissor Kick, as Capcom said Bison stole the move from Adon. Toshiya finally succeeds in being recognised by Garuda as a worthy challenger, and the final match happens. Before the match, we see Garuda training with his disciples in Bangkok, and some Japanese tourists who are there seeing the reclining Buddha in Wat Pho, another reclining Buddha. The match is obviously extremely violent, and during the first round Garuda notices that any blow to his chest causes him immense pain. He deduces that years of muay thai fractured some of his ribs, whose fragments now are digging into his flesh and threaten his heart. The problem is that Toshiya noticed as well, and understandably he's now targeting Garuda's chest: so Toshiya must die. Garuda attempts his finisher, but Toshiya manages to escape, and as both can't use their special moves because they know how to counter everything, they continue pummeling each other using regular basic attacks. The last assault is a brutal kick to Toshiya's neck, who is already unconscious when he unleashes his last, fatal knee strike to Garuda's chest, who dies instantly for the fractured rib that pierces his heart. That's the origin of Sagat's scar on his chest, although he didn't die after Ryu's shoryuken. Toshiya is then judged by the doctor as unable to ever set foot in a ring again, IF he recovers. The last panel is Miko alone, observing the deserted arena and wondering about the sense of all that. Two men dead and one crippled for life... "For what?" "For something... Only a man could understand!" Classic Kajiwara tragic ending (with an even more classic self-absolution, lol). All of this is the answer to the question: "Why Thailand?". It couldn't have been anything else. Kajiwara constantly hammered Thailand down the throats of readers back then. Even the jaguar, who isn't an Asian animal. The very first page of Kurenai no chōsensha opens with a QUOTE FROM THE FIRST PARAGRAPH OF HEMINGWAY'S 1936 SHORT STORY "THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO". Kajiwara translated the paragraph verbatim, except that he wrote ジャガー JAGUAR over 豹 hyō (leopard). BOTH TIMES. So he clearly INTENDED a jaguar to be there, instead of a more plausible leopard. Even in the second page, when Kajiwara continues "But HE could explain! He saw Kilimanjaro as well! Just not in the Dark Continent, but in Asia! He saw Kilimanjaro in Bangkok, Thailand's capital city! Because, since he saw it, he became a JAGUAR too, determined to climb the lethal walls of ice with an incredible zeal..." And THIS is why Adon uses "Jaguar" in his moves. ¹ Call back to Tiger Mask's 虎の穴 tora no ana ("Tiger Cave"), itself a reference to the real catch-as-catch-can gym Snake Pit in Wigan, UK. If you ever wondered why Slammasters's Titanic Tim comes from Wigan, now you know.

Ok thanks, they clearly skipped a lengthier explanation. Gotta find the Japanese dialogues!

Was it 江戸主水 Edomondo? That is, 江戸 Edo, Tōkyō's old name, and 主水 mondo, the Chief of Public water (during the Ritsuryō system, so far before the Edo period, but who cares...)? Or something else?

WTF? DID THEY ACTUALLY CANONISE THAT? O_O Did he also tell you what was the Japanese meaning of Edomondo?

Or the simpler and most likely explanation... Capcom can't do math, as always when it comes to dates, weights and heights, come on.

As if it were the first time, lol. I remember when everyone was saying (and they still say it...) that Honda's shikona was "Fujinoyama" because of Sodom's SFA2 ending, when it was actually Honda's opponent... But it was so crystal clear only in the Japanese ending, after all. You posted the whole page. I just summarised its content and directly translated only the Master's words. The second half is about Sagat.

That's a conclusion they draw themselves. Nowhere All about SF Zero says that. Rose feels an ominous aura, runs out of her house and sees a passing limousine with Bison on board (who sees her and grins while the car goes away), then thinks about her master's words: "One day, you'll have to fight. Remember: Soul Power is your strongest weapon, but also a weakness you can't overcome..." But NOTHING in that original text says that Bison was that master.

To be fair, he does say that his pro-wrestling persona is a "heel". So to the public in the SF world, he is a "bad guy". Also, they practically used Ralph's own costume to make Zangief's casual (I WANT THAT IN GAME CAPCOM), down to the same colour palette. However, I suppose he's a heel now. Couldn't have been back in SFIV with all those children being his fans, lol. I imagine he's "The Gief". After all, we saw him lose the mask in his intro.

Manon's techniques also are grounded in actual jūdō. If you talk about REAL throws, the only real techniques are: - uchi mata, Abel's forward normal and Manon's back normal, although in Abel's case it resembles more an ō soto gari and was named Drop Throw in the English version; also Manon's finishing throw during her Pas de Deux SA (not its CA version); - tai otoshi, Abel's back normal (Pincer Throw in English), actually more similar to an ō guruma in execution; - ō uchi gari, Manon's forward normal; - ippon seoi nage, Abel's anti-air special Falling Sky; - uki waza, Abel's Finish Mid during Change of Direction. Everything else is "bullshit", whether you add ballet and swan feathers or try to stick to your traditional martial seriousness which apparently gives your moves more gravitas, even if you are a clone whose eyes go black when you're too excited and in both cases you jump higher than a 10 story building while rotating your opponent as if they are in a tornado, before catching them again and drive them to the ground. You can like whatever artistic license you want, but don't tell me one is "non-bullshit jūdō" or "believable" because they're absolutely the same level of bullshit from a realistic point of view. Abel's Finish Low is based on morote gari but good luck throwing your opponent with that and making him do a 450° flip backwards, so that's already superhuman. Manon's 1st and 2nd medals Manège doré is based on kouchi gari but even here you would never cause your opponent to do a backflip like that. It's particularly egregious if we consider that many of those throws assume to catch... the lapel of your opponent's jūdōgi, even when there's absolutely nothing to grab. So we can watch Abel grabbing... What, Blanka's chest hair?, and swinging him over his head, or Manon's 5 medals Manège doré when she grabs an inexistent lapel to choke her opponent while airborne, or again her final uchi mata during Pas de Deux. Also, answer to @Shakunetsuabout Thailand incoming... with the jaguar explanation.

🤣🤣🤣🤣 Imagine seeing THIS and thinking "That's totally believable and human jūdō moves".

And I believe I know WHY Adon (well, CAPCOM) named his moves with Jaguar. Which is odd, because jaguars only exist in South America, not in Asia where he's from... That's part of the story about Thailand which I was researching. You wouldn't believe it, but it was because... Hemingway.

"Horrible misfortune awaits whoever sees me." 🤣🤣🤣

You think that's Retsu because it IS Retsu. 😛 Luckily everyone has his own name clearly written, so there are 弾 Dan, 隆 Ryū and 烈 Retsu.

JP to Zangief: “Seeing you, I can’t help but recall Mosolov’s Iron Foundry, tovarsich.”

Doesn't make much sense, honestly. Unless he IS somehow connected to Neo Shadaloo. Maybe Ed will tell us more, when he comes.

What do you mean NEW? One who we never encountered before (and we know there are at least other two students of the same master who taught Bison, so...) or one who has learned it in the last 5 years (veeeery doubtful)?

Who's that guy staring at Ryu? 🤔

"It's great to have a GOOD FRIEND like you, Juni." "Indeed, Cammy. We're BEST FRIENDS FOREVER!" ❤️ 😝