Miðgarðsorm

LOL Russian Drop is a combo kick + DDT. Old Atomic Drop got shafted (never liked it, but it's strange after Capcom showed him doing it against one of his students during Gief's trailer). Also, you can CHOOSE whether to add the elbow drop after the bodyslam or not. If you hold the buttons, Gief does the elbow. Splendid.

Hang on, is there a VIDEO of all his normal throws? Anyway, Honda with just two normal throws is a travesty. I'm surprised MANON also doesn't have more than two.

According to THIS WIKI, Zangief has SIX NORMAL THROWS. With THREE different LOW THROWS. 😍 Bodyslam + elbow drop is neutral LP + LK. Captured Suplex is b + LP + LK. German Suplex is f + LP + LK. Spinebuster (new!) is DF + LP + LK. Russian Drop (his old Atomic Drop? Seems likely, he did it in his trailer after all) is DB + LP + LK. Brain Buster (aka the regular Vertical Suplex because the Japanese did confuse the two moves) is D + LP + LK. FREAKING FINALLY!

A baseless concern, if you consider how Capcom did constantly retcon every "Shadaloo destroyed" event as done by "Ryu and his merry warriors", or a generic "the fighters". Every time. Every game until V had the "character perspective" of events, meaning that "your character" won against Bison, or Gill, or Seth or whoever the heck was the big bad at the moment. Then, the next game vaguely specified "and then Ryu and his merry warriors" won, and everything moved on with some elements of other characters' stories being confirmed as happened and some other not. V had a general story which followed all the characters (well, DLC not included...), the protagonist was RASHID but STILL Ryu defeated Bison. Exactly like in IV when the protagonist was (well, MAYBE) Abel. Having a new protagonist, this time literally THE PLAYER, means nothing about the lore. You could well still have the single characters' stories which depict the events from their perspective, then the player avatar who interacts with everyone and pieces together the general story without necessarily being the one who defeats the big bad. At best the other fighters will compliment you (and all the other players like you) for your help to defeat Mad Gear, JP and whomever the heck is doing EEEEEVIL this time, and that's it. And that also means that the World Warriors managed to train a good new generation who will stand against the oncoming menace. That's the best outcome I could've hoped for.

The best thing out of all that is that it could be YOU to bring the narrative forward. The main story could well revolve all around YOUR avatar, with all their interactions with the main cast. They finally succeeded in making the player the protagonist.

The move itself is obviously the Kamehameha, but the name comes from Space Battleship Yamato's Wave Motion Cannon (波動砲 Hadōhō). They simply replaced 砲 hō (cannon) with 拳 ken (punch). Before HNK, there was the manga Otokogumi ("Male class", but also "clan" as in MAFIA clan), by Tetsu Kariya and Ryōichi Ikegami. It ran from 1974 to 1979 and it was the first manga to deal with juvenile delinquents who fought each other in the school (neither Otokojuku nor Rival Schools could exist without it, to be clear). Protagonist Zenjirō Nagare is a Tàijíquán champ and is charged with parricide and sent to a school ruled with an iron fist by the rich and tyrannical student Gōji Jinryū, and tasked with the mission of ending Gōji's reign. Zenjirō always fights without removing his handcuffs (where did I see something similar... I can't remember well... 🤔), meets various martial arts experts¹ and the conflict escalates nationwide (gotta love mangas' exaggerations). Long story short, anyway, the first special move Zenjirō creates is... the 旋風脚 senpūkyaku. The inclination of Nagare's leg is more similar to FF's GUY's version of the move, but the name is there. Remember that in SF1 Ryu and Ken kept the leg more downward, kinda like HNK's Shū did with his 円環斬襲脚 Enkan Zanshūkyaku ("circling beheading assault kick"), which Kenshirō later copied. Even the initial slow ascension is similar... Ikki Kajiwara's Jūdō Icchokusen (1967-1971). Which also provided Abel with his supers and ultras. You remember well, but the Youtube video with all the cool moves from the live action series of it is sadly gone... 😑 Anyway, I am writing also a long answer to@Shakunetsubecause, as @Lord_Vegasaid, Yasuda answered that at the time Thailand had the best martial art in the world... But he also admitted he was influenced by a manga for that. Of course he was. But WHAT manga? Prepare to know! Also, hello @biachunli ! Nice to see you here! ¹ Among them, the first ever Bājíquán master depicted in a manga, courtesy of the martial arts consultant Ryūchi Matsuda, who authored the immensely influential kung-fu manga Kenji (1988 - 1992), which inspired most of the Chinese characters everyone of us has seen in a fighting game. It obviously warrants an article (more than one, I fear...) just about it. You wouldn't believe the amount of things every fighting game directly copied from it... And not only fighting games: even Shenmue or Fate wouldn't have existed (or would've been much different) without Kenji.

My gripe about Luke is that he's a PMC. I was fine with his "modern Popeye who does MMA" gimmick until I found out he's a military contractor. I already had enough of all the military characters, but a mercenary is even worse. There's no such thing as a "good Rolento".

The poison hand fighter is an old idea taken from, guess what, manga. Which in turn took the idea from old kung-fu manuals. Remember when I wrote about Mad Bull 34 and Haggar? Well, amongst Sleepy’s outrageous adventures, there’s a curious one: he once gets recruited by Son, an old Chinese master assassin who’s retired and is now a hotel owner. Son is dying of cancer and won’t live another year, but his last desire is to kill his former apprentice Morgan, a lanky and psychopathic monster who doesn’t follow the moral code of the true professional assassin, and kills children and women for fun to rape them afterwards. Son has challenged Morgan to kill him, so he knows Morgan will come; and also knows that he has no chance against his former protégé. In the very likely case Son won’t be able to terminate Morgan, Sleepy should step in and kill Morgan in his stead, to finally purge the world from this monster. Basically, Son chooses to die in battle to atone for his sins, ensuring there wouldn’t be further consequences. To motivate Sleepy, Son offers him his hotel… and his own daughter Lei. The interesting thing is that Son, Morgan and Lei all kill using a peculiar martial art, here called 陰手功 inshukō, “yin hand technique”. Son explains that it requires a bowl filled with sand mixed with the poisons of various plants and venomous animals. By repeatedly striking the sand every day with the bare hand, over time the practitioner can acquire a lethal poisonous hand, so powerful that it can literally dissolve the organic tissues of the victim. Son used to be called “Red sand hand” Son. His daughter Lei also knows the art, and styles herself as “Blue sand hand” Lei. Morgan is “Black sand hand” Morgan. Colour coded for your convenience, indeed. Morgan obviously kills Son, then exactly as obviously Sleepy kills Morgan (spoiler!). There can be spotted various interesting ideas that Capcom later reused: the old Chinese master assassin dying of cancer and wanting to die in battle instead of illness is a concept recycled for Gen; the daughter of the aforementioned assassin seeking vengeance on her father’s killer is exactly the backstory Capcom initially thought for Chun-Li in the first pitch for Street Fighter II in 1988, when she still was to be called 智麗 Zhìlì, would’ve used mantis-style kung fu (later recycled as one of the two styles for Gen in SFZ2) and should’ve been Gen’s daughter, long before someone thought about Dorai or even making Chun-Li a cop. The concept of a female apprentice for Gen, although no longer his own daughter, briefly resurfaced during SFV development, but it was ultimately discarded. Again. But Capcom just hates to let good ideas go… Since SFIV, Gen apparently has had an ambiguous relation with Dorai, so now he’s again a sort-of mentor figure to Chun-Li. And finally we have the eerie, tall and wiry psycho killer in sunglasses who uses poison… And that’s F.A.N.G. Who now has his own young female apprentice. Obviously, F.A.N.G’s appearance and mannerisms owe to a number of other influences, but the impact of Mad Bull 34 is undeniable. The method of poisoning one’s own hand to make the body resistant to poison – more than that: to become poisonous itself -, didn't originate in Mad Bull 34, however, but that's another story...

The problem with Akira is that I love her as a character, but her Bājíquán is shared with Yun, Yang and (under the false name "Kanzuki-ryū") Karin. They had to rework a lot of her old moves in order not to make her redundant. After all, they all take inspiration (as do ALL the FG characters who use Bājíquán) from the same manga, and Akira is a particularly egregious case. Not sure how a "violent and wild" servant would be well accepted by Gill though, let alone Urien... who's another violent and wild villain, even if relatively controlled. As much as it would be funny to see them clash, lol.

I love Lily's back throw. Choke hold with the pogamoggans, Argentine backbreaker and toss. Classy. Also, Honda's level 3 is MARVELOUS. Creating a flaming sumō ring by dragging the opponent, then pushing them near its edge... only to throw them over THE FARTHEST ONE to show complete dominance.

He was already leaked a year ago. Season 1 DLC, we'll never get rid of him.

Procella, Latin for "Tempest". "Porcella" would be "SOW" in Italian, not the best pick for a move I would say. 😛 Anyway, there's A LOT to note about Zangief: Also, Maeda was trained by Karl Gotch, who until 1961 went by the name Karl Krauser. Full circle. Obviously, Gotch also made the German Suplex the rightly respected move it is today, and it's worth noting that, when he used it in 1961 for the first time in Japan, it was still named ATOMIC Suplex. "German" came later, in honour of Gotch (whose real name was Karl Istaz; he was billed as a German even if he was actually Belgian, but no one would say Belgian Suplex...). Then there's Abdullah the Butcher's 地獄突き Jigoku tsuki ("hell stab", as it was also its name in Virtua Fighter when Jeffry McWild adopted the move in VF2). Most wrestling fans nowadays would recognise this blow as being used by The Undertaker or Kane (or Jinsei Shinzaki if they're into Japan), but Abby did it first in the Eighties, and it was him Capcom wanted to homage with Gief's crouching LP back in SF2. Then there's Zangief's Knee Hammer (f + MK): aka the Jumping Knee Bat, a staple move of Jumbo Tsuruta (also Akira Maeda and nowadays Jun Akiyama). He generally did it with the right arm up, a style instantly recognisable. Zangief's move is named ニーバット Knee Bat in the Japanese SFV, just to note that sometimes you also lose the immediate references in translation... And also already homaged by Tekken's King and Armor King, and DOA's Bass: Finally, the Mongolian Chop. Its inventor was Masashi Ozawa, better known as Killer Khan, another character created by Karl Gotch. Ozawa wrestled as a "Mongolian" for much of his career, first starting as Temjin El Mongol while in Mexico in 1978, then as Killer Khan in the USA in 1979. AoF2's Temujin is obviously modeled after him. His double chop was named "Mongolian" from his character, and then adopted by any "Mongolian" wrestler, real or not (they even gave the Mongolian Chop to AIGLE in Rumble Roses, just because she's Mongolian...). Killer Khan used the blow with a characteristic shriek, part of his so-called "Albatross style".¹ The Mongolian Chop's legacy was inherited by Hiroyoshi Tenzan and Killer-O-Khan (another "Mongolian" who does the move just like Killer Khan, "albatross shriek" included), who just in 2021 had a feud centered around who had the RIGHT to use the move (LOL), so they had a match with a "loser can't use the Mongolian Chop anymore" stipulation in January 30, 2021. Tenzan lost and ceased to use the move... Until he had enough of it and ignored the ban just a month after that. 😂 With so recent a drama about the move, it's no wonder the devs included it in the game. Neither Sagat nor Adon will come back. But don't worry! There will be a muay thai rep anyway! ¹ Also parodied by PUCK in BERSERK once, lol.

I suppose that's because the first real wrestler to use the Tiger Mask gimmick was Satoru Sayama in 1981, when Antonio Inoki acquired the rights of the character from its creator Ikki Kajiwara. 1981 was also when the second animated series of Tiger Mask debuted, three days before Sayama's debut as Tiger Mask, in an obvious marketing move to promote his enormously successful stint.

Tiger Mask has nothing to do with Fray Tormenta, however. The manga Tiger Mask was first published in 1967, and Tormenta debuted in the ring in 1978. It's a case of life imitating art. King however absolutely could've been influenced by Tormenta, but only for the priest thing. All of his moves reference real or fictional wrestlers, the vast majority of them Japanese.

Yes, but the Japanese named them so because they were referencing things THEY knew. In Japan, Vega was first and foremost the evil alien emperor in UFO Robot Grendizer. And Capcom had already used Balrog in Strider, so it was more of a self-reference.

Crossposting from the lore thread. Cammy has a new throw which seems a low throw. Ok, so Zangief HAS the Running Bear Grab. GOOD. Also, the EX SPD has him CALLING THE MOVE. 😍 Marisa carrying him at the end is hilarious. 😂

Cammy has a new throw which seems a low throw. Ok, so Zangief HAS the Running Bear Grab. GOOD. Also, the EX SPD has him CALLING THE MOVE. 😍 Marisa carrying him at the end is hilarious. 😂

I tolerated the GH just because it showed that Zangief could do Hadokens if he ever wanted, like everyone else. It's just that he didn't want to do them. Because projectiles aren't wrestling. No, with "low throw" I meant that ZANGIEF is the one crouching with df + LP + LK, not the "throw done on a crouching opponent" introduced in SFV (and first seen in a Capcom game with RING OF DESTRUCTION, where the throw indeed changed if your opponent was crouching). After all, it wouldn't make much sense for Gief to show the Atomic Drop in the trailer if he can't do it in game (even if I personally never liked the move). But both Body Slam and Atomic Drop throw the opponent forward, so one of them should be the down variation. Unless they ALSO kept the throws done on crouching opponents, so that could bring even more variations (and I'd like that idea, but doubt they went for it). Captured Suplex is the same suplex Gief already does in SFV as back throw. Cool indeed, and a nice present to Zangief's designer back in SF2 Ikuo "IKUSAN.Z" Nakayama, who wanted the Captured Suplex because he was a fan of Akira Maeda, but they couldn't do that convincingly with sprites back then (well, Zangief gained ALL HIS KICKS since SF2 from Maeda anyway). Actually it would make more sense to go for a Backdrop instead (aka Gief's CA in SFV), but that would be overkill 😛 The only problem with the Karelin lift would be that the opponent should be prone on the floor. The closest could be on a crouching opponent, or maybe they could give Gief a throw which first positions the opponent like that. Who knows, maybe in the SA3 variant he does it... 😛

No, we both got something wrong, sorry. SA1 Aerial Russian Slam SA2 Cyclone Lariat with Jackhammer finisher SA2 HOLDING THE BUTTONS Cyclone Lariat HIT ONLY, so you can juggle the opponent OR go to SA1 afterwards as we see in this last trailer SA3 Bolshoi Storm Buster I never liked GH as well. The only time it was good was in Alpha 2 when you could use it in combos (jump in, d + HP, MK, GH and SPD or FAB was a KILLER combo). Also, Zangief has no need to show that he can project ki out. It's simply not how wrestling works. That's why I also want the RBG back. Also curious about his normal throws. I bet that he kept SFV Atomic Drop (he did it in the trailer after all) with f + LP + LK, Captured Suplex or something other (Vertical Suplex?) b + LP + LK and the Body Slam with People's Elbow followup we saw in the trailer is actually DF + LP + LK, because thanks to Dhalsim we know now some characters have LOW throws.

Nakayama clarified that, besides the typo in the first tweet (Aerial Russian SLIM, lol), if you don't hold the buttons during this SA2 (so it's the second one and Jackhammer is SA1, as expected), the followup Slam doesn't happen.

AERIAL RUSSIAN SLAM IS BAAAAAAAACK

If only Capcom would take the chance to show Ryu finally enlarging Akuma's arse with the whole temple of his background, I'd be all for it. Too bad they'll never do so and we will be still plagued by Akuma as of SF36, and we'll just have to be grateful if they won't waste even another slot on Evil Ryu ever again. Oh well, as long as they keep giving me the best Zangief ever seen, I won't care. In the meantime, I discovered a new chapter in the novel "Capcom randomly jumbles cultures", but it's really like shooting fish in a barrel. Nakayama said Lily's weapons are called ポカモガン pokamogan. Aka the English pogamoggan, in turn from the Ojibwe bagamaagan "club" and the Cree ᐸᑲᒪᑲᐣ pakamakan or ᐸᑲᒫᑲᐣ pakamâkan, "club, sledgehammer". As @EvilCanadianalready pointed out once, the weapons have a very specific origin, and that's the Northeastern Woodlands. This contrasts with the Great Plains cultures which always were the primary inspiration for the Thunderfoot tribe since its inception, but we should remember that Capcom had (and still has) in mind the classic Hollywood stereotype about the Native Americans: basically, "all the Indians are the same", and that "same" is mostly "Lakota with totem poles" (no Plains culture had totem poles, which are an exclusive feature of the Northwestern Coast).¹ Indeed, we know the elder's name and is Singing Wolf, a blatantly classical English-translated Lakota name. And yet... we saw the Thunderfoot village from above during T.Hawk's ending in SFIV, and they dwelt in typical Lakota tipis. Why do they seem to live in caravans now? With a lot of Aztec imagery on top of that, such as the Sun Stone reproduction just in front above Lily. At least that is Mexican, as is the papel picado hung everywhere, the writings (Gente orgullosa, "proud people" lol, teléfono and, on the left, Lujo - La Fonda - cocteles, "Treat - The Tavern - cocktails"), the people and the coloured hill town in the background, which not only closely resembles the colourful houses of Mexican cities like Guanajuato but also doesn't make the Thunderfoot village seem so isolated anymore... I can't wait until we know the names of Lily's moves, her normals in particular. Also, the name of the wind spirit... What language is that? ¹ It's ironic that we use "totem poles", using an Ojibwe word (ᑑᑌᒻ doodem, "clan") for something that the Ojibwe never carved. Linguistically understandable, as most of the Native American words which entered English are from the Northeastern coast because they were the first people the European colonisers met, but still awkward. Well, it's also more pronounceable than the Haida gyáaʼaang, the Tlingit kootéeyaa or the Timsin pts'aan, gotta give them that.

Left: огнеопасно - высокое напряжение Ogneopasno - vysokoe naprjaženie, "FLAMMABLE - HIGH VOLTAGE" Up right: осторожно Ostorožno, "Caution" Low right: осторожно! злой зангиев Ostorožno! Zloj ZANGIEV, "CAUTION! EVIL ZANGIEF" I suppose it refers to Gief's heel persona, whom his two students (the ones similar to Gunloc and Biff behind Gief) reveal with their sandwich double lariat at the beginning. Also, the stage is called "Barmaley Steelworks". That's a reference to Barmaley Fountain in Volgograd, which in turn comes from the fictional pirate Barmaley. I call @-PVL93-to confirm that. Gief's students have 右王 migiō "right king" and 左 hidariō "left king" tattooed on their bodies.