Ryu VS Kenshiro (Street Fighter VS Fist Of The North Star)
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“Voidness is that which stands right in the middle between this and that. The void is all-inclusive, having no opposite--there is nothing which it excludes or opposes. It is a living void, because all forms come out of it and whoever realizes the void is filled with life and power and the love of all beings.” - Bruce Lee
Ryu, the World Warrior from Street Fighter.
Kenshiro, the Savior of the Century’s End from Fist of the North Star.
Two warriors that walk in their solitude meet, and a clash of fists and fate begins. Only one path survives. It's time to decide whose journey ends today in a DEATH BATTLE!
Before We Start…
Both series have had a lot of discourse of what should be used in terms of their canonicity, but thankfully, the Street Fighter World Warrior guide makes Ryu’s side easier then you’d assume. We will be using the mainline games, guidebooks, Udon comics that are backed as canon by the guide, the Final Fight games besides Revenge, and the Rivals Schools games. We’ll talk about the rest of the Udon Comics, EX, and Revenge in Before the Verdicts.
Comparatively, Kenshiro is simpler - the main Fist of the North Star and Fist of the Blue Sky manga and their anime adaptations with other material such as the various spinoff games being used as supporting material. We’ll discuss the various Gaidens in Before The Verdicts as well.
The art team (L.A.D, Aggravating_Floor and Flip) tried to make this blog as pleasingly looking as possible, and in this blog we tried doing something different with the background cards to be a bit more creative, so we hope you guys enjoy the change for future blogs. On the other hand, we also decided to tone down the usage of custom GIFs, given they make the document more heavy and therefore not load as well on Wordpress, which we will use as a backup eventually. Sorry if that comes as a disappointment. Special thanks for ishi_yuki as well for clutching in with some of the final images. We hope you guys enjoy this blog!
Background
Ryu
“The answer lies, in the heart of battle.”
A wandering warrior with no home but the road beneath his feet, Ryu is the purest embodiment of discipline, restraint, and the eternal pursuit of strength. Orphaned as a child and taken in by the reclusive master Gouken, he was taught the martial art of Ansatsuken, not as a weapon for death, but as a means of self-perfection. From a young age, Ryu showed an uncanny focus, devoting himself entirely to his training. While other children laughed or played, Ryu spent his days meditating beneath waterfalls, striking trees until his knuckles bled, and shadowboxing long after the sun had set. His path was never about fame or accolades, only about becoming stronger than he was the day before, which is why he decided to join the World Warrior tournament for the first time.
Though he emerged victorious with a surprise Shoryuken, defeating the mighty Muay Thai emperor Sagat in a duel, this fight would leave a scar on them both. A massive chest wound marked Sagat's body, and a deeper, more lasting wound pierced Ryu's spirit. That final strike awakened something terrible within him. For the first time, Ryu had tasted the power of the Satsui no Hado, a violent energy buried deep within the core of Ansatsuken. It is a force that grants unimaginable strength through rage and bloodlust, twisting martial discipline into something monstrous. This power once consumed his master’s brother, turning him into the being known as Akuma, a man who had cast aside all humanity in exchange for absolute strength. Shaken by this encounter, Ryu left quietly, drawn back to the road, to silence, to self-reflection. This became his life: a ceaseless pilgrimage from one place to another, seeking worthy opponents, absorbing lessons from every clash, never settling down, and searching for true balance within himself. He trained in freezing mountaintops and remote monasteries, exchanged fists with sages, soldiers, and savages, each encounter shaping the warrior he would become.
Over the years, Ryu has crossed fists with legends. His closest friend and eternal rival, Ken Masters, trained alongside him under Gouken’s watchful eye. Unlike Ryu, Ken fought with flair and fire, with a confidence that bordered on arrogance, but the two brought out the best in each other. Through every match, they sharpened each other's skills, reminding one another of where they came from and what they stood for. Sagat, once consumed by hatred after their first battle, would later come to respect Ryu, seeing in him a kindred spirit who fought for principle rather than pride. Ryu’s journey also led him into direct conflict with global threats, standing against tyrants like M Bison and the criminal empire of Shadaloo. He has tested his strength against the cold efficiency of Vega, the brutal might of Balrog, and the sadistic genius of Seth. Along the way, he has battled warriors like Chun-Li, Guile, Fei Long, and Zangief, each of whom carried their own beliefs, burdens, and disciplines, adding their lessons to the ever-growing mosaic of his path.
Eventually, Ryu came to face the truth about himself. He could no longer deny the fear that lingered in his heart. The fear that he would lose control. The fear that he would become like Akuma. But in accepting this fear, he found clarity. He attained a higher state, known as the Power of Nothingness, a spiritual awakening that draws strength not from hatred or anger but from inner peace and empty-mindedness. Where the Satsui no Hado thrives on chaos, the Power of Nothingness thrives on serenity. With it, Ryu finally found balance.
Now in his early to mid-forties, Ryu remains a nomad. His body has grown stronger and his soul quieter. While many of his former allies have found places to call home, Ryu still walks the earth with little more than a tattered gi and a restless heart. He eats what nature provides, sleeps under the stars, and trains as though every sunrise might bring the fight of his life. He has no interest in material things and only the barest need for comfort. What he seeks is not conquest or recognition. What he seeks is understanding. Ryu fights because it is the only way he knows to become his truest self. He fights because, for him, the fight is life itself.
Kenshiro
1,800 years in the past, a man called Shuken invented the art of Hokuto Shinken, a martial art that called upon the power of the Big Dipper constellation to decimate foes with pressure point combat. This power would be wielded by his descendants for centuries to come, but each generation could only yield one champion. Almost two millennia later, the Earth was absolutely ravaged by nuclear warfare. Civilization had fallen, and the rest of humanity suffered under the weight of constant wars for resources and survival. Fortunately for life on Earth, one such champion would eventually rise above his brothers and use Hokuto Shinken not for his own good, but for the good of humanity. His name was Kenshiro.
Kenshiro was raised alongside three adoptive brothers by a successor of Hokuto Shinken called Ryuken, all of whom were taught the art of assassination from early childhood. Ken was the youngest of the four brothers and lagged behind Toki and Raoh in skill and strength. He was, however, the one who best embodied the principles that make Hokuto Shinken, being the one who best understood and gathered strength from his feelings and the feelings of others. Tragically, it was not long into his life before the planet erupted in nuclear warfare, leaving him, what remained of his family, and the love of his life, Yuria, in a barely habitable wasteland. Toki, the most compassionate of the four brothers, sacrificed himself to let Ken and Yuria into a nuclear bunker, becoming extremely sick after absorbing the fallout of the atomic bombs outside for two weeks. He then pursued the path of a healer. Raoh, seeking the path of conquest, saw the apocalypse as an opportunity to seize control of what remained of the world. Kenshiro was chosen as the successor, as Ryuken saw Toki’s sickness and Raoh’s dangerous ideology as problems that would make them stray from the path of Hokuto. He tried to seal Raoh’s fists to stop him from rampaging across the world but failed. Jagi, jealous of Kenshiro, tried to kill him but ended up disfigured and ran away. All Kenshiro wanted afterward, being left orphaned and alone, was to live his life in as much peace as possible with Yuria, but that hope was eradicated when Jagi conspired with his old rival Shin to kidnap Yuria and permanently scar Kenshiro with a recreation of the Big Dipper on his chest, leaving him to be known as “The Man with Seven Scars.”
Kenshiro was left with nothing but to wander the wasteland, eradicating every brutal warlord he came across while searching for Yuria. In his journey, he became acquainted with Bat and Rin, two orphans that Ken protected. He eventually reunited with his brothers, but unfortunately not under good circumstances. He confronted Jagi, finishing the job he decided not to do when he was younger, and met Toki in a prison for martial artists built by Raoh, now called Ken Oh, the King of the Fist. Toki made sure he could pass on as much of his knowledge as possible, as Kenshiro would soon be left with no choice but to face his eldest brother, who had become a brutal and powerful warlord during the time Kenshiro spent trying to settle down. Raoh then kidnapped Yuria, who was revealed to still be alive, and battled Toki, defeating him due to his weakened state. After Toki’s passing from his illness, every last vestige of Kenshiro’s old life was gone. But while this was a tragedy, the sheer sorrow would also lead him to unlock the ultimate art of Hokuto Shinken, Musou Tensei.
With Musou Tensei, Kenshiro could reach a state of nonexistence which allowed him to attack his opponents while being completely untouchable. It granted him a massive increase in strength that allowed him to go toe to toe with the mighty Ken Oh. It was not long after that Raoh also unlocked that state, and over an old lost love (yes, Raoh also loved Yuria… everyone loves Yuria), they were forced to battle to the death. The most intense battle in both of their lives came shortly after, and after being beaten within an inch of his life, Kenshiro barely scraped by with a victory. While Raoh’s might could tear heaven and earth, the ties of love in Kenshiro’s heart made his fist stronger and granted him the strength to win. However, it was not exactly a happy ending, as Yuria was revealed to be sick and to have only a few years left to live, and all of Ken’s family was gone. Ken left with his love mounted on Raoh’s horse, spending Yuria’s remaining years of life together in isolation.
Yet the world did not settle down. After ten years, Kenshiro reunited with Bat and Rin, now freedom fighters who gathered allies to fight against evil, and confronted the terrible Army of the Celestial Emperor. After defeating their leader, Ken was told that Rin had been kidnapped and taken to the Land of Asura, a dangerous country tied to the origin of Hokuto Shinken that held many mysteries and deadly enemies. Crossing the last sea on Earth to the land of demons, Kenshiro moved on to fight against whoever opposed him. And so he did, but not without discovering new secrets. One of them was the terrible art known as Hokuto Ryuken, an offshoot of Hokuto Shinken that was founded by Shuken’s rival and cousin, Ryuoh, 1,800 years ago. As their lineages split, the rivalry between the two schools grew with time. It was discovered that Toki and Raoh were descendants of Ryuoh, and that Ken was directly descended from Shuken’s bloodline. It was also revealed that Raoh had an older, lost brother named Kaioh, and that Kenshiro also had a lost biological brother named Hyoh, who practiced Hokuto Ryuken and was raised by Jukei, Ryuken’s old rival. As you might have noticed, the post-timeskip part of this manga is quite strange. These two enemies were exceptionally powerful and even managed to defeat Kenshiro’s Musou Tensei. However, it was not enough to stop Ken from beating them.
Kaioh’s horrible and violent reign over the Land of Asura was brought to an end once Kenshiro underwent the ritual of lifting the seals of Hokuto Shinken by touching the ancient stone of Hokuto Soke and attaining comprehension of Shuken’s life and story, finally becoming a true successor. He managed to defeat Kaioh using all the strength from the love and sorrow his heart had endured, ending Kaioh’s life not as an act of punishment for his sins but as an act of love, stopping him from sullying the blood of their ancestors any further. With this, the last remnants of Hokuto Ryuken were buried in the land of its birth. After going back to Japan with Rin, Ken said goodbye to her and Bat, and left to train and guide Raoh’s son on the path of the successor of Hokuto. If it sounds out of nowhere that Raoh has a son, it is because the manga introduces this information exactly like that. Ken and the child, named Ryu (huh, wait a second), went through many kingdoms and helped fight injustice. The boy was left under a trusted caretaker by Kenshiro, until it was time for Ken to train him further in the art of Hokuto.
Afterward, he vanished into the sunset, but not without leaving a massive impact on the world that was left after the war. Thanks to Kenshiro’s acts of heroism, thousands of innocents were spared from death by corrupt rulers and psychopathic gangs, and rebuilt cities became more common, providing people with food, water, and safe places to live. Kenshiro’s true strength did not just lie in the sorrow that allowed him to achieve Musou Tensei, but in the love for others that allowed him to keep going despite that sorrow. Despite being capable of ending a life with a single finger, it was Kenshiro’s compassion that inspired people’s hearts and made the Man with the Seven Scars a true warrior.
History and Legacy
Ryu
In 1986, game designer Takashi Nishiyama began sketching out of boredom while in a meeting with Capcom’s development staff. Inspired by his previous successes on “Spartan X”, a martial arts side scroller more commonly known as “Kung Fu Master” internationally, as well as his own passion and interests for martial arts. Nishiyama conceptualized a 1v1 fighting game built around the boss fights of that game that would become the very first Street Fighter, before he presented it to Capcom producer Yoshiki Okamoto who found his idea intriguing and later, after some convincing Capcom finally greenlit the project once their shooting games were starting to lose steam. So along with Capcom planner Hiroshi Matsumoto, Nishiyama discussed his ideas and Matsumoto refined them with the rest of his team.
The mindset they had was that games at the time didn’t give the bright and colorful feeling of sports and athletics, they didn’t just want a game with two boxers fighting against each other as they thought it would be very simple. But instead different fighting styles all around the world make interesting combinations, so with their shared interest in martial arts media they came up with details like what kind of characters or what moves they should have to give it a sort of martial arts film quality. The result being a game starring a young karateka by the name of Ryu, wandering the world and climbing the ranks as he sought to become the king of the hill in the martial arts world.
Such influences also gave us beloved characters like Ryu, Ken and Sagat. Ryu particularly was inspired by the legendary Mas Oyama’s likeness AKA “Godhand”, as well as the sensationalized manga retelling of his story Karate Baka Ichidai in the form of Ken Asuka. And Sagat was obviously based on Reiba, The Dark Lord of Muay Thai who also wears an eyepatch.
One of Nishiyama’s sketches around that time.
Much of Karate Baka Ichidai inspired the setting of the first Street Fighter, the team’s perception of Muay Thai was that they thought it was the strongest martial art at the time. So it only made sense to make characters as imposing as Adon and Sagat (ignore the derpy face) as the last bosses, right? Homages to Mas Oyama also became more clear in games like Street Fighter 6 and Capcom vs SNK 2.
Originally the cabinet for the game had two giant pneumatic buttons, these buttons had sensors detecting the strength of a punch or kick based on how hard you hit the button. But this of course didn’t bode well during location tests, since most of the people were either tired or injured from repeatedly hitting the buttons like crazy. This was changed to the iconic 6 button layout that we know today, with the game getting more positive reception upon the actual release of a newer cabinet in January of 1987 as a result; while the game didn’t sell as well as they expected in the U.S, it was still a moderate success that breathed a fresh air in the videogame industry. Critics praised the new control scheme that offered a new depth of strategic thinking, the varied enemies, “realistic” graphics and the impossible to execute command moves(most things that haven’t been seen before by that point). No matter how badly you think the game may have aged. Of course with this there was a lot of interest for a sequel, one that would surpass its predecessor in every way.
Hoooooowever, SNK and Capcom were headhunting employees from their companies at the time (building their iconic rivalry that you saw back then). Nishiyama and most of the team that worked for the game left the company to move over to SNK, due to some creative differences with the company and not having a friendly relationship with his old supervisor at Capcom. He was now free to do whatever he wanted, so he took some scrapped concepts from the original Street Fighter. And reworked them into the hottest fighting game he was spearheading at the time, a little game called Fatal Fury: King of Fighters.
Yup, not only do Street Fighter and Fatal Fury share the same creator. The white american protagonist we see in the intro of Street Fighter 1 was in fact the prototype of what would become Terry Bogard from Fatal Fury, Fatal Fury gave the man another opportunity to put him there.
Getting right back on topic, with Nishiyama gone it was now up to other people to take it’s reigns. Now you may have heard this story, but they intended to make the original Street Fighter 2 in the form of Street Fighter 89 due to the growing popularity of beat-em-ups. But due to negative reception at location tests the game was turned into its own original title. Final Fight. After finishing the game and making plenty of big bucks, game designer Akira Nishitani was called by time management to help develop Street Fighter 2. But with one condition, keep it as straightforward as possible. This put Nishitani kind of down since he wanted to experiment with the formula, but one day he built up his courage to and said, to quote “Alright! If those are the limits, I'll show them what a 100% Nishitani effort looks like!”. Pretty hard if you ask me.
Surprisingly, he didn’t play Street Fighter before-hand outside of a few times. And understandably so, even back then he didn’t think it was a very good game by modern standards during his replay; Nishitani wanted the sequel to not just make a sequel that would surpass it in every way. But a sequel that would satisfy him too. So with a team of producer Okamoto, new character designer Akira Yasuda for the artist team, Yoko Shimomura in one of her earlier composing for the sound team and of course the rest of the team members. They built the fighting game that would in many ways, define generations to come.
Pictured right, there’s also some concept art of a potential Ryu redesign that looks a bit familiar to a certain someone…. But I'll be shocked to see who.
The game originally was to be set in a big island where they would host the tournament, before they settled on the international fighting tournament of the game with a cast of 8 playable characters. One of their biggest priorities was making a much more colorful cast based around the nationalities and fighting styles of the characters, though represented and exaggerated to a ridiculous degree. Whether it be by music, designs or stories. And the manga and film influences certainly didn’t stop! Drawing much of its DNA from other sources like JoJo, Riki-Oh, Fist of the North Star and Genma Taisen to draft characters like Bison, Guile, Vega and Chun-Li. Speaking of manga, a lot of the fighting moves for the characters were inspired by Kinnikuman with the series going forward, with the most notable being Zangief’s “Siberian Blizzard” being inspired by Suguru’s “Kinniku Driver”, C. Viper's “Burning Dance” based on Zebra's “Muscle Inferno”, and El Fuerte’s “Ultra Spark” and “Flying Giga Buster” being based on Suguru's “Muscle Spark” and Big Body's “Maple Leaf Clutch”. There’s more references in the series, and one of them you guys will check later in the blog 😉.
After two arduous years of development, Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior hit the arcades in March 1991 and its success could not be understated. While the game wasn’t initially a hit in Japan, it quickly grew in popularity globally due to several factors: The starting roster of 8 characters offered plenty of variety for players to choose for playstyles or character preferences, the combo-based structure that the series would adopt later on (which was originally a hidden oversight) and easier to execute motion offered a much more smoother gameplay than its predecessor, the classic soundtrack and most important of all is the competitive aspect. No other game prior had taken advantage of the player vs player structure like Street Fighter 2 had done previously, and entire communities were built off of this hobby that would become the FGC we know today. We see this with arcade culture in Japan, as well as EVO.
Thanks to all this, Street Fighter 2 became a global phenomenon and sent ripples across the gaming landscape, instantly becoming the highest grossing game of 1991 and 1992 and cementing itself as one of the most important games of all time. Ever since then Capcom kept constantly milking the game by re-releasing on every console possible and with new additions like new mechanics, addition of supers, faster speed and characters. With the first appearance of a secret character in the form of Akuma.
The fighting phenomenon kickstarted by Capcom inspired plenty of new challengers in the 90s looking to take their bite in business as well, with series like Mortal Kombat, Tekken, Art of Fighting, Samurai Shodown, Killer Instinct, Virtua Fighter and more entering into the fray. Street Fighter in particular built quite a rivalry with both SNK and Midway, whether it be through their past links or outright having Blanka break a copy of Mortal Kombat 1 in a commercial. Midway were understandably kinda pissed. Despite all that though, it still influenced its rivals in plenty of ways. Mortal Kombat’s fatality was inspired by the stun system from Street Fighter 2, initially starting as a free hit to land on a dizzy opponent before evolving into the nasty finishers we know today. SNK though was on a whole other level with how much they took from one another, Ryo Sakazaki from Art of Fighting was made as a deliberate homage to Ryu and Ken, while Yuri Sakazaki parodied Ryu and Ken and many of their moves. So Capcom paid the favor right back with Dan with plenty of cheeky references. Then SNK decided to make a character that would deliberately not just rival but contrast Ryu in every way in the form of Kyo Kusanagi, as they considered the character an incredibly huge wall to overcome. Inspiring their eventual rivalry in the Capcom vs SNK games (no, Terry was never Ryu’s rival).
One other major influence that Street Fighter 2 shared among most of these and many later games that would follow was the combo system that allowed the player to link attacks by cancelling their previous actions, to this very day most fighting games still have this feature and we have Street Fighter to thank for that. Capcom would even further expand this in the form of chain combos in the first Alpha game and Darkstalkers, that is, allowing players to chain normal attacks from light to strong. We would see this combo system prominently appear in anime fighting games like Guilty Gear, Blazblue, Melty Blood or Under-Night in Birth in the 2000s.
Daisuke Ishiwatari (creator of Guilty Gear) admitted he was an avid fan of Street Fighter 3, citing it as one of his favourite games. In fact, it was Street Fighter’s focus on simplicity and tactics as to what led to him making his own take on a fighting game in the first place, as well as Kinnikuman’s absurdity. He later got invited to do artwork for Street Fighter’s 25th anniversary, depicting Yun and Yang.
After the constant re-releases, Capcom knew they simply couldn’t keep the fans waiting for a new game, so they started expanding the series more with anime and new games. First came the prequels in the Street Fighter Alpha games. Depicting some of the cast in their much younger days, bringing some of the SF1 characters back and introducing new lore with the Ansatsuken or the Satsui no Hado or new characters like Sakura or Rose. Later Capcom finally delivered the long awaited Street Fighter 3 series, showcasing a new game with a whole new generation without most of the original cast of 2 not returning with the exception of Ryu and Ken, as well as Akuma and Chun-Li in the later revisions. Causing a bit of a negative stigma around the game due to the game throwing away most of the cast from 2 and giving it poor sales due to gaming moving from arcade culture at the time, especially no console like the PS1 or N64 could really ever handle it. But time eventually came to its side (or at least Third Strike exclusively did) and Street Fighter 3 gained more appreciation in later years once Evo Moment 37 came around.
But this wasn’t the end of the fighting mania for Capcom, once they collaborated with Marvel to do arcade games for their properties with Punisher, X-Men: Children of the Atom and Marvel Super Heroes. Capcom decided to put little cheeky easter eggs in the form of hidden characters with Akuma and Anita, so it’s possible they thought “what if we combined both….” and they did. In 1996, Ryu and the rest of the Street Fighters would throw hands with the X-Men, kickstarting the Marvel vs Capcom series and a long continuing trend of Ryu wanting to fight everyone under the sun. (SNK, Tekken, Tatsunoko, Granblue, Asura’s Wrath, Family Guy, literally every franchise on Smash, Fortnite or Project X Zone)
You can’t stop it. The Ryu number simply grows much stronger with each passing day…
Now that sounded good and all, but all good things must eventually come to an end. From the late 90s, fighting games on a 2D plane were starting to dwindle in popularity and sales, primarily due to a few reasons: 3D was the new big boom in the 90s once games like Tekken or Virtua Fighter came around and sprite based games were seen as outdated by that point. The market was also oversaturated with many fighting games, becoming incompletely indistinguishable and complex from one another to the general viewer and causing another fighting fatigue once again. SNK went bankrupt since they unfortunately couldn’t branch out of fighting games and Capcom’s whole mugen asset reuse with Capcom’s new crossover game Capcom Fighting Evolution caused them to put off their entire fighting game division in 2004 due to its rocky development and reception. The attitude since then made them hesitant on developing fighting games again, choosing to stick with their other franchises like Resident Evil for a while. It was truly the dark fighting game age. Well at least if you were a Capcom or SNK fan. MK was mostly fine with the 3D era, same with Tekken and you had anime fighting games like Guilty Gear.
But all was not dark.
Let's jump into the late 2000s. After some convincing from Yoshinori Ono. Capcom co-developed a new game with DIMPS, the company that Takashi Nishiyama now helmed. So you could say in a sense the series returned to its original creator with this specific entry. And they unveiled a new fourth entry to the Street Fighter series after going 8 years without a game. The first trailer showcased Ryu and Ken battling it out in an awesome oil painted style, all to an incredibly positive reception for those who long awaited a new entry to Street Fighter.
A new generation of players were introduced to the renaissance of the fighting genre once Street Fighter IV released in May of 2009, not too dissimilar from Capcom’s previous attempt with Street Fighter 2. With an all-new digital age bringing a giant spotlight to fighting game tournaments due to livestreaming and content platforms like Youtube, instantly becoming another smash hit and revitalizing the fighting genre. EVO received a notable spike in entrants due to that new gained attention and it has been one of the most played fighting games in the entire genre.
Ever since then, Capcom has continued Street Fighter releases with the occasional fighting game crossovers. Both with plenty of ups and downs over the years(cough cough SFV and MVCI). But Street Fighter 6 did fix many of the issues and sold marginally much better than SFV in just a year. Finally making the long awaited sequel to Street Fighter 3: Third Strike, featuring the OG Street Fighter 2 cast facing off against a new generation of world warriors.(Why are there barely any SF3 chars now tho????? Why are they costumes????), with the addition of a new world tour mode. Offering an adventure open style mode similar to MK Deception’s Konquest mode where the player creates their own character, wandering the streets of Metro City seeking for strength and training all over the world under several masters. We even finally got our first guest characters in the series (if you don’t count the Final Fight characters but be fr) in the form of Terry and Mai Shiranui, letting players get the privilege of having Terry quite literally beat the depression out of Ken Masters. So as of now, the series seems to be going strong as ever and we couldn’t imagine how gaming or even the world would even be without its presence.
Kenshiro
In 1982, Nobuhiko Horie, an editor for the Weekly Shonen Jump Magazine, encouraged newcomer artist Tetsuo Hara to make a new manga after his debut serialization “Iron Don Quixote” was cancelled. As a fan of martial artists such as Bruce Lee and the action film star Yusaku Matsuda, Hara always wanted to make a manga about fighting. On a visit to a used book store, Horie picked up a chinese acupuncture book and had an insight after reading a curious anecdote. In it, a Chinese medicine student tried to cure an eye issue by overstimulating a pressure point, but ended up making it worse. Horie had an idea that mixing martial arts and pressure points would lead to an interesting shonen story, as the protagonist could destroy bodies from the inside and therefore be able to challenge enemies much bigger and stronger than himself. He pitched the idea to Hara and the story was decided to be titled around a Chinese legend about two sages named after constellations, Hokuto (the Big Dipper Constellation in the North) and Nanto (the Southern Cross Constellation in the South). Hokuto and Nanto were respectively the gods of death and life, and Kenshiro, the protagonist, was pictured as the son of Hokuto.
Hokuto no Ken (Fist of the North Star) and Hokuto no Ken II were published as one shots in April and June of 1983, and were highly praised by readers. The series featured a noticeably younger Kenshiro fighting evil punks, the stuff you’d expect. However, the setting was contemporary, and not the one we are used to.
A younger and slimmer Kenshiro in the first Hokuto no Ken one shot. Damn, that is literally just Bruce Lee.
Kenshiro in the Hokuto no Ken II one shot, now sporting his iconic leather fit.
In September, the full serialization of Hokuto no Ken began, with writer Buronson (pen name of Yoshiyuki Okamura) being assigned to work with Hara. With him, a lot of changes came to the story. The setting became post-apocalyptic, inspired by Buronson’s own trips to Cambodia and witnessing the horrors caused by Pol Pot’s dictatorship. With the sight of devastated constructions and corpses piled up everywhere, the idea of the wasteland Kenshiro would wander through started to form. Added to the influence of the Mad Max films (particularly The Road Warrior, the second one), that starred a leather clad lone wolf surviving a deserted wasteland and killing gangs of punks left and right.
It’s also important to note that the setting and structure were heavily inspired by other manga as well. Violence Jack, from 1973, predates the first Mad Max film by 6 years and features a muscular protagonist violently dispatching of bandits in a wasteland filled with brutality and tragedy. Sound familiar? Well, Go Nagai is cited as one of the most influential mangaka of all time for a reason.
This Jack fella went on to inspire a certain Black Swordsman later as well
On the coattail of great martial arts oriented shounen stars of the past like Ring ni Kakero and Kinnikuman (whose main character shares a voice actor with Kenshiro!), the story went on to become a smash hit in the pages of Shonen Jump, not only thanks to the instant iconicity of Kenshiro and his one-liners, but also thanks to Tetsuo Hara’s unbelievable art that brought realism in Shonen manga to a whole new level, inspired by the manga masters that came before him and also by the art of Frank Frazetta and famous Hollywood stars. The Gekiga (manga for adults) movement of the 70s also had a huge influence on Hara as an artist, and made him seek realism and detail in his art.
But the manly hyper violent action wasn’t the only thing captivating readers. At its core, Fist of the North Star was a love story, a story of tragedy and loss that showed a generation of young boys that yes, it is okay to cry (it’s going to be even more evident when we talk about Musou Tensei). Kenshiro and Yuria’s tragic romance and the overall dramatic tone the manga often took helped amass an unlikely fanbase of female readers that are active in FOTNS fan content creation to this day.
With Hokuto finishing its publication at Jump, it cemented itself as a legend. It became a massive franchise with an absurdly iconic anime adaptation, anime movies and OVAs, videogames and even a horrible live action american adaptation. Fist of the North Star is one of the best selling manga in history, selling over 100 million copies, more than juggernauts of the industry such as Hunter x Hunter and Fullmetal Alchemist.
With the initial publication over, Buronson and Tetsuo Hara went to work on their own projects, with Hara starting his new period piece manga with Keiji at Shounen Jump, and Buronson starting a new partnership with Ryoichi Ikegami to publish a gritty crime drama called Sanctuary. Neither stopped working on manga, and have a lot of other works put out. Of course, none ever hit as big as Hokuto. In 2001, Tetsuo Hara started a prequel to Fist of the North Star titled Fist of the Blue Sky in the Weekly Comic Bunch Magazine. After the end of this magazine, Hara and Buronson started their own Magazine to replace it, where Hara also supervises the creations of younger mangaka on original manga and even spinoffs of Fist of the North Star.
Hana no Keiji by Tetsuo Hara and Sanctuary by Buronson and Ryoichi Ikegami
But let’s go back in time a little bit. Of course, being a success, Hokuto started heavily influencing other manga running at Shonen Jump during its initial run, including the legendary Dragon Ball. In an interview, Kazuhiko Torishima, Akira Toriyama’s editor during his work on Shonen Jump, said that he studied Fist of the North Star’s massive success in order to steer Dragon Ball’s initial run into a different, more action oriented direction. That’s why Dragon Ball went from a relatively innocent adventure to a martial arts epic full of tournaments and increasingly sinister villains.
Shonen Jump mangaka pay tribute to Fist of the North Star in its 40th anniversary. For a full list of illustrations see here.
However, Toriyama wasn’t the only one to be inspired by the legend of Kenshiro. Hirohiko Araki, of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure fame, is a Hokuto superfan and started his iconic long running manga with a very blatant and heavy inspiration on Fist of the North Star, from its art to its dramatic dialogue and similar plot, the importance Tetsuo Hara and Buronson had on Araki and his work cannot be understated.
Kentaro Miura, another aspiring mangaka from the 80s, was also a huge Hokuto fan, and that is easily observed in his magnum opus, Berserk. Outside of Guts and Kenshiro being obviously very similar in appearance, Griffith took a lot of inspiration from Shin, the initial antagonist of Kenshiro’s story. Miura has stated multiple times that Fist of the North Star was the greatest influence he had on his career as an artist, and it’s easy to see why. In life, the late creator of Berserk also managed to work with both Buronson and Tetsuo Hara in different projects, with Hara even drawing Guts once.
It’s safe to say that shounen and manga in general were changed forever thanks to Fist of the North Star. It is considered the father of the modern shounen for a reason, alongside Dragon Ball. Hell, it is the reason Dragon Ball is so influential in the first place, as it wouldn’t be the way we know it if it wasn’t for Hokuto’s influence in action and tone. Think about any modern shounen that you like, you can trace its DNA back to Kenshiro’s legendary manga.
Fist of the North Star, Berserk and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure
Of course, manga wasn’t the only medium that changed because of Fist of the North Star’s monolithic influence. Video Games, particularly Japanese fighting games, were greatly impacted by Tetsuo Hara and Buronson’s work. To start small, the character of the Colonel greatly influenced characters such as Rolento from the Final Fight series and Heidern from The King of Fighters. We also have Yuda, the narcissist Nanto fighter of FOTNS, being a central influence on Vega from Street Fighter in addition to his mask and braid taking notes from the Nameless Shura. There are countless more examples we could point out, and it’s interesting to note at least Tetsuo Hara was aware of them, as he is a fan of Street Fighter 2 and even collaborated with Capcom on another videogame!
Saturday Night Slam Masters, or Muscle Bomber, a 1993 Capcom wrestling game with art by Tetsuo Hara.
Of course, that’s avoiding the obvious. The Ansetsuken art in Street Fighter is clearly inspired by Hokuto Shinken, the concept of the Satsui no Hado is obviously inspired by the Matoki Aura, Ryu’s Mu no Ken is Street Fighter’s version of the Musou Tensei, the list goes on. No wonder both series eventually crossed over.
You can find references to Fist of the North Star in many other video games, from Guilty Gear to Castlevania. For even more, watch this video.
And here we are. Full circle.
WIth all this in mind, it’s easy to see why Fist of the North Star is one of the most important manga published by Shonen Jump. With a memorable story whose cast is as powerful as its gorgeous art, Kenshiro’s saga earned its place among the legends that came before and after its conception. His story might have effectively ended in 1987, but its ripples are still felt today.
Experience and Skill
Ryu
Ever since he was adopted and raised by Master Gouken, Ryu’s life even at a young age was surrounded in the very heart of battle.
Having been trained in the ways of combat in Gouken’s passive variant of the Ansatsuken along with Ken for over 10 years, the teachings that he imparted to Ryu allowed him to always learn about and react to his opponents movement accordingly while pointing out their flaws and strengths. Always looking for an answer in the battle itself even in defeat or victory. In this way, Ryu's journey has always been about improvement. Getting so good at martial arts that he started unconsciously learning techniques on his own even without Gouken’s guidance, mastering each strike and ki attack of the Ansatsuken as if he were the one that created them and captivating many of the street fighters such as Bison, Sagat or Oro. And Oro is a 140 year old immortal hermit and senjutsu master who considered Ryu to be the only worthy martial artist in the world to teach.
Once he actually set out on his journey to fight the world's strongest, Ryu gained a whole belt of experience under his fists fighting famous figures such as Fei Long or Dudley. His experience in various countries in particular has allowed him to easily overwhelm more novice martial artists such as the Yun and Yang brothers or Alex, countering their techniques. And winning numerous local village tournaments before in Asia (Ryu rizz), speaking of tournaments though. During his first outing in the first world warrior tournament, he defeated fighters all around the world and once he finally got to Thailand he beat 20 well known figures in the sport of Muay Thai, all just to attract the attention of the by-then strongest known man in the world Sagat. One of the most skilled martial artists in the world who won numerous championships and remained undefeated since he was 15, and whether Ryu defeated him fair and square with the Satsui no Hado or not. The two have exchanged fists more than once after that scarring victory, so keeping up with Sagat is no small task for our good old hobo.
When it comes to life and death situations though, Ryu has been through thick and thin fighting some of the world’s most dangerous fighters and any world conquering threat. He faced and defeated the leader of Shadaloo and psycho powered terrorist M. Bison several times, even teaming up with his friend Ken on one occasion to make an organized attack against him. Overpowered characters such as Seth and Sadler who used the data and abilities from other fighters around the world and while he hasn’t solidly won an encounter against him yet(at least in canon). Has kept up with Akuma, his master’s killer and the master of the fist.
Kenshiro
Reading his backstory, you’d expect Ken to be an absurdly skilled martial artist, but that would be underselling it.
Since he was a child, Kenshiro has been harshly trained in the ways of Hokuto Shinken by Ryuken, the ancient art of assassination with 1800 years of history, and achieved mastery in it, becoming chosen as its 64th successor. This is no small feat, as Hokuto Shinken is the most dangerous and powerful martial art in the world, stated before to be more terrifying than an army of a thousand men. It is said an unworthy successor could bring ruin to the entire world. Thanks to this, only a single successor can exist. Kenshiro and his two brothers are said to have brought Hokuto Shinken to its absolute pinnacle in 1800 years of history, putting Kenshiro above his uncle Kasumi, who was already absurdly skilled in his own right, being able to perfectly counter a martial art that had no weaknesses and just counter techniques based on instinct with his pure skill.
As Hokuto Shinken’s basis lies in striking the pressure points of the human body, practitioners require extreme knowledge on anatomy, which Kenshiro mastered as well. Striking pressure points correctly requires superhuman precision, and Ken can hit a minuscule pressure point with a strand of hair in the middle of a fight to the death.
Hokuto Shinken masters like Kenshiro are capable of perfectly adapting to enemy techniques and attacks after brief studies or expositions to their fighting styles, as well as copying their abilities and understanding them on a deeper level than their original practitioners. Hokuto Shinken, being the ultimate martial art, has infinite fighting variations, and Kenshiro, being a direct descendant of Shuken, the founder of Hokuto Shinken, holds in his bloodline infinite potential. As 1800 years of history run through his veins, he was a killer since the day he was born.
When he was a child, Kenshiro could already defeat fully grown men trained to kill in the art of Nanto Seiken. Even enemies that Kenshiro fights early in the manga are incredibly tough and skilled, such as members of the God’s Hand. They’re stated to be able to kill entire armies of 500 guerrillas each. Their leader, the Colonel, had mastered combat to such a degree that he could read the opponent’s attacks by observing subtle eye and muscle movements, effectively achieving precognition. Kenshiro slaughtered his entire forces and killed him, negating his technique with eyes closed. Armies are nothing to Ken, as he can kill armies of thousands, calmly, as if marching through an empty field.
Ken’s journey wasn’t a cakewalk, though, as he met several formidable foes that shaped his power and skill by the end of the series. As stated by himself, Kenshiro grew stronger by fighting strong opponents, and he continuously grows during a fight to match his opponent’s strength as well. One of such strong opponents was Souther, a member of the Six Divine Fists of Nanto, who initially appeared immune to pressure points, until Kenshiro found out that his secret lied in his body’s inverted heart, and found out a new strategy to beat him, reinforcing Ken’s ingenuity and combat prowess.
Of course, we can’t not mention Raoh, Kenshiro’s older brother in Hokuto Shinken. Raoh was a great fighter, considered to help bring Hokuto Shinken to its peak in 1800 years just like Kenshiro. He spent time gathering military strength and seeking knowledge in martial arts, even creating a prison to steal the secrets of hundreds of martial artists. It is said that by his time as Ken-Oh, Raoh had already mastered almost every martial art. To defeat him, Kenshiro attained the most powerful technique in Hokuto Shinken, called Musou Tensei, becoming the first in history to do so. Once Raoh managed the same, their final battle came down to a contest of raw skill and willpower, which Kenshiro won.
On his later journeys through a continent called the Land of Asura, Kenshiro met his older biological brother Hyo, and Raoh’s biological brother Kaioh. Both practiced the art of Hokuto Ryuken, an evil martial art that enables one to tap into the demon realm, and manifest an aura so evil that it corrupts the user's very soul. At first, the spatial powers granted by this aura even beat Musou Tensei, but Kenshiro eventually managed to adapt and defeat both of them, cementing his status as the strongest man in the history of Hokuto.
By the end of the manga Kenshiro underwent the ritual of lifting the seals of Hokuto by interacting with the Hokuto Soke stone. By doing that, Ken experienced in an instant the entire lifetime of Shuken, the founder of Hokuto Shinken, and achieved true understanding of the martial art, reaching the full potential of his bloodline and receiving a great power boost.
But mere knowledge in martial arts is not all Ken has to offer, as he is practically a renaissance man in his own right. Kenshiro is also extremely intelligent and has a photographic memory, being able to memorize 50 thousand words by reading them once. Master Ryuken also taught him traditional Chinese medicine, a field Kenshiro grew to have a deep knowledge of.
Equipment
Ryu
White Headband
White hachimaki that a young Ryu wears during Street Fighter 1 and the Alpha series.
Red Headband
Red hachimaki that was originally worn by Ken to tie his hair. Ryu was given it during the Alpha series, and remains wearing the headband to this day.
Gi
Ryu’s iconic tattered karate gi. Arms are ripped off to allow for easier movement. The four kanji on his belt mean wind (風 Kaze), forest (林 Hayashi), fire (火 Hi) and mountain (山 Yama). These words make up the Fūrinkazan and refer to Sun Tzu’s art of war. They represent how one should conduct battle: "as fast as the wind, as quiet as the forest, as daring as fire, and immovable as the mountain."
Gloves
Many pairs of gloves that Ryu wore during the series. Sometimes brown, sometimes red, sometimes a bunch of wraps. The stylized Kanji are the same as the ones on Ryu’s belt.
Oro’s Cloth
Old waistcloth originally worn by Ryu’s second master, Oro. Looks like it needs some cleaning…
Shoes
Red tai-chi style shoes that Ryu wore in Street Fighter 1. They look a bit silly, but it’s better than going barefoot. He would never go barefoot, right?
Sandals
After getting tired of not wearing anything on his feet for over a decade, Ryu now wears straw sandals as of Street Fighter 6. Better late than never.
Bag
A bag that Ryu walks around with. Carries money, food and other stuff he needs for travels and living.
Battle Items (Debatable)
In Street Fighter V’s Survival Mode, characters can obtain a variety of items that give boons for further battles. While there are a variety of items, they fall into six main categories. There are Health Recovery items that restore health, either all at once or gradually. There are Critical Gauge Up items that allow for Special Moves to be performed with less cooldown or to start with a meter. V-Gauge Up items do the same for the V-Gauge. Attack-Up Items increase the percentage of damage done by attacks. Defense Up Items do a similar percentage decrease for damage received. Finally, Special Effect Items instill unique effects like letting the character survive fatal hits with one HP, imbue attacks with ice or poison effects, reduce enemy critical gauge, negate chip damage, or automatically perform certain actions. The main functions of the battle items are divided in four different categories: Health Recovery, Increasing Critical Gauge, V-Gauge Up, Attack Power Up, Defenses Up and Special Effect.
Like we mentioned, these consumable items are exclusive to the Survival Mode, only being used between each round (up to five items), meaning you can’t use them anywhere else. It’s up to each reader to decide whether these actually make sense to be given to Ryu, but we are gonna mention them anyway due to completion’s sake. They will not affect the verdict.
Kenshiro
Nunchaku
Kenshiro’s melee weapon of choice. He is able to yield it with mastery, even against multiple opponents at the same time. They can also be dual wielded.
Kokuoh
A massive war horse formerly owned by Raoh. The name Kokuoh means “Black King”. Kenshiro adopted him after Raoh’s death. It is described as being the size of a small elephant, and has strength that allows him to fight and kill even entire armies.
Abilities
Ryu
Ki Manipulation
In Street Fighter, Ki is an energy obtained by those who transcend nature in their pursuit of championship. All of them coming from the same source but still brought about through different circumstances, in Ryu’s case his training with Gouken and his own desire to become better as he kept training gave him a great understanding over Ki. Granting the capability to manifest Hado or use Ki in different forms.
Sensing: Ryu has shown the capability to sense fighters through their ki in mediums like the OVAs or the UDON comics. Other ki users like Chun-Li have also been able to gauge someone’s strength by their ki.
Energy manipulation: Many practitioners of Ansatsuken have shown to manifest energy for several types of projectiles like the hadouken or increase his striking strength by covering his fists with energy. He also has shown enough control to say, make his ki go through a waterfall or create an entire energy dragon with petals.
Elemental Manipulation: Controlling Ki isn't just using energy, practitioners of Ansatsuken such as Ken or Akuma have the ability to control the elements. Ryu own's personal choice of elements in particular are the ability to control Fire, Electricity and Wind. Such as imbuing his projectiles with fire or electricity as shown with the Shakunetsu and Denjin Hadouken, creating electricity around his fists with Denjin Renki, send a pressure of overwhelming wind out of his body, create small tornados with his Shoryuken or make hurricanes that are large as entire skyscrapers with Shinku Tatsumaki.
Ansatsuken
Also known as the Assassination Fist, Master Goutetsu would lay the foundations mixing traditional martial arts such Karate and Kenpo and techniques utilizing the Hado into a style deeply rooted in assassination. Befitting its name. Creating such iconic techniques as the Hadouken, Tatsumaki Senpukyaku and Shoryuken that many of your typical shotos use.
Goutetsu passed the art to two of his students Akuma and Gouken, but due to Gouken not being a fan of the violent ways of the Ansatsuken he made his own more passive variant of the art centered on self-defense and control. Whereas Akuma was obsessed in learning the darker side of the Ansatsuken and its forbidden secrets such as the Satsui no Hado, pursuing a greater strength in the face of death. Leading to a violent battle between Akuma and his master as only one such kind of demon could exist, with Akuma resulting victorious after killing Goutetsu with the Raging Demon.
Years later Gouken would teach his peaceful variant to Ryu and Ken at an early age, training them in the ways of combat for 10 years. While Ken focused on more of his own thing with a practical style with Shoryuken focused techniques, Ryu would initially stick to an all-rounder defensive style defined on Hadou based techniques and the essentials that Gouken taught to him. With straight punches, solar plexus strikes, axe kicks or chops, and defensive techniques such as parrying thrown into the mix. Though he has picked up other martial arts in hopes of self improvement, including ones such as Taekwondo or the grapples and throws of Judo. This jack-of-all-trades style has allowed Ryu to learn and adapt to many opponents through its flexible use in battle.
Solar Plexus Strike: A powerful body blow to the opponent's gut.
Collarbone breaker: Overhead strike that breaks through crouching defenses.
Short Uppercut: A short rising Uppercut.
Whirlwind Kick: Ryu jumps as he performs a short turn heel kick.
Axe Kick: Self explanatory.
Jodan Sanengeki: Two punches followed by a roundhouse kick.
Fuwa Triple Strike: Ryu first hits the opponent with a punch to the midsection, before sweeping their footing with a low kick and ending it off with a spinning donkey kick.
Fist of the Wind
After hearing the voice of nature and having his soul transported to a tree in Africa (don’t ask). Ryu learned to sense and feel the voices of the trees and wind, thus allowing him to unlock Kaze no Ken (Fist of the Wind).
In simple terms, by merging his consciousness with nature Ryu can use his feet as a way to absorb Ki from them; and then release that energy into his punch as a powerful “shapeless fist” that can go beyond his striking range. The “shapeless fist” essentially will act as a sort of raging torrent of wind that will slash the opponent when they are struck. While the move is exclusive to this manga, Capcom has a weird sort of thing with constantly referencing it in the games.
Satsui no Hado
The Satsui no Hado(殺意の波動 ”Surge of Killing Intent”) is an ever present malicious energy rooted in the dark side of the fighting spirit, it has acted as an evil spirit in the goal to possess those with a desire to win or survive so great that they would even go as far kill their opponent to prevail. Tempting them with unlimited power at the cost of their regard for human morality, all who repeatedly tap into it without any prior experience are soon to be driven mad.
It primarily targeted those who trained in martial arts like Ansatsuken. Coming hand to hand with its fierce nature, Ryu in particular has been dealing with it ever since the first time he scarred Sagat with a Shoryuken. With the Dark Hado constantly gnawing at Ryu and echoing in his mind to fall into the path of bloodshed, relapsing into it whenever he started struggling against a much greater foe or when he saw a loved one in danger.
With the Satsui no Hado taking him over. Ryu’s physical capabilities were of course much greater, having his strength, durability and speed boosted to the point of overpowering characters like Cody, Birdie or Chun-Li, consistently tank and dodge bullets super easily or bunny hop like nobody’s business. He is also able to use the dark energies of the Satsui no Hado to empower or imbue many of his iconic attacks for greater destruction, able to shoot multiple Hadoukens or use its deadly technique, the Shun Goku Satsu.
Regeneration: Can regenerate injuries like bullet wounds by shooting them out of his body and stop the bleeding, Ryu could also recover from his wounds much faster than Ken in the SF Alpha manga.
Teleportation and limited Phasing: Can teleport and phase through attacks or projectiles with the Ashura Senku by covering himself with illusions, Akuma has also teleported around the world in one of his battles with Gouken.
Telekinesis: Akuma has shown the capability to lift big rocks in the air.
Movelist
Hadoken
Using his ki, Ryu can release an energy fireball to keep his opponents at a distance and fight off other projectiles. Ryu has shown enough control to make it pass through waterfalls or stop fires with it.
Shakunetsu Hadoken
A more powerful variant of the Hadouken that imbues it with fire.
Hado no Kamae
Makes a faint by assuming a Hadouken stance, misleading opponents into attacking.
Hashogeki
Ryu can concentrate his ki directly into his palms, focusing it instead as a close-ranged energy blast.
Shinku Hadoken
By concentrating and condensing his body’s ki even further, Ryu can launch a fast multi-hitting Hadouken.
Shin Hashogeki
Through spiritual focus, Ryu can enhance the Hashogeki into a more powerful energy blast.
Denjin Hadoken
Ryu charges energy, creating several layers which are inverted to generate electricity. When fully charged the blast will cause a massive electric shock that will inflict both external and internal injuries, leaving the opponent dizzy.
Shoryuken
Ryu springs into the air and delivers an invincible rising uppercut, making it perfect for anti-airs or wake-up dp.
Metsu Shoryuken
(RIP chin.)
A more brutal version of his Shin Shoryuken and supposedly a result of the influence of the Satsui no Hado briefly taking over Ryu as the name implies. Ryu targets his opponent’s stomach, before following with a powerful uppercut that’s focused on delivering as much damage to the jaw as possible.
Shin Shoryuken
A combination of powerful strikes focused on the opponent’s vital points. Ryu first delivers an uppercut on his opponent’s stomach, followed by landing another on their jaw and then ending it off with a jumping knee strike that sends the opponent flying. Enhanced versions of this move have Ryu enveloping his fist with electricity.
Tatsumaki Senpukyaku
Ryu twists his whole body and uses the recoil to deliver a series of spinning kicks like a human hurricane. Can also be used airborne to jump over projectiles.
Shinku Tatsumaki Senpukyaku
Ryu performs a stationary Tatsumaki Senpukyaku that is not only stronger, but has a vacuum effect that sucks in the opponent and can hit them multiple times before kicking them away.
Joudan Sokutogeri
Ryu takes a step and strikes with the tip of his foot for maximum effectiveness. EX versions of this move have the opponent wall bounce to follow it up with another move.
Hanagashi
Ryu assumes a stance to parry incoming enemy attacks, undoing the damage taken. If done successfully he can follow-up this up with either Tesshin/Isshin, a strike which sends the opponent flying across the screen.
V-Trigger
Denjin Renki/Denjin Charge
Ryu uses the Power of Nothingness to cover his body in an electrifying aura, giving many of his moves and normal electric properties.
Kakko Fubatsu
Ryu instead envelops his fist in energy to enhance his attacks, he can also create a shockwave that is capable of stunning opponents and follow it up with the previously mentioned Isshin.
V-Skill
Mind’s Eye/Parry
By parrying incoming attacks, Ryu can build up energy with each successful parry.
Thrust Strike
Ryu takes a step and performs a straight punch. If Ryu is attacked during the course of this attack, he will slip past the opponent’s attack and counter it.
Drive Impact
Shingeki
Ryu absorbs an opponent’s attack and charges forward with a powerful strike.
Chest Strike
Ryu blocks and counters right back to hit with his elbow.
Fumikomi Jodan Kagizuki
Ryu evades the opponent’s attack, before stepping in and countering with his right elbow.
Ashura Senku
A teleporting move that allows the user to move/phase through projectiles and attacks by cloaking themselves with illusions. It can also be used for quick movement.
Zounuki
Evil Ryu takes a stance and swings his entire body as he delivers a haymaker imbued with dark energy.
Rakuyo Hadoken
Throws Hadokens in the air, homing in on the opponent.
Ryukosai
Ryu lifts and brings down his leg to deliver a stomping axe kick. EX variants knock the opponent down.
Rasetsuko
Evil Ryu grabs the opponent from their arm and then stomps the ground with enough force to send the opponent whirling into the air.
Messatsu Gohado
Evil Ryu fires the Dark Hado as a murderous high-speed projectile of dark energy, can also be charged to make an even more powerful blast.
Messatsu Goshoryu
Evil Ryu begins by uppercutting the opponent with three repeated Goshoryus, with the final one sending them into the air as they’re attacked by a violent stream of purple hitsparks. He then finishes the opponent off by gathering dark energy in his arm before hitting them right in the face with it to drive them into the ground.
Raging Demon
The Shun Goku Satsu (瞬獄殺 “Instant Hell Murder”) or more commonly known as the Raging Demon is the Ansatsuken’s forbidden secret technique, and for a pretty good reason outside of the whole killing people thing. Many of the ones who weren’t experienced perished from simply using it once as they were taken advantage of by the Dark Hado until their last breath, only those who have enveloped themselves in the dark path of the Hado like Akuma can use it while not letting the Hado fully take over.
When performed, the user rushes in to grab the opponent with their killing intent at full display as they unleash a brutal chain of 16/37 hits depending on the game. With the past sins and evil actions of the target weighing in and making the target’s death far more painful as each strike is landed, killing them and even potentially destroying their life force or spirit. In the words of Akuma, “In numerous blinks of an eye, you have witnessed hell. It is not by my fist, but the weight of your own sins that killed you.”, talk about a literal karmic punishment.
Extended material like UDON takes Akuma’s words far more literally, as the Shun Goku Satsu has the victim’s soul just straight up sent to the realm of Makai. Y' know? like the Darkstalkers version of hell? So you are just straight up witnessing actual hell.
The only real ways to avoid the technique is by using the Power of Nothingness to negate the attack or by separating one’s life force/spirit from their body to prevent them from being destroyed, as latter is how Gouken was able to survive the Raging Demon before Akuma killed him, by rebuilding his body with his spirit as the years went by before the Raging Demon killed his soul. Other characters such as Gen or fellow Final Fight’s Guy have also similarly been able to avoid it by blocking each and every strike from the Raging Demon. Or be Gill and just get right back up with resurrection, or if you’re M. Bison and Capcom aren't fully willing to kill you off.
Resistances
Limited Precognition: Menat claims that reading the future of fighters is difficult, because they always fight against it, including Ryu himself.
Limited Mind Manipulation: Ryu’s mind was stated to be strong enough to resist being brainwashed. Whether he gave in or not in this ending is unclear.
Fear Manipulation: Akuma’s mere presence caused the trees to kill themselves out of fear of being destroyed in Ryu’s fight with Akuma.
Electricity: Can resist lightning-based attacks such as Blanka’s Electric Thunder. The Satsui no Hado made Ryu unaffected by C. Viper’s electricity, which could hurt his normal self.
Fire: Can survive being lit on fire by attacks such as Dhalsim’s Yoga Fire and Ken’s Shoryureppa.
Ice: Broke out of being encased in ice by Gill’s Cryokinesis.
Corruption and Possession: Subdued the Satsui no Hado once and for all, with Kage being unable to convince him to embrace it again. Ryu has also been shown to resist M. Bison’s ability to possess people more than once, with one time Ryu using Bison’s own Psycho Power energies against him.
Soul Manipulation: Necalli couldn’t devour Ryu’s soul like he did to others.
Kenshiro
Tōki Manipulation
Also called Battle Ki, it is the form of Ki, or spiritual life energy, that is used in various martial arts in Fist of the North Star. Users can project it offensively, coat themselves with it in a protective barrier or use it for many other applications. Kenshiro has attained unparalleled mastery of Toki by the end of the series, and as such should be capable of replicating most if not all abilities that use it demonstrated throughout the Fist of the North Star franchise. It is directly related to one's life force, and raising it can massively increase one's power, durability and speed.
Energy Projection: The series features many named and unnamed ki attacks that can act as energy blasts to attack enemies from afar, tearing them apart and exploding them.
Phasing: Ki energy has demonstrated the ability to phase through people and objects. Either completely going through someone to attack something behind them without causing them any damage, or selectively targeting their internal pressure points without causing any external wound.
Non-Physical Interaction: Kenshiro’s Tenha Kassatsu, an attack made of Ki, was able to cause damage to Souther during his Tensho Juji Ho, during which he was completely intangible before.
Ki and Energy Nullification: Kenshiro was able to completely nullify a ki attack aimed at him.
Ki and Energy Absorption: Ki mastery can be used to drain others of their own energy.
Tōki no Aura
A specific form of Toki manipulation, Toki Aura involves fighters in the series radiating powerful fighting spirit energy from their bodies and coating themselves with it for both offensive and defensive purposes, being able to completely negate attacks aimed at them. Kenshiro attained unparalleled mastery over Aura by the end of the series and as such should be able to replicate all of the effects it has demonstrated throughout the Fist of the North Star franchise.
Barrier/Forcefield Creation: Aura can be used to project a protective barrier around the user, making them completely invulnerable to damage.
Shockwave/Air Manipulation: Aura can be used to project shockwave blasts in any direction, pushing enemies away or just attacking them without needing to move. Powerful enough auras can trade countless invisible strikes without needing to move. The shockwaves can also deflect other Ki attacks.
Fear/Empathic Manipulation: A strong enough aura can completely terrify enemies, making them freeze and be unable to fight, attacking them at their fighting instincts rather than their minds and making them sense death itself approaching. The effect can also make dozens of enemies collapse. Aura can also be used to dull murderous intent and calm people down.
Telekinesis: Aura and ki can be used to levitate and throw objects and even alter the direction of physical bodies such as water and projectiles.
Phasing: Aura can press enemy pressure points without leaving external wounds, without the user even needing to move.
Weather Manipulation: Strong enough auras clashing has been shown to cause hailstorms, tornadoes and strong winds.
Instinctive Action: Aura has been shown to automatically protect the user from attacks.
Levitation and Flight: Kenshiro and Raoh have used their auras to fly in the air.
Healing: Aura can be used to close wounds by powering up.
Tōshin no Aura
A special kind of aura manifested in the form of Indra, the God of War, summoned when a member of the Hokuto Soke bloodline awakens their true power. It is powered by the user’s own soul and is capable of fighting even when they are unconscious. Its terrifyingly powerful presence is capable of frightening even Kaioh. It becomes Kenshiro’s true default aura by the end of the series. Outside of the general abilities granted by the normal Toki Aura, the Aura of the God of War adds and upgrades a few abilities.
Enhanced Fear Manipulation and Statistic Reduction: Frightened Kaioh and scared his demonic ki back into his body, making him unable to fight and weakening him so much that a simple pebble knocked him down and left him shocked on the ground.
Ki and Energy Redirection: Deflected Kaioh’s ki blast, forcing it into another direction.
Keiraku Hiko
A concept tied to ancient Chinese acupuncture. The Keiraku Hiko, or Meridian Channel Hidden Points, are 708 points in the human body that concentrate Ki. Hokuto Shinken users can send their own Ki into these points via contact to disrupt them and cause many effects, mostly destruction from the inside. The various effects include mind control, lethal muscular contractions, paralysis, healing, memory erasing and restoring, an increase or decrease in physical capabilities and so on. The Keiraku Hiko are used mostly in martial arts related to the Hokuto tradition, although some techniques such as Nanto Seiken occasionally employ them as well.
Pressure points do not require direct physical contact to be pressed, as Hokuto masters can phase through the opponent’s body to touch them, use their aura or simply target them with their ki from afar, which also has phasing properties.
Striking the opponent’s Keiraku Hiko essentially negates their durability with many of their effects.
Masters of Hokuto Shinken like Kenshiro and Raoh should be knowledgeable on all of the pressure points and their effects. Here is a list of all of the known Keiraku Hiko and their effects.
Hokuto Shinken
The Big Dipper God Fist, an ancient Chinese assassination martial art with 1800 years of history. Founded by the heir of the Hokuto Soke clan, Shuken, by blending the ancestral arts of Hokuto Soke no Ken and Seito Gekken. Born around the time of great turmoil in China, the martial art was created to bring peace back to the land after the assassination of the Emperor. After its creation, there was schism in Hokuto during the period known as the Three Kingdoms: Hokuto Soka Ken, Hokuto Sonka Ken and Hokuto Ryuka Ken each served different generals. At the end, Hokuto Soka Ken became the defining martial art of Hokuto Shinken.
Hokuto Shinken is mostly based around striking the 708 hidden pressure points in the human body, injecting the opponent with ki to diverse effects, mostly related to destroying their bodies from within. It requires a great deal of precision and control, as it’s an extremely complex martial art. Beyond striking pressure points, Hokuto Shinken has many applications and techniques involving the mastery of Toki and adapting to other fighting styles, making it one of the deadliest and most invincible martial arts in history. Hokuto is so versatile it is considered to have infinite fighting variations. It is considered more powerful than entire armies, and its successors are considered to be capable of bringing ruin to the world.
Hokuto Shinken masters are capable of seeing through and mastering all the techniques from an opponent after a single encounter. Not only can they copy enemy martial arts perfectly, but also understand them at a deeper level than their original practitioners, seeing through their weaknesses and effectively negating their entire style. The same attack will not work on a Hokuto master twice. It is very common for Hokuto masters to incorporate learned martial arts to their own style, and logically pass them on to the next generation.
As it is extremely deadly, Hokuto is taught following a strict law: there can be only one Hokuto successor per generation, and the art must be passed from father to one son. Students that fail to become successors must renounce Hokuto Shinken, or have their memories removed or fists sealed.
Kenshiro’s master, Ryuken, was the 63rd successor of Hokuto Shinken, preceding his older brother Kasumi Kenshiro and their father Kasumi Tesshin. Kenshiro was trained harshly since he was a child in the style, becoming a master worthy of the title of the 64th successor of Hokuto Shinken alongside his brothers Toki and Raoh (not Jagi, he sucks), and elevating the art to levels never seen before. Kenshiro also touched the Hokuto Soke stone, lifting the seals of Hokuto and being able to see the entire history of the founder of Hokuto Shinken. As such, Kenshiro should be knowledgeable on every single Hokuto technique, ability and variation, as the previous successor teaches his pupil everything he knows.
Hokuto Hyakuretsu Ken
North Star Hundred Rending Fist. Kenshiro’s most iconic technique. The user punches his opponent 100 times, dealing seemingly no damage but striking at their pressure points, and causing them to explode violently after a short time. The scene where Kenshiro uses this move for the first time is the origin of his famous catchphrase: “You are already dead”.
Hokuto Shinken Nishinshikuna
A technique created to catch projectiles with just the user’s middle and index fingers and incredible precision.
Hokuto Shinken Ougi: Tenryuu Kokyuu Ho
The Art of Dragon’s Breathing. Unlocks the hidden 70% power every human has, granting the user effectively a 3.333x multiplier in their base physical capabilities. It affects strength, durability and speed. You know it's being used when Kenshiro powers up and his muscles rip through his clothes.
Ganzan Ryozanha
A powerful chopping strike that crushes an opponent’s skull. Doesn’t even hit any pressure points, sometimes Kenshiro just wants you dead like that.
Hokuto Zankaiken
The user drives his thumbs into the opponents’ head, pressing the toui pressure points and assuring they will die an explosive death after three seconds. The time is used by the victim to think and feel remorse about their actions before death.
Koshuu Hagaken
Two strikes to the neck and a knee to the face that make an opponent’s head split in half.
Goshuu Retsudan
A gentle tap on the opponent’s hands that destroys all their fingers.
Hokuto Sozin Jizai Kyaku
Two kicks that paralyze the target and forces them to do whatever Kenshiro wants.
Hokuto Gokin Bundan Kyaku
A seemingly harmless sequence of kicks that massively decreases the opponent’s muscle strength, to the point they become as strong as any normal man. Kenshiro implies he could have decreased even further.
Hokuto Shinken Kokyoku Ryobu
An evasive maneuver that renders attacks from any angle futile.
Hokuto Kaikotsu Ken
A strike to the forehead that makes the victim’s skeleton shatter and be expelled from their backs.
Hokuto Kyomu Shidan
Ki finger bolts that erase the memories of the opponents for the past few days and puts them in a catatonic state, making them faint.
Hokuto Renkan Kumite
Basic Hokuto Shinken moves that specialise in fighting against a group of 7.
Hokuto Dankotsukin
Light taps that completely destroy the target’s joints and crushes their bones.
Hokuto Jūretsu Ha
Kenshiro rushes in to beat up a whole line of enemies.
Hakkei no Hō
Referred to as a breathing style by Joker, Kenshiro can stop the momentum of thrown objects with Toki.
Meidatsu Hokai Ken
A technically specifically meant for destroying the corpses of the undead.
Enkan Zanshu Kyaku
A spinning aerial kick that decapitates every thug within the vicinity of Kenshiro.
Gekitsui Shi
Kenshiro embeds four fingers into his opponent’s head, leaving them with three seconds to live before they explode.
Kōshu Hatō Ken
Kenshiro jumps and kicks the victim at the back of their head, causing their whole body to explode.
Hagan Ken
Kenshiro caves in an enemy’s face with his fist, breaking their skull and later resulting in them exploding.
Hichō Kūzan Pa
A flying kick used against enemies that rely on well…. Flight.
Hokuto Shichishiseiten
Strikes 7 pressure points in the shape of the Big Dipper constellation, making so the target’s ribs are crushed and open outwards, exploding their chest.
Hokuto Senjukaiken
Hits the opponent with 1000 punches, and makes them explode 5 seconds afterwards.
Seikyokurin
A secret stance that makes one’s defense so flawless it cannot be perceived. During a fake fight with Rei, Kenshiro used it in conjunction with the Hokuto Ryu Gekiko stance. It’s also a signal to mutually strike an opponent’s pressure points and induce a state of fake death.
Hokuto Hachimon Kudan
Horrifically scars and deforms the victim’s face and head. Jagi was struck with it and had to wear a metal plate on his head to make the pain more bearable.
Zenkai Sekihoken
Forces the target to walk back to their doom.
Hokuto Koretsuha
An extremely powerful grip that destroys all of the opponent’s shoulder’s tendons.
Hokuto Shichishi Kiheizan
A flying lunge punch that Kenshiro used to knock Raoh out of his horse.
Hokuto Shinken Ougi: Shichisei Tenshin
A powerful Hokuto Secret Technique. Traces blind spots in a movement that creates afterimages to form the big dipper and targets those points to kill even the strongest opponent.
Hokuto Shinken Ougi: Suieishin
The Soul’s Reflection on the Water. Kenshiro can copy any technique from a single exchange with this skill.
Hokuto Shinken Ougi: Tenha Kassatsu
A secret Hokuto technique that allows the user to strike the enemy’s pressure points using only their ki. The ki blast phases through the enemy and was able to hit Souther who was previously phasing through Kenshiro’s normal attacks. It is a variation of Hokuto Sonkaken, as shown by Kasumi Kenshiro. It can be used with a single finger as well and it cannot be blocked.
Hokuto Tenki Sho
An honorable stance taken between warriors before a fight to the death. It means whoever loses will ascend to heaven with no grudges or regrets.
Hokuto Shinken Ougi: Genonkai
A technique shared with Hokuto Ryuken. It paralyzes the opponent like a statue until the seven stars of Hokuto shine in the sky. Then, their body will collapse and break apart.
Kento Shadan
A chop that phases through the enemy’s defenses and disables their hands.
Hokuto Senki Raidan
A technique where the user strikes the target behind their neck. It being used possibly purified Jukei of the influence of Hokuto Ryuken’s demonic influence which affects the soul.
Tomon Ketsu Hashiso
A barrage of strikes that completely destroys an opponent’s skeleton without leaving external wounds.
Hokuto Gokin Hadan Ken
A technique that induces the enemy’s muscles to degenerate to the point of uselessness.
Raibo Shin Kyaku
A technique that propels the user around at high speeds, making dents wherever they land.
Keiko
A similar technique to the Raibo Shin Kyaku, where the user propels themselves in a direction at such high speed they damage where they stand after taking off.
Tiaoqi Breathing Technique
An essential Hokuto technique. Enables the user to hold their breath for at least 10 minutes.
Hokuto Shinhozan
A technique that sends the opponents’ souls to the afterlife and completely disintegrates their bodies.
Kiko Yabu
Another secret breathing technique. By inhaling more air than normal, a Hokuto user can massively increase their aura, granting a giant power boost. It was used by Kasumi Kenshiro to overpower two giants that went toe to toe with his 100% mode. Kenshiro seemingly used this technique in the bonus Chapter 136.5, where it shows the user also grows slightly in size?
Senju Rakan Sho
The user throws a thousand palm strikes that form a protective dome around them, acting as a means of both attack and defense.
Soryu Tenra
A secret technique of Hokuto Shinken, passed only to the sole successor. The user transports himself and the opponent to a void of nothingness (by unleashing a massive toki aura) and nullifies all ki techniques and barriers, forcing both to kill each other with their bare hands by passing a location called the “barrier of death”, from which the fight can only end in death, as they cannot evade or retreat from the opponent’s fist. Before that, the fighters are fighting in their heads and reading each other’s moves with precognition instinctively, killing each other multiple times. In Legends ReVive, it is described that “heaven and earth are erased” and that Soryu Tenra is a separate realm.
Musou Tensei
The Unconscious Transmigration of Souls, the ultimate technique of Hokuto Shinken. In 2000 years, no one was able to master it before Kenshiro. For one to attain Musou Tensei, they have to know true love and sorrow.
Ryuken describes it as moving freely between life and nothingness, the nothingness that predates life and is the strongest thing in the world. As proven by Kasumi Kenshiro (who was not able to actually achieve true Musou Tensei, but almost got there), it activates automatically to protect the user, even if they are completely unconscious.
It is a state of thoughtlessness, or “no-mind”, similar to the buddhist concept of Mushin, that allows the user to strike subconsciously with a blank mind, making their movements impossible to predict.
Musou Tensei is also capable of making the user intangible, phasing through enemy attacks but still being able to harm them, even being able to appear and disappear through attacks, as if “vanishing through thin air”, and creating afterimages and clone-like illusions to further confuse the enemy. To add to the untouchability of the technique, it masks the user’s ki so well that their original body is impossible to locate, even in a setting where sensing enemies through their emotions and ki is normal.
As it is the ultimate technique of Hokuto Shinken, it is stated by Raoh to make every other Hokuto Shinken technique useless, to the point he and Kenshiro had to revert to beating each other with their bare hands in order to fight at all once both achieved Musou Tensei. The techniques would obviously include Tenha Kassatsu, which can hit opponents that can become intangible, and Hokuto Shinhozan, that can send enemy souls to the afterlife. Hokuto Shinken successors such as Kasumi could even directly touch souls and ghosts, and it is unlikely he has any special characteristic Kenshiro or Raoh don't have regarding special unnamed powers.
In extended media, we have a little more clarification about the properties of Musou Tensei, and information that corroborates already present effects. In Legends ReVive, it is stated the technique allows one to “enter the void between life and death”. In Ken’s Rage, the intangibility is portrayed normally, as the user is completely invulnerable to damage during the activation of Musou Tensei, and the game itself states that it “erases the body of the user from existence”, or “allows the user’s body to be erased into nothingness”, giving credence to the notion that normal non-physical interaction is not enough to be able to touch someone during Musou Tensei.
The weakness of Musou Tensei lies in spatial distortion. More specifically, Hokuto Ryuken’s ability to distort space and “destroy the nothingness” that comprises Musou Tensei, with abilities such as the Anryu Tenha, making the user revert to their normal state. Kenshiro has, however, overcome that weakness and is no longer vulnerable to its effects.
Misc. Hokuto Abilities
Non-Physical Interaction: Outside of Tenha Kassatsu being able to hit Souther who was intangible during his attack, Kasumi Kenshiro could physically touch the souls of two enemies before sending them to the afterlife. He could also harm a wolf that was potentially a manifestation of Yahma’s soul and directly described in a guidebook to be a ghost. There is nothing indicating this is an ability specific to Kasumi, as he shares all his superhuman traits with Kenshiro (Toki manipulation, Hokuto Soke bloodline, Hokuto mastery, etc.).
Precognition and analytical prediction: Predicting attacks via reading subtle eye and muscle movement is considered a fodder technique by Kenshiro at the very start of the series, and he should be capable of the same. He can also predict enemy attacks after a single study. Other Hokuto masters such as Kasumi Kenshiro can perceive extremely small openings in enemy movement and predict their movements based on that. Kasumi can also play entire fights in his head, reading two steps ahead of his opponent. Hokuto Shinken masters can even anticipate techniques based on subconscious reflexes.
Information analysis, reactive evolution and adaptation: Hokuto masters can adapt to enemy fighting styles after briefly fighting them, seeing through their techniques and negating their martial arts. It even works on abilities that warp space itself. Other fighters like Shachi are capable of the same.
Accelerated development: Kenshiro’s strength evolves according to the level of strength of his opponent, and he grows by fighting opponents stronger than himself just like his brothers. Went from being blitzed by Souther to blitzing him in mere seconds.
Weapon Mastery: Kenshiro is extremely skilled with melee weapons such as nunchaku, sticks, staves and throwing spears. Hokuto masters have also been shown to throw projectiles with extreme precision and force.
Enhanced Senses: Kenshiro has extremely powerful hearing and eyesight, being able to hear whispers from 2 kilometers away and having a superhuman sense of smell comparable to the one of a dog, just like the one of his uncle’s.
Technique Mimicry: Hokuto masters can copy any martial art or ki ability they see once and incorporate them into their own style.
Extrasensory Perception: Fighters can sense Ki on others to locate them and prevent sneak attacks. Ken has even sensed attacks while he was sleeping and can locate enemies based on the movement of the air and fight with his eyes closed. Kenshiro has been able to sense danger from far away, and others can sense the death of others without witnessing them. Ken can sense emotions such as hatred and sadness, and use them to locate enemies as well. Other fighters in the series can do the same.
Stealth Mastery: Hokuto Shinken is a martial art created for assassination, and as such it fittingly excels in the darkness. Kenshiro can sneak up and disappear like Batman on opponents such as Shu and Han. Han is a high level Hokuto branch practitioner, and they can sense Ki just like Kenshiro could since he was a kid. Shu can locate enemies with his heart (likely referring to Ki sensing) despite being blind and has greater awareness than people that can see. In Rei’s Gaiden, Shu can sense Ki from hundreds of meters away.
Sound Mimicry: Kenshiro is able to mimic many sounds, including the ones made by animals.
Afterimage creation: Hokuto fighters can create afterimages with their speed with many specific techniques or just their movement.
Rage empowerment: Rage and sorrow are the essence of Hokuto Shinken. This is corroborated by Toki’s Gaiden. Getting angrier can greatly increase the physical statics of Hokuto fighters.
Hokuto Sonka Ken
One of the three branches of Hokuto Shinken during the schism it underwent in the Three Kingdoms period in Ancient China, serving Emperor Sun Wu. It specializes on the mastery of ki and controlling the user’s madness to amplify their physical capabilities. It was incorporated by Kasumi Kenshiro, and Kenshiro is seen using one of its moves with Tenha Kassatsu, so he should have mastery of it by being a successor of Hokuto Shinken.
Soki Sho
The art of using ki to manipulate objects. It can be used to casually bend and shatter weapons as shown above, and also manipulate the trajectory of bullets.
Kyoshin Kon
The user can take control of their own pressure points and induce hikoheni, or pressure point transference by changing the blood and ki flow inside one’s body. It is madness inducing and causes immense pain. Some pressure points cannot be transferred.
Ki Draining
Hokuto Sonkaken users can utilize their mastery of ki manipulation to drain energy out of the opponent, severely weakening them. Kasumi Kenshiro was able to counter this with a breathing technique.
Hokuto Soka Ken
One of the three branches of Hokuto Shinken during the schism it underwent in the Three Kingdoms period in Ancient China, serving Emperor Cao Wei. It specializes in channeling energy to allow the user to pierce through anything, and even phasing through bodies. Kasumi Kenshiro has mastered this style and should have passed it on to other successors, so Kenshiro should also have mastery over its techniques.
Kushin Datsumei
The user inserts their finger inside the target’s brain, pressing a pressure point and being able to control their mind.
Hokuto Sokaken Ougi: Bakuryu Yoen Totsu
A technique created by Zhang Tai-Yan. It’s a barrage of strikes with one's pointers that target the opponent’s pressure points.
Muei Kyaku
A kick executed at blinding speeds that surprises the opponent.
Hokuto Sonkaken Ougi: Genmu Hyakki Kyaku
A barrage of kicks so fast that the opponent isn’t even able to see them.
Kiken
A technique where the user utilizes their perception and reflexes to attack and evade subconsciously.
(Possible) Deconstruction
Hokuto Sokaken users have been shown to be able to make perfect holes in glass without leaving any trace of damage besides the hole. Kasumi has been able to make a perfect hole on a wall after making it ripple and twist into itself by using this martial art.
(Possible) Phasing
By using Hokuto Sokaken principles, Kasumi has been able to push his finger inside a man’s brain and press a pressure point. There was no wound left after he took his finger out.
Go no Ken
The Fist of Strength, or Fist of Domination, is Raoh’s favored branch of Hokuto Shinken. It specializes in both physical and ki attacks that aim to utterly destroy opponents with overwhelming power. It is an instinctive style, and its practitioner fights without thinking. Kenshiro learned it from fighting Raoh, and should be capable of reproducing all of its moves, including the ones performed by Toki.
Gosho Ha
A technique where the user joins their two palms to fire a huge ki beam at the opponent.
Tensho Honretsu
Another technique where the user projects a powerful beam of ki at their opponent.
Muso Insatsu
An instinctive technique that counterattacks at blinding speeds with a kick by sensing the enemy.
Tensho Raigeki
A powerful vertical downward chop aimed at the opponent’s head.
Shinten Rai
A powerful destructive dome of ki that can both repel enemies and keep the user safe inside.
Goten Sho
Another Ki blast technique where the user projects a huge pillar of energy into the sky. The impacted area is several kilometers wide.
Zenrei no Ken
An attack in which the user channels their entire soul into their fist to finish the enemy with a single blow. Extremely dangerous and impractical to use.
Hokuto Shinken Ougi: Tokei Koho
A respiration technique that accumulates energy as you inhale, and releases it all when you exhale.
Saiha Ken
A powerful uppercut coated in Ki. Even by grazing the target it can burn their skin.
Tensho Hyakuretsu Ken
A barrage of punches and strikes to one’s pressure points similar to the Hokuto Hyakuretsu Ken, but executed after a graceful backwards somersault.
Ju no Ken
The Fist of Compassion. It's a variation of Hokuto Shinken notoriously practised by Toki. Its focus is on fluid movement and agility, turning the enemy’s strength against them. In contrast to the brutal and painful results of other Hokuto versions, Ju no Ken causes the opponents to pass peacefully and painlessly… at least sometimes. Since Hokuto masters are capable of copying and adapting to martial arts by seeing them once, and that Kenshiro made his own variation of it, it’s safe to assume he would have mastery over the techniques by the end of the series.
Hokuto Ujo Hagan Ken
The Hokuto Compassionate Visage Cleave. Strikes the opponents’ kensei pressure points with just the user’s ki. It causes them to explode while feeling intense pleasure.
Hokuto Ujodan Jinken
Toki taps the pressure points of enemies, making their heads explode without them feeling any pain.
Hokuto Ujo Moshoha
A barrage of punches that finishes with a fierce straight to the chest that pierce’s the enemy. Causes them to pass away peacefully without any pain. It has also been shown to purify the enemy of evil influences and turn them to dust before sending them to the afterlife
Gento Koken
A martial art with 2000 years of history that rivals even the power of Hokuto Shinken. Its practitioners are a select few that swore to protect the Heavenly Emperor. The secret of Gento Koken lies in the projection of ki through one’s hands to completely obliterate the opponent at the cellular level, leaving nothing behind and negating the target’s durability. Since Kenshiro, like other Hokuto Shinken users, has the ability to master and copy fighting styles after a single encounter, and has copied Gento Koken by himself after fighting , he should have access to all of the techniques of this style.
Gento Ryurin Kozan
The user rends the air with multiple strikes, creating deadly blades of Gento ki that slice the opponent apart from afar.
Ha no Rin
The user projects a giant ki and attacks the opponent in a circular motion from a distance.
Gento Sekko Retsuzan
Fires multiple ki bullets from all fingers.
Gento Seiko Hiken
The user forms an energy spear made out of toki to throw.
Gento Hyakusen Soko
A technique that disperses the thrown spear into multiple energy spears.
Gento Ryokko Hidan
The user forms a green ring to throw as an energy blast.
Gento Hakuka Dan
The user gathers deadly ki in their hands, thrusting forward for a strike with their fingers.
Tensho Bu
The user balances themselves on the opponent’s fist and takes a free ki shot at them.
Hiko Fuji
A move that can counter Hokuto Shinken pressure points by cauterizing them at the cellular level.
Gento Koretsu Kyaku
A special technique of super fast kicks performed standing perfectly still on one leg.
Metto Kosei Jin
The user fires two beams of cold ki from their palms that can freeze the area around them.
Gento Moten Sho
The user utilizes their palm to try to block a strike with a strong grip.
Sho no Rin
The user creates two rings of ki by rapidly spinning their arms in a circular motion.
Oko Setsuzan
The user utilizes a ki blade to slice the opponent in half from a long distance. It works so fast the opponent can’t even feel it until after they’ve already been cut.
Kyokujuji Seiken
The Sacred Fist of the Southern Cross. A martial art very similar to Nanto Seiken, with which the user cuts targets apart from the outside. It is an offshoot of Hokuto Ryukaken, being created by a former student. Since Kasumi Kenshiro has fought and defeated Kyokujuji masters, and Hokuto Shinken masters are able to perfectly copy, understand and adapt enemy martial arts after single confrontations, it is reasonable to assume he was able to learn this martial art and pass it to future successors.
Meiki Sobu
A lunging strike with which the user stabs through the opponent with their fingers.
Shicho Ketsujosan
An invisible strike that targets the opponent’s tendons. So blindingly fast the opponent doesn’t even realize they’ve been cut.
Burets u Soha Dan
A slashing strike where the user scars the opponent’s back in the shape of a cross.
Enbu Zan
Another cross shaped sequence of slashes that cuts the enemy’s body apart.
Senju Ragyo
A sequence of chops with which the user attacks the enemy with a thousand hands.
Nanto Seiken
The God Fist Southern Cross, a style that is the polar opposite of Hokuto in many ways. There are 108 sects of Nanto Seiken, but the style is generally based on the principle of cutting enemies apart with the user’s hands or feet, air pressure or ki, destroying the target from the outside instead of the inside like Hokuto Shinken. Kenshiro was able to copy and learn Nanto Seiken from his diverse encounters and fights with Nanto fighters, and used the styles of some of them in Musou Tensei. According to a guidebook, Kenshiro should know techniques from all of the 108 Nanto schools. Since there is an abundance of Nanto Seiken techniques and attacks, we’re gonna list just the most prominent schools of the martial art practiced by characters most close to Kenshiro that appear in his Musou Tensei. For a comprehensive list of all of the Nanto Seiken schools and techniques, check the Fist of the North Star wiki’s list.
Nanto Suicho Ken
The South Dipper Waterbird Fist is the Nanto style employed by Rei, and, in his Gaiden, his former master Rufu. It focuses on graceful flowing movements that are as deadly as they are beautiful. In Rei’s Gaiden story, he is able to use it to cut enemies so finely that their ligaments would regenerate if they stood still for a few seconds, meaning the style has absurdly high cutting power.
Nanto Koshu Ken
The South Dipper Lone Eagle Fist is the style practiced by Shin, Kenshiro's former friend who marked his body with scars in the form of the Big Dipper Constellation before kidnapping Yuria. The style focuses on rapid hand and feet strikes that overpower the enemy and cut them apart.
Nanto Ho-oh Ken
The South Dipper Phoenix Fist is the style practiced by Souther, one of the Six Scared Fists of Nanto, a villain who was enslaving children to build a mausoleum for his former master. It is the fastest out of the Nanto variations, and can even enable the user to phase through attacks.
Nanto Hakuro Ken
The South Dipper Little Egret Fist is the style practiced by Shu, one of the Six Sacred Fists of Nanto. Shu was one of the first people to believe in Kenshiro's potential as the successor of Hokuto Shinken, and blinded himself to prove his faith in the young Ken. The style focuses on elusive movement and kicks.
Taizan Tenrou Ken
A fast and brutal style practiced by Ryuga, one of Raoh’s lieutenants and Yuria’s brother. It is a style with which the user can chop an enemy apart so fast that they feel a chilling sensation before they even begin to bleed. In Toki’s Gaiden, it is explained it stops blood flow around the wound and makes it appear frozen. Since Kenshiro defeated Ryuga and witnessed his techniques, and because Ryuga appears in his Musou Tensei, Kenshiro should be able to replicate his techniques thanks to his general copy and adaptability abilities.
Tenro Toga Ken
A swift vertical downward strike aimed at the opponent’s head, presumably to cut off their face.
Resistances
Hypnosis/Mind Manipulation: Kenshiro resisted hypnosis from Geira
Fear/Empathic Manipulation: Kenshiro can still fight while being caught in the auras of other powerful fighters such as Raoh, whose power matched his own. Auras are capable of freezing enemies in terror in the series and making them unable to fight, as they sense death itself approaching. They can even make enemies collapse.
Ki/Energy Draining: Kasumi Kenshiro was able to counter his ki being absorbed on the fly. Kenshiro should be capable of the same.
Pressure Points: Hokuto Shinken has many methods of countering their own pressure points. Gento Koken should allow Kenshiro to negate the effects of pressure points at the cellular level. After interacting with the Hokuto Soke stone, Kenshiro became completely immune to Hokuto pressure points altogether.
Precognition and information analysis: Early series Kenshiro could already negate precognition from an enemy that could predict movements by reading subtle muscle and eye movements.
Clairvoyance and possible Fate Manipulation: Men of Hokuto are capable of changing their fates, and their future is impossible to predict. One’s ability to change fate in the series is reinforced a few times in the manga and in Gaidens.
Illusions: While initially affected by them, Kenshiro was able to see through Patra hiding herself with illusions. sensing her movements with his mind.
Radiation: Scaling from his brothers who are also Hokuto practitioners without any special characteristic besides their usage of ki. Toki could live for years after surviving being bombarded by radiation for two weeks and receiving a dosage 50 billion times higher than the one that would kill a normal person. In his Gaiden, Jagi survived being caught in the explosion of a nuclear bomb.
Poisons: Kenshiro resisted a poisonous gas that would paralyze a normal person and is naturally resistant to all poisonous substances thanks to his bloodline. This resistance can be enhanced by pressing the Anbaku-Kou and Gedokujutsu pressure points. Can endure 5 times the lethal doses of acidic and alkaline substances.
Pain: Ignored the pain of having his torse stabbed by multiple needles thatsucked out a lot of blood from him. Gets routinely stabbed by weapons and projectiles and continues fighting.
Electricity: Kenshiro was completely unaffected by the electricity of a gate that killed a man and would burn a normal person to a crisp.
Fire: Kenshiro could withstand a barrage of flamethrowers and grab a volcanic rock barehanded just fine. Scales to Raoh whose body is completely impervious to flames that could burn normal people to death. Superior to Jagi, who, in his Gaiden, could withstand the heat of a nuclear fireball.
Deconstruction (Cellular level): Kenshiro could tank Gento Koken attacks, which can completely disintegrate opponents on a cellular level.
Forms
Ryu
Evil Ryu
(Check Before the Verdicts)
Stronger. Angrier. Spikier. During his journey to become a true martial artist Ryu has fallen under the corruption of the hado several times, becoming a raging warrior who seeks only bloodlust. With the Satsui no Hado Ryu’s capabilities became proportionally much greater as previously stated, being able to use many of his abilities with greater potential for annihilation.
Though it should be noted that Ryu during this state hadn’t mastered the full potential of the Dark Hado and likely never will since cleansing him of it with the Power of Mu since Street Fighter V.
Mu no Ken
Discovered by Gouken in his aim to make a style of focus and self-control, the Power of Nothingness is a state of spiritual and mental refinement where the user is in complete calm and free of desire. Pure nothingness. Normally extremely difficult to learn and control due to its passive nature, but when fully unlocked and mastered it has the potential to surpass the Satsui no Hado. Ryu first unlocked it during his fight with Seth in the Ties that Bind film and easily overpowered him, with a S.I.N machine counting his power as so ridiculously high to be exactly measured or exactly analyzed.
With such a power at his hands Ryu no longer would be taken in by the Dark Hado and knew how to push forward in more ways than one, he is able to use his Ki to once again enhance his attacks, using the electric properties of the Denjin Hadouken regularly or phase full energy beams through people to focus on what not to target. The Power of Nothingness is even capable of holding back and even purifying evil energies, like the time Gouken was able to briefly seal Ryu’s Satsui no Hadou away for some time and Ryu was capable of fully purifying the Dark Hado from his body once fully unlocked. He has even done the same with other evil energies like M. Bison’s Psycho Power with the dictator fully crumbling into dust after taking a full powered beam from Ryu.
Shin Ryu
UDON presents an interesting alternate path for Ryu in Street Fighter Unlimited, similarly to his game counterpart Ryu had been seeking a way to rid himself of the Dark Hado. Having unconsciously created two sides within himself as alternate personalities, constantly battling each other to see who would really take control with each passing day. So instead of just embracing the light and suppressing the Hado, or fully rejecting his humanity and letting himself be corrupted. What if Ryu instead chose to welcome and balance both as one? This is the conclusion he came to after training with the Senjutsu master Oro, attaining a whole new level of power after merging both halves that allowed him to defeat a Gill possessed Alex.
Now in complete communion with both positive and negative energies, Ryu is able to utilize both his normal and Dark Hado abilities of Evil Ryu at their fullest extent without risking losing himself for control. He’s also seemingly now capable of freely using many of the techniques from all across Ansatsuken gallery like the Metsu Shoryuken or the Tatsumaki Gorasen from Gouken, exorcise people with Hadoukens, use telekinesis, create an omnidirectional wave of energy around himself to blow away people with Fudo Shin, jump across the world and even use the Raging Demon, which sends the souls of those affected into Makai.
Beard
AKA “Hot Ryu”. Originally was meant to be Ryu’s default outfit in SFV, though they did make it into a costume. The reception to this costume was so so so positive that it became his default look in SF6 in all its big hairy man glory.
Kenshiro
100%
A state in which Kenshiro unlocks the hidden 70% of his latent power, as humans can normally only use 30%. It is accessed via the Tenryu Kokyuho technique, and boosts his physical stats by 3.333x. When it is used, Kenshiro flexes his muscles so hard that they expand and rip through his jacket and shirt.
Beard
A form exclusive to the 1986 Fist of the North Star anime movie. Does nothing but make Ken look cool. Unlike Ryu, Kenshiro doesn’t really rock this look, as he looks way better when shaved.
Feats
Ryu
Overall
Won the First World Warrior Tournament
Overcame the temptations of the Satsui no Hado and mastered the Power of Nothingness
Defeated fighters like Ken, Sagat, Sadler, Seth, Gill and Bison
His power under a S.I.N machine was too high to be measured
Helped end the terrorist organization of Shadaloo(at least for a bit of a while)
The very first shoto who ever shoto’d and influenced many other fighting game protagonists
Power
Can smash apart a Toyota and a SUV car in bonus game
Blasted part of a giant skyscraper while under the influence of the Satsui no Hado
Blew away a massive fire with a Hadouken while teaming up with Sakura
Ryu’s energy was used by Bison to power the Psycho Drive laser enough to destroy a city - (33.347 megatons to 1.157 gigatons of TNT)
Speed
Has dodged bullets and machine gun fire multiple times as Evil Ryu
Blitzed C. Viper
Kicked a guy with wind pressure so fast that he only recognized the attack after the fact
Jumped from the Mediterranean sea to Ayers Rock in Australia as Shin Ryu (Mach 1320 to 3960)
Durability
Took a brutal beating from Seth (see above)
Survived Akuma blowing up an island with the Kongou Kokuretsu Zan
Endured being dragged through a building by Bison's Psycho Crusher
Kenshiro
Overall
Battled and defeated opponents such as Souther, Raoh, Hyoh and Souther
Was the first Hokuto Shinken master to awaken Musou Tensei in 1800 years
Lifted the seals of Hokuto and became the most powerful Hokuto Shinken successor of all time
Helped give his post-apocalyptic world hope and lead it to a new age
Redefined Battle Shounen and influenced practically every other Shounen manga since 1983
Killed Kinnikuman and Cell
Power
Lifted and pushed large boulders
Threw a giant mutated man and punched through the walls of a nuclear bunker made of 10 tons of concrete and steel that can withstand a bomb
Pulled Fudo out of a sandpit, a massive man that weighs over 300 kg
Created a massive tornado in a clash of auras with Raoh, which disperses the sky.
Alongside Falco, split the skies in a clash of auras - (44.98 gigatons of TNT individually)
Speed
Has catched arrows several times, even while sleeping
As a teenager, blitzed Jagi, striking all his pressure points without him even seeing it
Durability
Survived Shin marking seven scars on his body
Ignores Jagi swinging and breaking a massive pillar on his body
Ignores a giant head of a stone statue falling on top of him and continues struggling with Han
Got stabbed in his shoulder and thrown into a building, breaking a stone wall, but just gets back up
Gets launched into a building by Han, creating a large explosion
Ignored being electrified by a fence that could burn someone to a crisp
Weaknesses
Ryu
With each victory, there also came an error for Ryu to learn about his limits. Many of his Ki or energy attacks continuously drain his energy with each use as potentially implied by his conversation with Ken in SFV’s story mode, and too much sustained damage or blood loss can put down Ryu just like any other man. The Satsui no Hado also made Ryu quickly lose control and become a raging mindless beast, though he has overcome it in different mediums.
Kenshiro
While superhumanly powerful, Kenshiro has limits. Excessive damage to his body and extreme blood loss will make him collapse and die like a normal human would, and he has finite reserves of Ki like everyone else. While nothing canonically gives an exact time limit to Muso Tensei, it is unlikely he could stay in it for absurdly extended periods of time, such as a day. I wouldn't recommend being his friend either, they tend to die a lot.
Scaling
Ryu
Ryu, the central figure of Street Fighter, has faced many enemies in his relentless pursuit of martial perfection, including some among the elite in his universe. Therefore, he would scale to the characters listed below:
Akuma
Ryu’s eternal rival. Ryu and Akuma fought multiple times throughout the Street Fighter series, but most times depict Akuma effortlessly taking the win. In SFIV, Ryu and Akuma are shown clashing punches, so it's fair to say current Ryu should at the very least downscale feats performed by Akuma by then. Other mediums like the Generations OVA, manga or the UDON comics have shown Ryu matching and even defeating Akuma, so Ryu should be perfectly capable of scaling to feats performed by those specific versions of Akuma.
Destroyed a mountain by landing the Raging Demon on Gouken - (750 kilotons to 6.47 megatons of TNT)
Akuma destroyed an island with a single chop - (119 megatons of TNT)
Oni caused a large volcanic eruption - (786.86 megatons of TNT)
Akuma created a large energy pillar with his ki - (6.88 to 16.73 gigatons of TNT and Mach 339)
Akuma can perform 30 strikes in 1 second by using the Raging Demon - (23.34 m/s, holy shit)
Shin Akuma destroyed a meteor - (Inapplicable) (Check Before the Verdict)
Street Foes
Ryu has overcome many threats across the years, and defeated the likes of Seth, Gill in UDON, and M. Bison in the past - as a result, he should scale to any of their greatest feats.
Gill parted the sea - (480 tons of TNT) (Check Before the Verdict)
Birdie and Balrog survived the destruction of the Shadaloo base - (11.5 to 30.52 kilotons of TNT)
The Psycho Drive Laser was used to blow up Easter Island - (158.6 megatons to 4.25 gigatons of TNT)
Sagat can move over a hundred meters at FTE speeds - (Mach 1.24 to 9.34)
Street Bros
Considering his journey of wandering the world as a martial artist, it’s not surprising that Ryu would match and surpass many of Street Fighter’s world warriors such as his longlife rival and friend Ken, good ol’ family man Guile, The Sumo Wrestler E. Honda or The Red Cyclone Zangief. Having fought alongside them when it comes to greater threats, match and defeat them in combat or beat foes far superior to them.
Ken and other characters survived Bison’s suicide explosion from a distance - (270 tons to 1.378 kilotons of TNT)
Guile can throw Sonic Booms at… you guessed it, the speed of sound.
E. Honda and Zangief with their combined weight destroy the Psycho Drive, other characters such as Birdie have also survived it’s destruction.
Hakan tossed E-Honda hard enough to destroy a meteor - (at most 961 megatons of TNT)
E-Honda’s Delivery summons can deliver orders at high speeds - (Mach 39.84)
Street Gals
Similarly to the street bros, Ryu should certainly be up to par with some of the strongest women in the world. Being comparable to characters such as Ken who have fought and beat characters like Sakura, similarly fought alongside them or defeated foes like C. Viper whom Cammy did lose against.
Sakura has defeated Zangief (2:54-3:07) and E. Honda, with the latter saying she seemed stronger than Ryu
Rose contained a large energy explosion over Shinjuku - (220 tons of TNT)
Chun-Li’s Kikosho can destroy a large portion of land - (1.24 megatons)
Juri blew up a theme park with a prototype of her Feng Shui Engine
Juri absorbed enough energy to blow up a mountain in Xinjiang - (46.275 to 400 megatons of TNT)
Final Fight Characters
Given the long established link between the two series, it’s no surprise that Ryu and other Street Fighters have thrown hands with plenty of fellow Final Fight cast members once they hit the streets in the Alpha series. To throw out some examples– Sakura has fought and fended off Maki Genryusai when she was going all out, Charlie has fought and defeated Rolento, and Ryu himself has even fought Hugo to a stalemate. Sometime later after this, Sagat easily defeated Hugo without as much as a single scratch and Ryu fought and beat Sagat by just a hair with the Fist of the Wind in one of their rematches. Potentially implying a notable power difference between his initial fight with Hugo and Sagat.
Haggar can piledrive people through Earth - (129 gigatons to 216 teratons of TNT for power and 0.01c to 0.65c for speed) (Inapplicable to mainline, Check Before the Verdicts)
Elias can attack at “lightning-fast speeds” - (Mach 260)
Street Fighter EX Characters
(Debatable, check Before the Verdicts)
While some of the accounts for EX’s lore are admittedly rather vague or minimal(especially with some misinformation in the SF wiki like Garuda beating Akuma), we do certainly know that SF characters are comparable with some of Arika’s fellow characters. With such examples as Ken beating Allen Snyder or Rolento wounding D. Dark in his backstory. So as far as we’re concerned, the original cast should be in the same ballpark as EX.
Shadowgeist potentially???? might have survived a building busting self destruct
Cracker Jack punched a Shadaloo train and can bat people into Jupiter and Uranus (1468 and 3400 times FTL respectively)
UDON Darkstalkers Characters
(Debatable, PLEASE Check Before the Verdicts)
Exclusive to the UDON comics, their version of Street Fighter shares a universe with the Darkstalkers series, with both casts having fought each other across multiple issues. While Ryu never encountered any of the Darkstalkers himself, his allies and rivals like Chun-Li, Ken, and Sagat have held their own against several of them, which can possibly lead to them scaling to the cast.
Felicia accidentally snapped a zombie’s neck and can avoid gunfire
Morrigan cut multiple grown men in half, collapsed a wall on Chun-Li, was launched out of a building, and repeatedly impaled Jedah
Jedah created the Majigen, a pocket of space-time between the human and demon realms that acts as a self-contained universe. It’s described later as a self-contained universe in the void between all dimensions where time, space, and the rules of reality are bent
Anakaris intercepted a Huitzil while it was flying into space
Pyron consumed his home planet and traveled from the furthest limits of the universe to Earth over the course of 3 years
Kenshiro
Kenshiro, the 64th successor of Hokuto Shinken, stands as the ultimate martial artist in Fist of the North Star, positioning him at the pinnacle of power in his universe. Therefore, it’s only logical that he would scale to the characters listed below:
Raoh
The mighty Ken-Oh, the Conqueror at the Century’s End. Kenshiro was able to match Raoh in their fight after both awakened their Musou Tensei, and even beat him with a deadly punch to the chest. Ken got vastly stronger than his big brother by the end of the series.
With the last remaining bit of his life force, after already having spent his entire spirit into an attack and failing to harm base Kenshiro, still had enough energy left to launch a ki blast into the sky and ascend to the heavens, dispersing a huge thunderstorm and clearing the sky.
Manga version - (1.74 gigatons of TNT and Mach 250.5)
Has casually destroyed and brought down numerous buildings and skyscrapers
Jagi (Check Before the Verdicts)
The second youngest of the Hokuto brothers… and the weakest. Jagi is a complete weakling compared to the likes of Kenshiro and Raoh, relying on dirty tactics to score hits and wins against Ken rather than his power or skill. Just by the beginning of the series, Kenshiro should already upscale Jagi by an absurd amount, as he beat him down quite easily, choosing to spare his life.
Survived one of the bombs from the nuclear war that caused the apocalypse. Other works show the bombs causing gigantic air mass splits on the atmosphere, and they are stated to have dried the oceans of the planet and split the earth itself - (5.2 petatons of TNT) (Check Before the Verdict)
Toki
The second oldest of the Hokuto brothers. Kenshiro and Toki matched power in base before Ken awakened his Musou Tensei, and Toki went even to challenge 100% Pre-Musou Tensei Raoh at the cost of his life, not being able to kill him because of his sickness. Naturally, Kenshiro should upscale Toki by the time he fights Raoh, and just get way above his brother as the series progresses.
Toki could live for years after surviving being bombarded by radiation for two weeks and receiving a dosage 50 billion times higher than the one that would kill a normal person (Check Before the Verdict)
Kasumi Kenshiro
The 62nd successor of Hokuto Shinken and Kenshiro’s uncle from the Shuken lineage of the Hokuto Soke clan. Since Kenshiro was considered by Koryu to be part of the pinnacle of the history of Hokuto Shinken alongside his brothers, and Koryu was a Hokuto student that was almost chosen by Kasumi himself to be the 63rd successor, we can reasonably scale Kenshiro before the awakening of Musou Tensei to feats performed by his uncle Kasumi, especially since Ken was stated to be the strongest man of Hokuto. Kasumi later went after through the ritual of lifting his seals by touching the Hokuto Soke stone, just like Kenshiro, meaning the feats performed by his uncle after the ritual would also scale to Kenshiro, especially considering Koryu still considered the then current generation of Hokuto to be the pinnacle.
His Toki Aura unleashed by the Soryu Tenra technique dispersed a large storm formed by start of the Hokuto Initiation Ritual - (2.13 teratons of TNT)
Saved a man from getting hit by bullets centimeters away from his eye using the Keiko technique - (Mach 222)
Can fight on par with Fei Yan
Could fight on par with Liu Zonwu, even while both were using the Keiko technique
Liu Zonwu could evade a strike to a pressure point from Kasumi in his forehead before it could completely pierce his skin, all while Kasumi was using the Keiko technique. Given Kasumi could attack accurately during Keiko, and Liu Zonwu could evade an attack so close to him, in addition to them being able to trade blows accurately, their reactions should scale to the technique.
Was capable of blocking Van der Kool’s Tento Kogai Sho, or “Heaven Dipper Imperial Hundred Quintillion Palm” - (Inapplicable, check before verdicts)
Kaioh
The most powerful master of Hokuto Ryuken and Raoh’s biological twin brother. Kenshiro can casually match El Hermano de Raoh here after he lifted the seals of Hokuto by touching the Hokuto Soke stone, and managed to beat him. Even before that, Kaioh was terrified of Kenshiro’s Toshin Aura. Obviously Kenshiro can scale to anything Kaioh can do by the end of the manga.
Distorted the clouds over an entire valley with just his aura
Is stated by Jukei to represent “a disaster of immeasurable proportions” (Check Before the Verdict)
Misc. Martial Artists
Kenshiro fought and beat many martial artists during Fist of the North Star, and by the end of the series should safely be considered the strongest character in the series. By all means, he should upscale all the feats that follow.
Hyoh could press all of someone's 1109 pressure points simultaneously - (Mach 65)
Hyoh could perform the Manju Maon Ken or the Thousand Hand Demon Sound Fist - (Mach 586.5)
Garuda can attack at the speed of light
Juza, who is about as fast as pre-Musou Tensei Raoh, outspeeds Garuda
Upscaling and Multipliers
Ryu
Given Ryu’s desire to become a true martial artist, it shouldn’t be surprising that some upscaling would come with the territory. We’ve seen Ryu improve in several ways before from his training, whether it be through strengthening his ki control, new techniques or the massive power increases from states like the Satsui no Hado or the Power of Nothingness.
For example, in his fight with Seth. Ryu with his normal abilities couldn’t do much to Seth at all, taking quite a beating against him and having his neck nearly cracked. However, with the Power of Nothingness Ryu went from being stomped to outright defeating Seth with no difficulties at all. A S.I.N machine even calculated his power as too high to be measured (going from many 99999999s to a number with many zeros), implying a massive power increase from SF4 to SFV and on after fully mastering it. So Ryu by the point of SF6 who uses the Power of Nothingness to its fullest extent should, at the very least. Easily upscale feats from many of the feats showcased between the Alpha series and SFIV (Psycho drive using his power to destroy cities, Bison catching up to satellites, etc.).
The same should similarly apply to his higher states as shown by canon or other mediums. To throw out some examples:
Satsui no Hado: Ryu was able to similarly go from losing to Cody to beating the lights out of him, or tanking a shock attack from C. Viper that could previously harm him before.
Fist of the Wind: In the SF3 Ryu Final manga, a normal Ryu fought Hugo to a draw. Sometime after the scuffle Hugo fought Sagat and he wasn’t even able to lay a single scratch on Sagat no matter how hard he tried. And when he finally unlocked the Fist of the Wind, Ryu challenged Sagat to a rematch and won the battle by just a hair. Yet again implying another massive power increase.
Shin Ryu: Street Fighter Unlimited shows Ryu at his greatest potential in UDON. In his fight with Alex possessed by Gill, even the powerful and violent Evil Ryu was incapable of defeating Gill by that point, so with both halves inside his mind united he became strong enough to overpower Gill and literally send him to hell.
Kenshiro
Kenshiro can use the Tenryu Kyoku Ho technique to boost his physical stats and use 100% of his potential instead of only 30%, granting him a multiplier of 3.333x to his stats from his base state.
In their first fight, base Kenshiro couldn’t do much to Raoh at all, but as soon as he went 100% mode, he could fight Raoh to a draw. After learning Musou Tensei, his base form could casually match Raoh and frighten him with his power, meaning that unlocking Muso Tensei granted him a power boost even greater than Tenryu Kyoku Ho. After Raoh also learned Muso Tensei himself, they were evenly matched.
That means Post-MT Ken is much stronger than base Raoh and his previous 100% state, who are 3.333x stronger than BoS Ken, putting 100% Post-MT Ken at much stronger than 11.10x his starting base form.
After the timeskip, 100% Kenshiro was overpowered by Kaioh despite using his 100% form. After Kenshiro's power awakened, he was able to easily match Hyoh, even after his Matoki Aura awakened and Kaioh considered him capable of killing Kenshiro, despite having been afraid of Kenshiro's power in a previous encounter (this is supported by Hyoh later stating that Kenshiro was now strong enough to face Kaioh). This should make Hyoh stronger than Kenshiro's 100% state that previously failed to beat Kaioh.
Even after going through the same awakening as Kenshiro (a greater increase than Tenryū Kokyū Hō), Hyoh admits Kenshiro would have still beaten him, meaning base awakening Kenshiro is at least 37x stronger than his base starting state.
After lifting the seals of Hokuto, Kenshiro matched Kaioh in his evil swamp, which increased his power. Later both of them raised their power to 100%. Meaning EoS 100% Kenshiro is at least 123.321x stronger than BoS base Kenshiro.
Before the Verdicts…
Higher Street Fighter Arguments
Street Fighter has had a plethora of arguments to get higher stats then the one you’ve probably seen in this blog; however, a lot of these arguments are very fundamentally flawed for one reason or another - to be fair, we’ll go over each of the major arguments we discounted, and go over their flaws as to why they can’t be reliably utilized.
Final Fight Revenge
The most popular argument for higher Street Fighter stats has been Haggar’s piledriver from Final Fight Revenge; it’s been calced to a variety of ranges, but no matter what it gets, it’s always significantly higher than any other Street Fighter AP arguments. However, this feat is flawed to use.
Make no mistake, while it has been inflated in the past, the feat itself is fine in terms of the Large Island to Large Country range calc; however, the game is pretty blatantly non-canon, as confirmed by the World Warrior Guide. Cody’s profile says that he was arrested due to him committing assault, while in Revenge he was arrested due to being framed. Guy’s zombie infection in Revenge is also not referenced in his profile, and Belger becoming a zombie isn’t referenced at all in his. In addition, Belger appears in SFV and is not, in fact, a zombie. Haggar’s profile references the events of the other Final Fight games, but notably, not Revenge. In addition, the game itself is not referenced in the guide by name once.
You could say Poison’s profile says she tries to frame Cody as a reference to Revenge, but it only says she tried, not that she succeeded, and considering that Cody’s profile openly contradicts this and no other elements of Revenge are shown to be canon, we can safely dismiss the game as being non-canon, and the feat inapplicable to the main Street Fighter continuity. You could use it, however, for both the Final Fight cast and in soft composites, but a majority of the time, it would be inapplicable to mainline Street Fighter characters.
Street Fighter EX
Street Fighter EX is another one of the various Street Fighter spinoff series that has been argued to get the series higher stats - in this case, MFTL speeds. However, when you look into it, it’s pretty cleanly not canon.
None of the original characters in EX are referenced at all in the World Warrior guide, nor is it listed anywhere on any of Capcom’s websites detailing games canon to the series. In addition, EX itself story wise is just a retelling of Street Fighter 2 with different characters as showcased by several ends such as Guile or Blanka’s being similar to their original Street Fighter 2 endings, and even several guides and books do specify it’s a parallel world set during the events of Street Fighter 2. The game during development was originally named with the subtitle “Street Fighter Gaiden”, meaning “side story”. Adding to that status.
Now, it’s important to mention that Street Fighter EX has actually been referenced before twice in the mainline. Primarily in the Shadaloo C.R.I and Zangief himself mentioning Darun Mister as “his friend” during a wrestling tour in India, the C.R.I even mentions that Darun gave him one of the pieces for SFV’s whole shindig with the Black Moon.
However, this doesn’t prove EX’s canonicity by itself, and Ruby Heart is acknowledged as canon too at some points (especially given Takayuki Nakayama has acknowledged C.R.I Ruby wasn’t the same Ruby as Marvel vs Capcom). At most, this means characters can be canon, even if the stories aren’t - and, let’s be real, going from Mach 967 to 3400 x FTL is kind of a huge outlier, even if EX itself had any acknowledgement in canon. Overall, we decided to rule out EX as non-canon, and as such, its MFTL arguments are inapplicable outside of soft composites.
UDON & Darkstalkers
Ever since they started publishing Street Fighter comics in 2003, UDON has created its own timeline in the Street Fighter franchise. It has earned its reputation in the Versus community as perfectly usable and canon for being official material. Death Battle has used it in the past, so it should be fine, right? Well, as we further investigate it, you’ll notice there is a lot to address regarding how coherently these comics fit in the Street Fighter universe.
Starting with the notion that the comics don’t contradict the original material, the games. Out the gate we can use Gen as an example. In the Street Fighter 2 UDON comics, Gen dies in a second confrontation with Akuma. In the games, he is still alive during the events of Street Fighter V, and even confirmed to be active after them by the writer of the games. Even Akuma and Gen’s original confrontation where Gen beats him is different, with a completely different portrayal and location between the game and the comic. Gen is also confirmed dead in the Darkstalkers crossover, as he is seen in Makai in Akuma vs Hell (and sends Akuma back to Earth after spending time in the void), and interacts with the cast as a ghost in Street Fighter vs Darkstalkers. So that’s a major character death that changes events of the games significantly, as none of his post-death comic activity is even alluded to in the games or the World Warrior guide at all.
Speaking of the World Warrior Guide, it does explicitly refer to UDON and the games as different continuities, only showing specific comic moments in the character profiles. From this we can infer that most UDON content is simply not canon to the Street Fighter games, with only a small handful of moments being usable.
Not enough? We have confirmation from Matt Moylan, official Director of Publishing at UDON comics and writer for many stories, that the chronological order for the UDON Street Fighter comics is different from the mainline Street Fighter games’, because they didn’t know Street Fighter V was supposed to be set before Street Fighter III when originally publishing the comics. As we know, official game timelines show otherwise. So now we have two separate official statements from UDON themselves that the comics are not supposed to be fully canon, but rather a different continuity. We also know that this continuity frequently contradicts the games themselves and has a sequence of events completely incompatible with them.
As you might have noticed, unlike with the games, this iteration of the series has rather explicit ties to Darkstalkers. And both of these series have had some rather strong ties to each other, starting with the end of Street Fighter Unlimited issue 11. Gill arrives in Hell after being killed by Ryu and meets Jedah Dohma, and the text box at the end advertises the crossover Street Fighter vs Darkstalkers.
This crossover was also led into via the backup stories in Street Fighter Legends: Cammy where members of the Street Fighter cast engage in brief scuffles with the Darkstalkers cast. And when Street Fighter vs Darkstalkers finally came out, there were multiple instances of both series’ casts battling each other. So how would this affect Street Fighter’s scaling?
Well, the Darkstalkers comics are surprisingly light on feats. In their own series, the best feats are Felicia avoiding gunfire, Anakaris intercepting a Huitzil as it's flying into space, and most impressively, Pyron consuming his home planet and traveling from the furthest limits of the universe to Earth within 3 years. Of these feats, the only ones you could really scale the Street Fighter cast to would be Felicia since Ken manages to dodge and block her attacks. With Anakaris all we have to go off of is one panel where E. Honda is holding back one of his attacks, while Pyron flat out can’t scale to anyone. He was depicted as casually taking out Morrigan, Demitri, and Donovan, none of whom could harm him due to his weird physiology.
When the Street Fighter vs Darkstalkers crossover came out, it gave a massive buff to Jedah Dohma. He’s responsible for the creation of the Majigen, a pocket of space-time made of his own blood that acts as a self-contained universe between the human and demon realms. In a later issue Gen describes it as a self-contained universe in the void between all dimensions where time, space, and the rules of reality are bent. Jedah then works with Gill to create the Fetus of God, an infant that will break through the void separating the human and demon realms and eventually break through the barriers of all universes and realities.
With a feat this insanely high, it begs the question of if anyone would scale to it. And the answer to that is no. At least nobody in Street Fighter would.
Despite there being a massive fight scene where everyone on both sides fights Jedah, it’s pretty much a one-sided beating where any attacks the heroes land don’t amount to much because Jedah regenerates from them near instantly. The only reason the cast managed to beat him is because Gill rips out his heart and Akuma uses Donovan’s demon slaying sword to kill Jedah. And the Fetus of God isn’t even handled by the Street Fighter cast! It casually absorbs their projectiles no problem, requires Morrigan and Lilith to merge to so much as hurt it, and Anita to use her psychic powers to seal it away.
Even without those two big feats, the idea of scaling the Street Fighter cast to the high tier Darkstalkers is rather flawed. The only occasions where the Street Fighters interact with those guys are Necalli getting bodied by Morrigan, Morrigan weakening Akuma and draining some of his soul with a kiss, Donovan shooting a fireball at Chun-Li, Ken, and Sagat, Ken and Sagat doing decently against Donovan, and Lilith bodying Elena until Chun-Li hits her from behind. But what about Chun-Li’s fights with Morrigan?
Well, despite Chun-Li seemingly winning their first fight, Morrigan was very clearly holding back as shown by her being more amused than anything afterward. This is even shown when they fight again in Street Fighter vs Darkstalkers. Morrigan flat out tells Chun-Li that if she wanted to kill her, she’d already be dead. When Chun-Li still attacks her on that same page, Morrigan responds “Enough of this! If the only way for you to get out of my way is for you to die, so be it.” The only reason the fight doesn’t continue past that point is because Chun-Li notices the Fetus of God being created. So we have pretty blatant evidence that Chun-Li’s only fights have been against a casual Morrigan who’s holding back. Neither Chun-Li nor anyone else in Street Fighter would scale to the higher tier feats from this crossover. The only one who would scale is a full power Morrigan.
But wait! What about that one recent Capcom art exposition that shows Darkstalkers as part of the Street Fighter timeline??? Surely that makes Dan multiversal???? Well… no. There are ZERO interactions between Darkstalkers and Street Fighter in the canon game timeline, and zero allusions to big scale Darkstalkers events in Street Fighter material. Darkstalkers is also not mentioned in the World Warrior guide or the SFV timeline. Even if you want to treat this art exhibition as more canon and reliable than actual guidebooks, there is no scaling chain to be found anywhere, outside of... simple cameos and gags like Felicia referencing Blanka.
To summarize: The UDON Street Fighter comics are not canon, save for small specific exceptions that do not change anything in terms of stats. The Darkstalkers crossover in the UDON comics is obviously not canon, and also does not change anything in terms of stats, as the SF characters do not have a reliable or consistent scaling chain to the Darkstalkers top tiers at all. At best ability descriptions from this continuity can be used.
Meteors
The Street Fighter series has its fair share of feats involving meteors, some of which have been argued to be worth country and even multi-continental levels of power. As it turns out, they either have problems that make them worth much less, or are just unusable. Let’s break the three feats down.
E. Honda’s Meteor (Street Fighter V) - The meteor is seen dispersing clouds in the sky which align with the descriptions of Stratus clouds, which form at most 2 km above the surface. There’s no other way to measure the size of the meteor if not by ang sizing this based on the height of the clouds. A common method of trying to figure the size is assuming the meteor is visible 100 km from the ground which is where they can usually start to ignite… but that completely ignores the clouds we’re seeing on screen, as they would not form at those altitudes. The statement regarding how if Hakan and Honda could “save the world” if they work together is pretty vague and could be considered hyperbole, given in the same game the Black Moons were going to crash into the Earth in the story, and their stated destruction radius of 10 km would pale in comparison to an actual extinction meteors such as the one that caused the Chicxulub crater. Even then, no one in the entire cast was considered able to stop them, and the two wrestlers that performed the meteor feat didn’t even try. Characters stronger than them such as Juri and Chun Li followed a plan to stop them through different means that weren’t brute strength. Pretty damning narrative evidence that Honda and Hakan wouldn’t be able to stop an extinction level event like that.
Gill’s Meteor (UDON comics) - Gill... does not actually overpower the kinetic energy of the meteor, he simply destroys it. Much similarly to the feat performed by a JACK unit in Tekken Tag Tournament 2. We also have no way to measure the size of the meteor because of perspective and timeframe issues, so this feat is basically impossible to calculate without making unreasonable assumptions about its size. Even if you assume it is a meteor the same size of the one that killed the dinosaurs, destroying it would only be worth 901 megatons of TNT. Even if you were to fully scale the kinetic energy of the meteor to Gill… UDON comics mostly aren’t canon, and this one hasn’t been even alluded to in the World Warrior Guide. If you want to soft composite and attribute the kinetic energy of the meteor to Gill, it would get 72 teratons as compared to the Chicxulub impact, which would just be lower than another non-canon feat such as Haggar’s piledrive anyway.
Shin Akuma’s Meteor (Capcom Fighting Evolution) - Perspective and lack of information makes this meteor’s size impossible to be calculated without unreasonable assumptions and massively inflating the number. If you were to compare Akuma’s size next to the curvature of the meteor you would end up with a pretty low size too. Regardless, the feat is not canon, as Capcom Fighting Evolution is a crossover game with no story and characters from different time periods of Street Fighter meeting characters from Darkstalkers and Red Earth. It is not present in the official timeline as of SFV and has no mentions whatsoever in the World Warrior Guide.
In conclusion, none of the meteors affect the stats the Street Fighter characters should get within canon or soft composite, and the Shin Akuma feat is just not usable at all.
The Black Moons
The Black Moons have been argued to be a really significant feat for the Street Fighter series, which may make it a surprise that any mention of them up until this point in the blog has been absent. So, an explanation is in order.
The Black Moons are doomsday devices meant for Bison in Street Fighter V to increase his Psycho Power, which are designed to also be able to disable electronics across the world to cause chaos as part of his plan. Now, the usual argument is that Bison was able to move 7 of them psychically, which has been shown to grant absurd results… but, both ends of this have problems.
Let’s address the problems with the calcs themselves - the Black Moons cannot be as large as suggested. They would cross into the Earth’s Roche limit if they had the mass of Mercury and were orbiting as close to the Earth as suggested (as seen in this shot, for example) - meaning that the calc itself can’t get in the absurd ranges stated before. In addition, it’s directly stated the impact range would be 10 kilometers if they crashed into the Earth - with the sizes suggested, the impact would have to be bigger than the surface of the planet, probably destroying the world. Reasonably, if the feat was accurate, then it would get much lower - likely in the Island ranges.
…However, that leads to the second problem. Which is that there is, uh, no feat. At all. The scene used for the calc is Necalli showing Ryu Bison’s plan in a vision, it’s not an actual thing that happened, he didn’t move the Black Moons to begin with. No one would scale to them crashing into the Earth or being put in orbit, or staying in orbit.
What about the EMP? Well… The thing is no one scales to it either. In the story, the Black Moons were created to generate electromagnetic pulses and cut power around the world in order to create chaos and despair, which in turn would fuel Psycho Power, and make Bison stronger. The same applies to the plan of making them crash into the planet. Bison is not empowered by the energy the Black Moons dish out, and so scaling him to their detonation has no real justification whatsoever. Why would Shadaloo even need to send them into orbit if that was the case, anyway?
Let’s assume that people would scale to them for whatever reason. It should get pretty high then, right?
…it would get 72 tons of TNT. The reason for that is simply because there is no air in space, and we cannot treat it as a generic nuclear fireball and use the explosion calc, so we have to settle for the luminosity. Actual nukes have been detonated in space, about 400 km above the surface. The 1.4 megaton warhead created a giant orange aurora borealis effect visible from the ground, and their EMP reached the surface and disrupted electronics too. If one were to highball this feat by comparing it to the effect of an actual nuke, the radius of the pulse itself would be at most 5.9x bigger and therefore the yield would be around 302 megatons of TNT. Mind you, with this high end it makes no sense that the nearby satellite wasn't completely vaporized.
In short, higher ends of the Black Moons rely on a completely incorrect interpretation of the scenes in question as well as highballed sizes that contradict SFV’s story (and the laws of physics). You can’t scale anyone to either feats attributed to the Black Moons, and even if you did, they would get relatively low numbers compared to other feats in the verse.
Ocean Running
Street Fighter 6 has granted us another popular higher argument for speed, via its assist mechanic. As you can call in characters in story mode who are in locations across the world to where you are at any time in a fight they must be running there, right? Moving at insanely fast speeds?
…Yeah, no. This same game makes it explicitly clear they need planes to travel anywhere, and this is likely just a case of gameplay and story being separated. It’s pretty obvious that it’s not intended for Ryu to be able to run across the world at relativistic speeds, and doing so contradicts the same game. As a result, this feat is inapplicable.
Gill Parts The Sea
On paper, this seems like something that should be very impressive. This feat had previously been calculated at island and even large island AP levels, but these calcs have fundamental logic issues that contradict real life science.
First off, it is usually assumed that the depth of the sea parting is equivalent to the average depth of the ocean. This sounds reasonable until you evaluate this assumption further. The feat occurs very close to an island, a geological formation that sits over a continental shelf, where the landmass of the island would logically extend further to relatively shallow waters until it reaches an edge to the ocean depths. In short, the ocean is much shallower when close to islands and continents, so assuming the average depth near an island to be about 3 kilometers is not very sound. A much safer assumption would be to use the height of the average mountain and compare it to the sea parting, which would get a much less impressive height for the ocean parting. You could assume the ocean got shallower as the path to the island went, but there's very little indicating that in the art itself, and the distance would make it an extremely upturned angle. There's also the issue of the narrative, in which it makes absolutely no sense for Gill to need to make a path that's KILOMETERS wide (the path is depicted as wider than it is deep) for a couple hundred people to pass, making 90 meters (the result we got for the recalc) much more in line with how these feats are usually portrayed.
In short, higher versions of this feat use faulty logic and have inflated results.
Seraphic Wing
Seraphic Wing has been used to push some faster than light arguments for the Street Fighter cast, but as interesting as they are, they’re not really applicable in any way.
First of all, what is Seraphic Wing? Seraphic Wing is a super art from Gill in Street Fighter 3 and Street Fighter 5, that notably emits waves of light at the player. Naturally, the argument would be that as a result of this, if you could react to it, they’d be faster than light, buffing the speed of the Street Fighter cast.
However, this is pretty blatantly flawed for multiple reasons. First of all, the light blatantly shows force, which light can’t do, meaning it’s debatable if it’s even light at all (which it is never even stated to be). However, the real problem is that you can’t actually react to it in either game legitimately. The only way to react to it in either game is to use a glitch to be able to parry it in Street Fighter 3 - but this would be the equivalent of giving Mario infinite speed due to the BLJ letting him climb the infinite staircase in SM64. It’s abusing a glitch in the game to do something not intended, not something the character can canonically do. As such, Seraphic Wing FTL arguments are dead in the water, as no one can react to the light in question.
MORE Cosmic Street Fighter
Ughhhhhhh… Alright, we’ll talk about this… While not exactly popular or widely accepted (thankfully), you might have seen that one document scaling Street Fighter characters to Planet Level, Universal Level and beyond, reaching even OUTERVERSAL levels of power. This is not valid for multiple reasons. We have talked about the ones pertaining to the UDON comics. Let’s address the arguments for canon now.
The main method would be using Dhalsim. In a text story, a conversation between him and Oro gets him thinking about his Yoga training and about how meditation lets him connect to the infinite vastness of space. There are other mentions of this in winning quotes from Street Fighter 4. This means absolutely nothing for AP scaling at all. Meditation simply allows Dhalsim to get in tune with the life force that connects all living things in nature and the universe, it is a concept used in REAL LIFE YOGA MEDITATION. Saying Dhalsim should scale to the power to destroy the universe because he talks about how his philosophy works is nonsensical.
Some people also argue that Guy and Akuma have planetary destruction statements. No, they do not. These are blatant hyperbole. Akuma is destroying Ayers Rock, the statement is about him being strong. “Heaven and Earth” statements are common hyperbole in Japanese media to describe someone being powerful, and they would be massive outliers for the cast even if you were supposed to take them literally.
There are way more other arguments that people use. Inflating Haggar’s piledriver feat, arguing the Black Moons are being moved by Bison directly and are the size of Mercury, arguing the Satsui no Hado is conceptual and would therefore be outerversal (???), arguing Akuma destroyed the void that Gen sent him to (this is never even alluded to), but they’re all very exaggerated and crumble like a sandcastle once you apply even the tiniest bit of sanity to them. For the surprise of almost nobody, cosmic levels of power for Street Fighter will be considered invalid.
Extra Arguments
Haggar’s lightspeed statement - Mighty Final Fight is an obviously non-canonical chibi spinoff of Final Fight where Belger comes back as a cyborg. The statement is also nowhere to be found in the Japanese manual of the game.
Psycho Drive satellite moving clouds - We have absolutely no timeframe or idea of how much of the mass of the clouds is being moved, as spinning implies centrifugal force and the conservation of angular momentum as observed in real life hurricanes. Lack of detail also stops us from knowing what’s even being done to the clouds, as they could have been gathered from unknown spots or be made to spin at completely unknown speeds and distances, and the mass would never be spinning at the same speeds at once. The clouds being likely cirrus also puts their distance from sea level as extremely variable. As we don’t know anything about this feat it can likely be discarded as too vague and inconsistent. Other satellite shots from the series have never been shown to do that, as they would have destroyed much larger areas if you take this effect into consideration. They are usually just shown to destroy cities, not countries or continents, making it even more inconsistent and outlier-ish.
Scaling to the full yield of Bison’s self destruction - The blast completely destroyed Bison’s body and no one was at the epicenter. No scaling chain and narratively inconsistent.
Karin’s Street Fighter 5 ending - In this Karin performs a technique said to be able to overwhelm enemies up to 12000 km away with just the rhythm movement of her muscles. This is clearly not supposed to be treated as a perfect omnidirectional air blast or else Shibasaki wouldn’t be standing right there besides her performing the move just fine. It is likely she can just project the vibrations up to that range and target specific individuals, calculating it like a nuclear blast has no justification whatsoever.
Cammy’s "country busting statement" and Cannon Spike - This is clearly alluding to the her being a deadly fighter and being able to kill a country’s worth of military, not being able to wipe it off the map, or else they wouldn’t use psycho drive technology to accomplish destruction on a far smaller scale. About Cannon Spike, this explosion has been calculated at island level before… based on extremely generous assumptions. Looking at it more reasonably made the feat land comfortably at megatons. Bear in mind Cammy shouldn’t even scale to the full yield at all as she wasn’t at the epicenter.
Asura’s Wrath - Come on now.
Higher Fist of the North Star Arguments
Fist of the North Star has also a plethora of arguments to get higher stats then the ones you’ve probably seen in this blog, however in most cases they are either inflated or plain misinformation. We will now go over the most major ones that people use to justify higher FOTNS scaling.
The Dragon of Hokuto
In a chapter by the end of Fist of the Blue Sky, we see a Dragon that is the incarnation of Hokuto Shinken fly to the Big Dipper constellation in a few panels. The speed of this feat has been calculated at millions of times faster than light. This is often argued to scale to the speed of the characters but… this makes absolutely no sense. No one reacts to this and it’s a flight feat that we can’t prove that scales to reactions. You could argue that the Keiko technique is stated to be “divine speed” or that Kenshiro being taken over by Indra, the god of war, would allow Ken to scale to this feat by the end of the series but at that point it’s just a massive outlier.
This feat is inapplicable.
Raoh parting the sky high ends
You might have seen some calculation of Raoh’s cloud feat that gets pretty ludicrous high results. It can range up from country to multi-continental levels of power. The truth is these are highly inflated and ignore a scientific property of air: the higher the altitude, the less dense it is. They also often use a pretty unreasonably big thickness for the cloud, instead of a safer low end, which ends up inflating the width of the hole as well.
For our calculation, we used a low end cloud thickness estimation to be conservative, which led to a much lower end than expected. Granted, this feat, while visually impressive, does not change much in the grand scheme of things, as Kasumi Kenshiro renders it irrelevant.
The Endless Dimension + other cosmic arguments
While not exactly popular, you might have seen arguments floating around for FOTNS characters achieving Star and even Universal levels of power. Unfortunately, they’re… not very good. Let’s address the major ones.
Starting from the bottom, we have the star level arguments. The first one is that Toki summoned the omen star of death (shichosei) for Raoh and that should mean he scales to star level. There is a lot wrong with this. But what is the omen star of death exactly? It is Alcor, the eighth star of the Hokuto constellation, and not normally visible to the naked eye. In the context of the series, those who witness the death omen star are fated to die, and viewing it varies from person to person. Two people can look at the sky at the same time in the same place and only one would see it, for example. It is not something that pops in and out of existence, it is a real celestial body. You simply see it or you don’t, and you can stop seeing it if certain things happen that change the possibility of your death. It is a real cosmic body that exists. Toki “summoning” it at best would relate to the ability Hokuto Shinken users have of shaping their own fates. Or that the star was alluding to the future where Raoh would die in his final fight with Kenshiro. It would also be a blatant outlier. The second instance would be Dragon of Hokuto scaling again. Some people assume that the creature flying to one of the stars of the Hokuto constellation would necessarily give it Star level attack potency… for some reason. Not only is the appearance of this dragon extremely vague but there is no scaling chain to it either so nothing checks out, and it would also be extremely outlier-ish for the verse. In short, none of the Star level arguments work.
Then we have the Universal arguments regarding a lot of statements about some characters and techniques’ potential to “destroy Heaven”, such as Raoh. Heaven in Fist of the North Star refers to the entire cosmos, as evident by the kanji used and how people who die become stars in the universe. The Dragon of Hokuto is also stated to be the guardian of the creator god of the cosmos. Not much to comment on the destroying Heaven part outside of the fact the usage of hyperbole here is extremely clear. On the Hokuto Dragon, the scaling chain has also been addressed as non-existent already.
Finally, we have the weirdest cosmic Hokuto argument. In the final episode of the Fist of the Blue Sky: ReGenesis anime, Kasumi Kenshiro gets trapped in a sort of pocket dimension created by a technique called the Black Cave Heavenly Death. The darkness in which he is enveloped is called limitless (in japanese, the word 無限 or “mugen” is used, meaning infinite). He then proceeds to use Soryu Tenra to illuminate all of it, destroying the pocket dimension and bringing his opponent into the void created by the technique. This could be used to argue infinite universal levels of power… but that would be silly. Not only do we not know how literal the infinite part is supposed to be, there’s no real reason to assume this is also not a weird space where space fluctuates and Kasumi merely has the sensation of being in a void. We have seen techniques such as the Anryu Tenha distort space and gravity before, and the Matoki Aura messes with your depth perception. No to mention, for the millionth time, this would be a blatant outlier.
In conclusion, cosmic levels of power for Fist of the North Star are not consistent nor based on solid evidence, rendering them inapplicable.
Tento Kogai Sho
In Chapter 6 of the Fist of the Blue Sky: Regenesis manga, Kasumi Kenshiro blocks an attack by Van Der Kool called the Tento Kogai Sho, or “Heaven Dipper Imperial Hundred Quintillion Palm” (天斗皇垓掌). Since numbered and named attacks that involve punching hundreds and even thousands of times tend to be accurate in the series, one could assume this attack involves the user striking someone 100 quintillion times. Let’s break this down.
First, how do you get 100 quintillion out of those kanjis? The term 天斗皇垓掌 can be broken down into two parts, 天斗 and 皇垓掌. 天斗, or Tentou, refers to Tento Seiinken, or Heavenly Dipper Sacred Palm Fist, the martial art which the move belongs to. 皇垓掌, or Kogai Sho, means 100 quintillion imperial palm. The kanji 垓 (gai), specifically expresses a 100 quintillion. Why does a kanji for such a specific number exist? Long story short, Buddhism. Japanese and Chinese languages needed ways to express the absurdly large numbers listed in the sutras (Buddha’s teachings) that describe impossibly large concepts such as eternity cycles and the size of the universe. So yeah, 100 quintillion is the actual number.
So what does that mean? Well, if you take it literally, the user of this move would have to be striking 100 quintillion times. Extremely conservative estimates put this at around billions of times faster than light, with high ends reaching trillions. But is it usable? Well…
On one side, this name is likely hyperbolic. We only have confirmation of attacks throwing up to thousands of strikes at once such as Hyoh’s attempt to press all 1109 of Kuroyasha’s destructive meridian points and throwing 10000 punches with manju maon ken, so it’s likely a jump to such an absurdly large number like 100 quintillion would not be literal. Even if it was supposed to be literal, this is a pretty blatant outlier for the verse.
For the sake of consistency, this feat is inapplicable.
Ocean Vaporization
In chapter 182 of Fist of the North Star, Jukei utters a relatively infamous statement about Kaioh’s power. According to him, Kaioh’s power when released out of his armor could unleash a disaster of unmeasurable proportions. People have often used this to scale his power to the output of the entire nuclear war, which vaporized all the oceans of the planet. Let’s investigate further to see if this checks out.
Let’s base our assumptions on the original Japanese statement, which reads “その鎧が裂け崩れた時とてつもないことが起きてしまうのだ”, meaning "When that armor tears and crumbles, something tremendous will happen." The term とてつもない or Totestumonai means something extravagant; absurd; unbelievable; preposterous; unreasonable; tremendous, huge in scope, etc. Since Jukei was alive when the nuclear apocalypse happened, it is assumed Kaioh’s power being unleashed would be absurd in scope even relative to it, ergo, Kaioh’s power would be relative or superior even to dried the seas of the planet with nuclear bombs. There are a few problems with this.
First, it’s extremely vague. We don’t know if Jukei is thinking about the nuclear apocalypse when saying that at all, and no feat performed by Kaioh indicates it to be true. Second, it could very easily just be hyperbole. Kaioh was stronger than any other fighter in the setting at that point and Jukei doesn’t know if Kenshiro was strong enough to him without power limiters, meaning there would be no one to stop Kaioh rampaging through the Land of Asura out of control. You could argue the notion of surface wiping with the statement that Hokuto Shinken successors can bring ruin to the world, but that’s another clearly hyperbolic statement.
With Jagi’s feat, this doesn’t even matter, as Kaioh would reach similar levels of power thanks to multipliers and upscaling.
In all, this scaling will be considered inapplicable.
Shadowless attacks
Don’t act like Jagi, please
…not this type of “shadowless”, Flip.
Anyway, a few attacks in Fist of the North Star get argued to cast no shadows and therefore be faster than light, such as Han’s. The problem is that in this instance, the phrasing pretty directly implies that the shadows are too fast to be seen, not that they aren’t being cast at all, so the attack would be faster than eyesight, not light. There is however, the case of Zhang Tai-Yan, whose shadowless kick is stated to be too fast to create a shadow in a guidebook. In the Legends ReVive mobile game, Tai-Yan’s kicks are also stated to be too fast to cast a shadow.
What does that mean? Well that is… pretty vague. In the context of physics, shadows are created by an object obstructing the path of photons, or light particles. Does that mean that kicking too fast to create a shadow makes you FTL? Well, it is fundamentally impossible to kick through the already existing photons in the air without obstructing them, meaning that your leg would have to turn transparent too. The statement is clear about it being related to speed, so you can potentially argue it’s supposed to be faster than light, but it is too vague and, honestly, scientifically impossible to be considered a reliable FTL feat. At best you can use it as support for Garuda’s speed of light statement, and at that point it’s not really relevant because it grants the same rating.
Han’s statements are inapplicable, while Tai-Yan’s are arguable but not really important.
Should Ryu have the Satsui no Hado?
Now if you may have looked at the abilities and transformation sections, you might be asking yourself. Should we include the Satsui no Hado? Which is a fair question of course. Ryu’s struggle finally came to an end when he faced Necalli at an end in SFV: A Shadow Falls, unlocking the Power of Nothingness and cleansing himself of the burden of having the Dark Hado control him and the state itself being in a sort of limbo with some questioning whether it’s canon or not. So it might be questionable for some if it's considered standards and if we can let Ryu have both at the same time, especially with the timeskip on Street Fighter 6 showing Ryu utilizing the Power of Nothingness to its fullest.
For the sake of fairness. We’ll account for both possibilities, first factoring Ryu at the middle of his journey going from Street Fighter Alpha to Street Fighter 4 prior to him sealing his Dark Hado away and then his full potential in Street Fighter V/3/6 with the Power of Nothingness. Which is the primary focus.
BLECE and cellular hax resistances
The BLECE, or Boiling Liquid Expanding Cell Explosion, is a special weapon created by S.I.N in Street Fighter IV. It has some interesting properties that can lead to arguable resistances for Street Fighter 4, mainly Ryu.
According to Street Fighter IV: The Ties that Bind, it is powered by human energy, the spiritual life force known as ki. Paraphrasing the movie, it harnesses human energy to cause a cyclical chain reaction by extracting ki artificially from a subject and amplifying it with the device. The resulting pulse resonates within the victim causing the mitochondria to overflow with excess kinetic energy. The moisture within living tissue begins to boil, causing an expansion that detonates the cells from within. Ryu’s ki was necessary to finish the machine, as the Satsui no Hado made him extremely powerful. In Ryu’s ending in Street Fighter 4, the BLECE starts extracting Ryu’s Satsui no Hado from within his body as the Dark Hado is still a form of ki. Which causes the Satsui no Hado to quickly start consuming him due to the BLECE’s previously stated amplification effect, so Ryu’s solution is to quickly destroy the machine before he himself goes kaput. In Sakura’s ending in Street Fighter 4, Sakura is knocked back by the machine’s energies and has her energy which similarly manifests as the Dark Hado in her being similarly amplified. So there could be a potential argument for cellular resistances raised by a few, but given the situation and how Ryu quickly destroyed the machine with a Shoryuken before the process of the combustion of ki took effect in the same ending. It’s unlikely that neither Ryu nor Sakura ever did manage to resist it, so assuming that it applies might be far-fetched.
Kage and NPI
An argument in the past is that the Street Fighter cast should have Non-Physical Interaction due to being able to hit Kage, the embodiment of the Satsui no Hado. Unfortunately, these claims aren’t really true - as stated twice in the World Warrior Encyclopedia, Kage is an entirely physical being, being referred to as such not once but twice. Hitting or interacting with him wouldn’t be NPI, and as a result the argument doesn’t particularly work and we couldn’t find any evidence for canon Street Fighter characters to have non-physical interaction.
Are Hokuto Shinken pressure points really durability negation?
While relatively unpopular, you might have heard of the argument that pressure point attacks in Fist of the North Star aren’t actually a form of durability negation. Let’s address the concerns around it, first by explaining how Hokuto Shinken works.
Hokuto Shinken is based around hitting the 708 meridian points of the human body that accumulate ki. The user then sends small amounts of their own ki into those meridian points in order to create many different effects, often exploding the target from inside. The martial art is heavily based on traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture, in which needles are inserted into the meridian points of the human body that hold ki, in order to trigger diverse effects by stimulating that region, altering or stimulating the flow of ki to make, for example, someone heal from a pain in certain region.
The counter to Hokuto Shinken being durability negation lies on claiming that since the user has to transfer energy into someone to explode them from the inside, the target’s durability can’t exceed the maximum amount of energy the user can emit, or else the energy wouldn’t be enough to kill them. This argument, however, doesn’t make much logical sense. By that logic, any killing blow dealt from a Hokuto user to an opponent of equal strength would simply kill the user by proxy as they would be spending lethal doses of energy. It also doesn’t explain the diverse, non-lethal effects of Hokuto Shinken such as memory erasure or making someone blind. If this was true, Kenshiro would have dropped dead after he killed Souther, as they were evenly matched in physicals during their fight. If you were to argue that the user transfers an insignificant amount of energy in order to kill someone of the same level… you would fall into fanfiction territory. How much energy do they transfer in comparison to their strength limit? 1%? 0.0005%? You’d have to simply make up a ratio of energy/lethality in order to accommodate that notion. Hell, why even target specific pressure points for that if they can just transfer energy and explode people anyway? In truth, it is just likely that the user doesn’t do that at all. Like in real world acupuncture, Hokuto Shinken should just use ki in order to disrupt or stimulate the flow of ki and trigger effects based on the target’s own energy, which makes no sense to be related to how many tons of TNT they can tank.
But what about Heart? The fat guy that negated Hokuto Shinken by being fat? Well, that’s a different argument. Heart’s fat body made it so that Kenshiro couldn’t directly touch his pressure points, so Ken had to use kicks in order to spread his belly and attack his pressure points more directly. This would imply that one needs strength or a perfect surface in order to touch pressure points. Toki’s fight with Raoh supports this, as Toki failed to hit Raoh’s pressure points and kill him because he wasn’t strong enough to reach them at the time. That would be a correct assumption! However there is something one has to consider: Ki and phasing.
Ki techniques such as the Tenha Kassatsu and Toki’s Ujo Hagan Ken are able to ignore this problem because they can phase through enemies and hit their pressure points, no fingering required. The literal first thing Toki does in the manga is send a ki wave that phases through two people and hits their pressure points without touching them directly or causing any external wound that indicates it needed to penetrate their bodies. In these two instances, we can chalk up to PIS that both Ken and Toki simply forgot they could use ki, because, a) Heart was at the beginning of the manga where they hadn’t introduced ki blasts yet and b) Toki needed to lose to Raoh in order to progress the plot. Going back to Toki’s fight, it even supports Hokuto being actual durability negation, as Raoh states that Toki wasn’t strong enough to reach his pressure points, strongly implying Raoh would die if he did.
Ki is not even the only way he has to phase through the enemy’s skin, as Muso Tensei allows him to phase, and even techniques such as the Kento Shadan allow him to turn his fist intangible and still hit pressure points.
Don’t forget that Hokuto Shinken has abilities that simply can decrease a target’s durability that can be triggered with ki from afar, rendering durability concerns null. In his fight with Kiba Daioh, Kenshiro struggled to harm him thanks to his powerful steel-like body. Ken then pressed his daikyokin pressure points, which turned his muscles soft again, “as soft as spongy fat” according to Kenshiro. It is completely nonsensical to assume that the effects of this pressure point are dependent on Ken’s AP. While Kenshiro did use his own hands to strike the pressure points, there’s nothing indicating he wouldn’t use ki to press this point against an enemy he can’t harm, as he is a combat adaptive genius.
In all, it is pretty clear from both a narrative and logical perspective that the lethal effects of Hokuto Shinken should be considered a form of durability negation on characters with human anatomy, and that arguments against that notion fall into multiple contradictions and unsubstantiated claims.
Toki, Jagi and Nuke Scaling
You might have read Jagi and Toki’s feats and thought: “hey, wouldn’t Toki getting sick make Jagi’s durability feat an outlier? Why did Ken and Toki even need a nuclear shelter if they’re that strong?”. In truth, these are valid concerns, but context elucidates why these cases don’t necessarily contradict each other or break the setting, this ain’t Fallout.
First, the reason Toki got sick was because he got exposed to 2 weeks worth of radioactive fallout. It wasn’t just an explosion, it was concentrated, non-stop exposure to gamma radiation for 336 entire hours. It wasn’t just being exposed to radiation that made him sick, but the absurd amount that his body absorbed. And even then, at least a year passed between those events and where he dies in the series, meaning his body is obviously more resistant to it than a normal human’s. It isn’t even contradictory because what happened to Toki is shown in Jagi’s Gaiden itself. Toki and Ken were also with Yuria, who is a normal human and obviously needed a shelter to survive. Bear in mind, Jagi is not a normal human either. He has superhuman stats in both his Gaiden and the original series, so him surviving while normal people died isn’t a contradiction in itself either, so him briefly taking on a single bomb shouldn’t diminish Toki’s endurance.
As for why is Toki’s OVA footage being used to gauge the power of the nukes? Simple, if you’re gonna soft-composite Hokuto characters, you gotta assume Jagi was there in that depiction of the bomb as well. We are never shown what Jagi was during when the bombs fell except for his Gaiden and Ryuken’s Gaiden, and both depict him being outside a shelter when the nukes go off, and surviving. The original manga also depicts the nukes splitting the clouds in the sky, so there is consistency to the notion that their explosions cause massive air dispersions in the atmosphere.
In conclusion, Toki contracting radiation sickness and Jagi surviving a nuclear bomb aren’t mutually exclusive feats and don’t necessarily contradict each other, making Jagi’s nuke feat fine to use.
What even are Gaidens? Fist of The North Star canon and expanded media
The Fist of the North Star franchise has many spin offs, titled “Gaiden” (Side-Story in Japanese) of which their canonicity to the original manga is often considered dubious. Let’s address their status as part of the canon of the series and talk about other auxiliary media of the franchise.
What are the Fist of the North Star Gaidens? The Gaiden series is a series of side stories set in the world of Fist of the North Star, featuring stories set before or during the events of the manga, offering different perspectives and focusing on characters that aren’t Kenshiro. They are also illustrated by many different young artists, as you probably noticed by the different art styles in some scans linked in this blog. Some notorious ones include Jagi Gaiden, which focuses on Jagi’s childhood and explores what he did before the apocalypse and how he came to be adopted by Ryuken, and Toki Gaiden, which explains what he was doing after the apocalypse and how he ended up in the prison we find him in Fist of the North Star.
According to an interview published in Comic Zenon and translated for Silent Manga Audition (both the magazine and the website are owned by COAMIX, a manga publishing company co-created by Tetsuo Hara himself), Tetsuo Hara, one of the co-creators of Fist of the North Star and sole author of Fist of the Blue Sky, was revealed to be heavily involved with the creation and supervision of the spin-offs of his work, offering his input and looking over the creation of every story, and stated that they “fill the gaps in the work he couldn’t fill himself”. They are also directly stated to “bring new readers to the existing worlds of his creations”, further supporting that they should be in the same universe.
In the official Hokuto no Ken website, many Gaidens are listed alongside the main series. They notably include Jagi’s Gaiden, in which Buronson and Hara are listed as the authors that pitched the story (attention to the term 原案, or gennan, which can be translated as “draft” or “original project”. This may refer to the story pitch or simply the original manga, but that is not important in this context). The same term and credits can be observed in all the listed Gaidens. DD Hokuto no Ken, a chibi parody spinoff, is the only one explicitly stated to be set in a “What if” scenario, meaning the others aren’t meant to be impossible to fit in the story of the original manga. In Tetsuo Hara’s official website, Rei’s Gaiden is described as an essential work to understand the history of Nanto Seiken. The same site also lists the comedic spinoff Hokuto no Ken: Ichigo Aji as “a gag story of what ifs”, solidifying the idea that mostly parody spinoffs are completely non-canonical, which would also apply to Amiba’s Isekai manga.
But are there any contradictions? Sure, they do exist. In Yuria’s Gaiden OVA for example, they show her meeting the Hokuto Brothers in a different way than the manga depicts, with her dog also being an original creation that is inserted in the story. Ten no Haoh introduces two characters (that are also present in the Raoh den OVAs) that don’t exist in the original manga, as does Toki’s OVA (which differs in story from the Toki Gaiden manga as well). Ryuken’s special chapter is filled with contradictions and completely mischaracterizes the cast, although it is the most extreme case out of all the Gaidens. Jagi’s Gaiden presente some inconsistencies to established scenes such as Raoh and Ryuken having their last confrontation in a different place than the original as well. There isn’t an instance where a Gaiden kills off a major character from the original manga in a way that makes their appearance impossible in the original story, for example. A curious thing to note is that the OVAs in particular are frequently referred to as works expanding the original manga and exploring things that were left underdeveloped, which would fall under Hara’s statement of using the Gaidens to fill the gaps in the story he couldn’t at the time. From that point of view, it’s possible that the contradictions are simply Tetsuo Hara not really minding creative liberties, as he stated in an interview that he wants artists to deviate from his manga on purpose. In spite of that, Gaidens such as Rei’s are stated to not break the “worldview” or essence of fist of the North Star, and are considered essential as previously mentioned. Not to mention the original manga does contradict itself and retcons new story elements all the time. The post-timeskip part of Fist of the North Star manages to introduce two Hokuto brothers whose existence had never even been established and completely changes Raoh’s motivation for conquest, along with giving him a son out of nowhere.
Another important piece of this puzzle would be the Fist of the North Star: Legends ReVive game. It is a gacha game for mobile that features dozens of characters from the Fist of the North Star franchise. According to Tetsuo Hara himself, the game is supposed to faithfully represent and recreate characters and events from the original story. According to his website, the characters are drawn under his supervision, and, again, the game is supposed to faithfully recreate the original work. An interesting thing to note is that the game features characters from the Gaidens, such as Rinrei and Rofu from Rei’s Gaiden, and Garuda, who has his own Gaiden and was designed by Tetsuo Hara himself for a Pachinko machine.
In conclusion, while the Fist of The North Star Gaidens do present quite some inconsistencies and contradictions with the original manga and each other, the fact that Tetsuo Hara’s involvement, supervision, and overall motivation have allowed them to exist in the first place presents a strong argument for them to be used in versus. Or at least, that FOTNS characters should be soft composited with them similarly to how the Toei anime filler is included for Dragon Ball, for example. Legends ReVive has been stated multiple times to be intended to be faithful to the series and is supervised by Hara, having its accuracy praised by him, so it being used as supporting evidence should be fine. Gaidens such as Rei’s and Garuda’s fall under side-stories with no real contradictions to the original story, merely expanding it under Tetsuo Hara’s supervision. For the sake of fairness, the Fist of the North Star Gaidens that have contradictions to the original manga and extra material such as videogames and OVAs will be equated to the Non-Canon Street Fighter material in usability for this blog, as they do present some inconsistencies with the original material. Gaidens that do not contradict the original manga will be considered canon.
Is Hokuto’s Fate Hax a thing?
Flip: This blog was delayed so much that I ended up making the same joke for a section on G1’s Simon the Digger vs Kyle Rayner later on and somehow it was released before this one.
Here's the gist, the most capable Hokuto and Nanto users in the verse actually do have fate powers, and fairly strong ones too. The only problem is that said powers are usually way too conditional and limited in what they can do to be reliably used.
Overall, Ken is consistently described as a “man controlling fate” in how he is sort of destined to bring peace to the world. Besides this pretty vague statement, there were far more blatant instances of this happening, mostly being the various shenanigans involving the Death Star. It's been shown that whoever witnesses the Death Star is doomed to die. In their battle, Toki and Raoh essentially summon the Star, and Toki would appear to be doomed to die, but Raoh spares his life instead (Toki dies shortly after though, so the Star still played its part). The most notable case of this power is how the Nanto user Rei made the Death Star disappear for Mamiya by defeating Yuda, more or less changing fate with the power of love.
What's the problem then? Well… This is not combat applicable in any shape or form. First of all, changing fate in Hokuto is not just doing a Thanos Snap. In Rei's case, it was a complicated sequence of events proving his love to Mamiya that allowed him to save her from her doom, and Ken affects fate more by what he is than by what he does, and not as an instant win button like fate hax is usually treated in the power-scaling community. Also imagine how fucking uncharacteristic it would be for Ken to be losing a fight and then go - "you know, fuck you and your superior skill, fate magic time". This just never happens at all, as arguing this is blatant fanfiction territory.
Is Musou Tensei a transformation?
Many people debate on whether Musou Tensei should be considered a “transformation” in the same sense as Goku turning Super Saiyan or Sonic turning Super Sonic. The main counter seems to be that it is called a “technique” in-universe and as such shouldn’t count. Let’s delve into this a bit deeper.
This argument only exists because Death Battle uses characters at their strongest forms to decide the verdict, therefore a character that beats base Sonic but loses to Starfall Super Sonic for example would be considered the loser of a battle, as they cannot beat Sonic at his strongest. That is the unspoken “no blitzing before the transformation” rule. How does Musou Tensei fit this?
Well, it by all means fits right in and was the inspiration for many transformations. It shares common ground with the Super Saiyan as it needs extreme emotion from the user to be achieved, and has basically the same “blank mind, instinctive action” idea behind it as Goku’s Ultra Instinct and Ryu’s Mu no Ken state. Calling it a technique is merely a case of semantics, as it basically allows Kenshiro to reach a whole new state of being and grants him a power boost when it is unlocked, same for Raoh. It is also naturally and automatically activated by the user, different from accepted transformations that rely on external factors and are still accepted such as Super Sonic needing the emeralds to be activated, and the Great Ape needing the absorption of radiation. Even some vehicles are considered in the rule, so it doesn’t make sense that Musou Tensei should be ruled out of the transformation rule just because it’s called a “technique” and not a transformation.
However, for the sake of fairness, we will consider Musou Tensei as something that has to be activated after the fight starts in the verdicts, ignoring the rule altogether to make this matchup more debatable.
Fanart!
T0m
L.A.D.
Floor
Kaiser
Verdicts
For this matchup we want to do something different. There will be two verdicts, each one detailing the winner under specific circumstances regarding what material is being used.
For the first one, strictly canon material will be used. For Ryu, that means the mainline Street Fighter games and closely related material such as the Street Fighter 4 animated content, the Rival Schools Series, the canon Final Fight games and specific canon UDON comics. For Kenshiro, that means the Fist of the North Star, Fist of the Blue Sky and Fist of the Blue Sky ReGenesis manga, the faithful animated adaptations of their content, specific Gaiden manga such as Rei and Garuda, and descriptions of the Legends ReVive game for support.
For the second one, the characters will be soft-composited. For Ryu, that means all of the previous content, plus Final Fight Revenge, the Street Fighter EX series, the many manga series, and all of the Street Fighter UDON comics. For Kenshiro, that means all of the previous content, plus other video games, all OVAs and movies and all of the many Fist of the North Star Gaidens.
Both of the verdicts will be divided in 4 categories: Strength, Speed, Abilities and Skill.
Round 1
Strength
In terms of canon Street Fighter and Fist of the North Star, both Ryu and Kenshiro have quite a few impressive feats they can scale to. As the apex of both series, both should scale to pretty much every single feat within their series for strength. First, we’ll cover direct feats for both characters, and then we will tackle scaling to other characters, to see which ends up consistently stronger.
For direct feats, Ryu’s energy was used by Bison to power the Psycho Drive, which at highest can get upwards of 1 gigaton of TNT. Impressive, especially considering when in the series this was - this was Street Fighter Alpha Ryu, and Ryu has grown much, much stronger since then. In addition, this was his base state, so he should be upscaling this to an absurd degree.
However, this is outdone by Kenshiro’s own showings. In his fight with Falco, their clash of auras split the skies, an energy equivalent to 88 gigatons of TNT - however, halving it due to both being equal in this showing, Kenshiro would have to be emitting an energy of 44 gigatons of TNT with his Ki. This is far, far higher than anything Ryu has, and like Ryu, Kenshiro should upscale this after his fights with Kaioh. Falco is as strong as Raoh, who Kenshiro was able to match in base after unlocking Musou Tensei. Prior to that, Raoh was able to beat 100% Kenshiro, who is 3.333x stronger than base Kenshiro. Kenshiro was beaten by Kaioh even while using 100%, but after the awakening against Hyoh and unlocking his seals, he was able to match Kaioh in base before both used 100%. Suffice it to say, Kenshiro would be far, far stronger then this showing, more then matching any upscaling Ryu would have on his feat.
However, what if we turn to scaling them to other characters? In this regard, Ryu fares far worse. The highest feat Ryu can scale to would be Akuma’s pillar from his Street Fighter 4 ending, which can get upwards of 16 gigatons of TNT. Lower than Kenshiro’s own showings, and unlike the Psycho Drive, Ryu’s likely not upscaling this feat at all, leaving him in a worse spot.
However, Kenshiro should scale to Kasumi Kenshiro, seeing as how he’s stated to be the strongest man of Hokuto multiple times, and how he and his brothers brought Hokuto to the peak near the beginning of the series. This statement was given by Koryu, who was just beaten by Raoh. This matters due to Kasumi’s own feat with Soryu Tenra of splitting the initiation ritual storm, which gets 2.13 teratons of TNT. Keep in mind, all the aforementioned upscaling for Kenshiro’s feat with Falco would apply even moreso for this feat, as this would scale to base Kenshiro at the start of the series, who is massively upscaled by EoS Kenshiro, making the AP gap substantially worse for Ryu. Applying the multiplier we found, we can give Ken 123.321x times the strength from his base at the beginning of the manga. Being generous and assuming Koryu would only truly mean that statement for BoS Raoh, Ken would still be 37x stronger by the end of the series in his 100% state, meaning the number for his AP would be at least 78.81 teratons of TNT. That is at least 4710 times stronger than Akuma’s best feat. Mind you, Kenshiro should also have access to Kiko Yabu, which would widen the strength gap even further.
Overall, Kenshiro should have strength in the bag, given scaling to other characters or not.
Speed
Speed, however, is a bit more complicated. Both have showings of being FTE and blitzing other characters, with Kenshiro also dodging needles from a needle gun and Ryu dodging bullets. However, this pretty obviously isn’t the best their speed can scale to, so what is? For Street Fighter, the best feat Ryu can scale to is M. Bison intercepting the Psycho Laser, which gets Mach 967. As for Kenshiro, Post-MT Ken can scale to the Thousand Demon Sound Fist in his base form, which gets Mach 586.5 at best. So, pretty clear cut in favor of Ryu, right?
No, not really.
Bringing back Kasumi Kenshiro, he had a casual feat worth Mach 222 in base. Thanks to Kenshiro being worthy of the title of successor according to Ryuken, we can safely scale Ken in base at the beginning of the series to this. Referring back to our table of multipliers for Kenshiro, this means that EoS 100% Ken should be at least 123.231 times faster than base Ken at the beginning of the series, bumping his feat to Mach 27377, 28.3 times faster than M. Bison’s best feat. While Ryu upscales his feat quite a bit, there’s no concrete way to quantify that or make it even match Ken’s number. And that’s the low end!
As we saw in the BTV section about the Gaidens, a few of them do not contradict the original manga and should be considered canonical because of Tetsuo Hara’s involvement, one of them being Garuda’s. Garuda is certainly not on the level of the Successor of Hokuto Shinken, ranking similarly to low level Nanto Seiken fighters thanks to being outsped by Juza, thanks to that, even base Pre-MT Ken should scale to him. Thanks to Garuda’s lightspeed statement, which is reinforced in the Legends ReVive game for consistency, and Tai-Yan’s shadowless statements being fine for support, Ken’s 123.231x multiplier should make him… 123.231 times faster than light in 100% power at the end of the series. Bumping up the speed gap to a 111464.519 times difference. So yeah, no matter the end, Ken will always be faster.
Kenshiro takes speed thanks to his upscaling and multipliers.
Abilities
Abilities are something these two specialize in, and both have a fair few techniques they can use to diverse effects. However, as you might have noticed by the sheer difference in size of their ability lists, this isn’t a very close comparison.
Starting with Ryu, he has quite a few different moves and abilities. He does of course have the typical Ansatsuken moves like the invincible Shoryuken and the Tatsumaki Senpukyaku, along with their greater variations such as the Shinkuu Tatsumaki or the Shin Shoryuken. But he can also launch many projectile based attacks through his ki with Hadoukens, sense the energy of other fighters or use that same energy to enhance his attacks with V-Triggers. Use the elements in other forms such as wind, fire and electricity to create tornados, fireballs or make his fists electrifying with Denjin Renki. As well as the Power of Nothingness further enhancing many of these capabilities with Ki phasing and what not. Albeit it’s purification power here is useless.
If we do allow the Dark Hadou at his disposal, he gains a limited form of teleportation/quick movement with the Ashura Senku that can allow him to phase through attacks and the ultra murderous Shun Goku Satsu that can either instantly kill you or mess with your soul/life force depending on what you use. So he's got quite a bit.
Kenshiro, however, is on a whole other level. Not only does Hokuto Shinken dwarf Ansatsuken in sheer variety of moves, but it also renders Ryu’s moveset completely obsolete or nullified. Ken can both perfectly adapt and counter all of his skills, and also copy them. His ki nullification and redirection also means that any attempt at projectile attacks by Ryu is gonna end up in failure. Especially given how Ryu’s Hadoukens have been affected or turned against him in the past.
Kenshiro’s Aura is also a major advantage. Projecting omnidirectionally from his body, it can be used both offensively and defensively. Not only can he stop Ryu from reaching him with the Aura’s tactile force field, but also attack him automatically from afar, or blasting him away with a shockwave. Just by powering up Ken can mess up Ryu via fear inducement, freezing him in place and rendering him unable to fight.
Ken’s access to pressure points is also a colossal advantage. Kenshiro has access to HUNDREDS of pressure points that can instantly kill Ryu in many ways, which include: making him explode from the inside out, forcing his spine to snap in half, making his body wither and turn to dust, ejecting his skeleton from his body, the list goes on. Ken can also use pressure points to completely remove Ryu’s strength and durability, withering his muscles so he doesn’t have any strength to attack, let alone move. Ken can also use them to memory wipe Ryu, leave him in a catatonic state, put him to sleep or just remove all of his knowledge of martial arts from his brain. They can be pressed not only physically with Kenshiro’s fingers, but with his Aura and Ki too, meaning he doesn’t have to lift a finger to induce several different game ending effects on Ryu from afar.
The phasing nature of Ken’s Aura, general Ki attacks and Hokuto Shinken moves such as Kento Shadan also means Ryu has absolutely no way to defend against them like he can with normal physical attacks via blocking or parrying. These attacks go through defenses and can all attack his pressure points, crippling, incapacitating or killing him on the spot.
With Kenshiro’s many Nanto Seiken techniques, Kenshiro would be able to turn Ryu into many pieces with its incredibly precise ability to finely slice through things with fingers alone. Notwithstanding its other abilities like keeping Ryu busy with Densho Reppa’s ranged attacks, make his nerves feel incredibly cold or throw Ryu’s senses off with illusions.
Gento Koken attacks can vaporize or freeze Ryu on the cellular level, something he has no defense to.
That’s not even starting to mention Kenshiro’s ultimate trump card: Musou Tensei. Not only can Kenshiro become completely intangible and unaffected by anything Ryu throws at him thanks to phasing, it also makes him unable to be located and still gives him the possibility to attack. With Kenshiro’s vast array of techniques that can end the fight instantly, Muso Tensei gives him the ability to use every single one of them without any risk of retaliation. There is not a single way that Ryu can deal with this technique at all once Kenshiro enters it. Oh yeah, and he can do so unconsciously. Yeah.
In all, it’s fairly easy to see how Kenshiro takes abilities.
Skill
Perhaps one of the most important parts to this match. Skill is certainly one of the key areas both Ryu and Kenshiro excel at, being trained in martial arts with roots in assassination since their childhood and kicking plenty of ass in their respective worlds. But unfortunately, this comparison isn’t very close and you’ll see why.
Now, let’s definitely not sell Ryu short. Under Gouken he trained for decades and mastered his version of the Ansatsuken to such a degree that he unconsciously learned techniques from it and even blended in other styles like Judo and Taekwondo, Gouken even once noted that Ryu had mastered Ansatsuken as if he were the one that created the techniques. His teachings have even taught Ryu to always carefully look at his opponent’s movements, actively learning about their strengths and weaknesses of their styles and being able to intercept or more accurately parry attacks even with his eyes closed.
The simple flexibility of Ansatsuken in this way has let Ryu persevere through its jack-of-all trades style. Like winning various fighting tournaments, beating 20 renowned muay thai fighters and fighting some of the world’s greatest fighters like the legendary Muay Thai King Sagat. To be brief as we explained previously, Sagat is of the strongest men in the world and undefeated Muay Thai Champion at age 15 thought to have the greatest fighting ability by-then, at least up until Ryu showed up. And he has kept up with him several times. Similarly, Ryu has also defeated threats such as Sadler and Seth, who copy the power and skills of fighters all around the world.
Impressive, but Kenshiro is on a whole nother league of skill and has done similar or greater things. To start with Kenshiro, he has similarly trained in martial arts since childhood but has showcased greater fighting ability in his younger years. Such as when he defeated several full grown masters of the assassination art of Nanto Seiken, striking pressure points in a single attack or eventually becoming the 64th successor of Hokuto Shinken under Ryuken’s decision once he grew up.
And mastering the style is certainly no joke, as Kenshiro and both of his brothers Toki and Raoh in its 1800 year history managed to bring the style to its absolute pinnacle. This is important because Hokuto Shinken is the strongest and most dangerous style in history, fitting with its nature as a killing art, both terrifying enough to defeat an army of one hundred men and bring the whole world to ruin if an unworthy successor is chosen. And requires extensive knowledge of anatomy to be able to precisely hit a human’s 708 points, with Kenshiro being able to hit points that are as thin as the head of a needle. Similarly, hakuna matata masters like Kenshiro have often been able to strategize against and copy other martial arts after a single exchange, gaining a much greater level of understanding than their original practitioners ever could have had with just one single study. To be blunt. Not only has Kenshiro shown to analyze someone at a much greater level than Ryu has shown to anticipate, with the sheer simplicity of Ansatsuken’s style it would only be a matter of time Kenshiro would adapt.
And this isn’t mentioning some of the baddies he met along the way. Plenty of cannon fodder or big bads have accomplished similar feats to Ryu or other Street Fighter characters at a much greater scale. So for example, Ryu has shown to defeat 20 muay thai fighters and anticipate attacks in different ways right? Well, early on in the series, soldiers of the God’s Army for example were stated to be able to defeat 500 guerrillas each, and the Colonel’s skill in assassination arts is so great he could predict attacks from even the slightest eye and body movements. Kenshiro later killed most of the army without breaking a sweat and beat their leader without moving to counter his ability to anticipate. And most impressively, Kenshiro has kept up with his brother Raoh, during his total conquest of the world he created the prison of Cassandra where many of the martial artists Raoh defeated were jailed, with Raoh stealing the secrets of their martial arts and mastering nearly every martial art on earth. In their final battle Kenshiro eventually prevailed against Raoh in a clash of Musou Tensei, winning by just a hair.
So while Ryu was skilled in his own right and had possibly more experience being older to give him his credit, Kenshiro’s much greater skills and overall adaptability win this category by a landslide. With that, Kenshiro takes every advantage and wins Round 1. Now let’s see how Round 2 plays out!
Round 2
Strength
Here things are shaken up a little, as the best feats Ryu and Kenshiro would scale would be performed by characters that are far from the top tiers of their verses.
Thanks to the inclusion of Final Fight Revenge, Ryu can get scaling to a feat performed by Haggar in that game, worth up to 216 teratons of TNT. Ryu should naturally upscale quite a lot, as he was always stronger than Haggar and only got stronger with time. Kenshiro however, gets scaling to Jagi, whose durability has been calculated at 5.2 petatons of TNT in his Gaiden thanks to surviving a giant nuclear bomb. For some reason, the giant air split that visibly happens as an effect of the bomb has never been calculated, but thanks to it Jagi’s feat has been greatly buffed. Given Jagi is fodder even to early Kenshiro, Ken should massively upscale this feat by the end of the series.
By applying the multiplier chain we found for Kenshiro to Jagi’s best feat, his final AP number should be worth 641.269 petatons of TNT. That is 2968 times higher than Haggar’s feat. While Ryu also upscales his feat, there is no concrete method to make his number even approach what Kenshiro gets with his multipliers.
Kenshiro takes the strength advantage in spades once again.
Speed
Speed is a different matter, and once again decided by relatively insignificant characters in the franchises.
Ryu’s best speed scaling route would be Cracker Jack, who performed a feat 3400 times faster than light in Street Fighter EX. Kenshiro’s best feat would still be scaling to Garuda, who is relatively weak in the grand scheme of things. His attacks should grant baseline speed of light scaling and scale to Kenshiro in the beginning of the series. Thanks to his multipliers, Kenshiro by the end can be upscaling speed over 123 times the speed of light. While impressive, this pales in comparison to 3400 x FTL, a value Ryu also upscales, making Ryu at least 27.64 times faster than Kenshiro in reactions.
In terms of movement speed, however, the best we can give Ryu in terms of direct feats is his UDON comics jumping feat that caps at Mach 3940. But thanks to scaling to Haggar performing a normal piledrive, we can also give him upscaling to movement speed capping at 0.65c. For Kenshiro, the Keiko technique is the best scaling avenue in terms of movement. As we saw in the previous round, his multipliers and upscaling bring it up to Mach 27377, or 0.03c, 21.6x slower than Haggar’s piledriver movement.
Ryu safely takes speed this time around.
Abilities
Now we have something very interesting. By adding new sources, two of their abilities gained new properties, namely Kenshiro’s Musou Tensei and the Raging Demon available to Evil and Shin Ryu. The key to winning this category lies in the interaction between these two abilities, arguably the most important tools in their arsenal, which can both decide the outcome of this battle by themselves.
Starting with the Raging Demon. Thanks to the UDON comics, it now has the ability to instantly send your soul to Makai if it lands. In base, Kenshiro has no real defense against this, as he showcases no resistance against soul manipulation, so it should work as a method of durability negation. Ryu takes speed, lands the Raging Demon, it’s over, right?... No, not exactly.
Musou Tensei should be able to negate all Hokuto Techniques, which coincidentally includes a technique that sends your soul to the afterlife. On top of that, outside of being completely intangible, even to people who should logically be capable of interacting with intangible beings (Refer to Tenha Kassatsu tagging Souther while he phases or Kasumi Kenshiro punching a ghost), Musou Tensei now allows Kenshiro to just flat out erase his own existence. Ryu has no means of interacting with him if Musou Tensei activates. But can it actually activate before the Raging Demon hits? Is Musou Tensei actually the only means Kenshiro has of defending himself in this situation?
For the first question, let’s go back to the speed category. While it’s true that Ryu takes the advantage in both movement and reaction speeds, it’s important to remember that Kenshiro’s reactions are still far superior to Ryu’s movement. Ken can react at 123c, while Ryu can move at best at 0.65c. The Raging Demon is an extremely telegraphed move, and given this gap Kenshiro should have no trouble activating Musou Tensei in time to avoid it. Mind you, it also activates automatically, even when the user is unconscious, meaning Ryu just won’t land the lucky hit if you crunch the numbers here.
Secondly, Kenshiro’s Aura also provides a perfect defense in this situation. Not only is the area of effect wide enough to protect Kenshiro from all sides, it’s also tactile and a means of attack. Given the massive strength gap and the difference between movement and reaction here, it’s likely Kenshiro can just flex his aura and smack Ryu away with it. Referring back to the pressure point application of Aura, this can also be lethal and explode Ryu instantly if he tries to approach. While soft compositing gives Ryu defenses against its fear manipulation effect, he still has no counter to… getting blasted with it really hard from an opponent that’s thousands of times stronger. Mind you, this is if Kenshiro is fighting Evil or Shin Ryu, which he shouldn’t, as Ryu shouldn’t have access to the Raging Demon in his actual strongest state.
In all, while the Raging Demon is a powerful move that can give Ryu the win if it lands correctly, Kenshiro’s defenses are simply too good to allow for the perfect opportunity, giving him the win in abilities once again.
Skill
Nothing notable changes in this category this time around. Kenshiro’s raw martial arts prowess and adaptability should make him take a massive edge in skill once again.
With that, Kenshiro takes most categories and wins the second round as well.
Summary
Ryu
“As long as I possess the strength to move a single finger…I will keep on fighting!”
Advantages:
Far faster in the soft-composite round…
Has access to the Raging Demon in two of his forms, which could instantly kill Kenshiro…
Overall more experienced thanks to being older
Disadvantages:
Far weaker in both rounds
…but far slower in the strictly canonical round
…but Kenshiro’s defenses make it unlikely he’d ever land it
Far less versatile, and vulnerable to almost all of Kenshiro’s haxes
No answer to Musou Tensei
Overall far less skilled
Street Fighter 1 is ASS
Penguin Scorpion fodder
Kenshiro
“A true fist is forged by the sorrow a warrior bears in his heart”
Advantages:
Far stronger in both rounds
Far faster with strictly canon material…
Overall way more skilled in combat
Far more versatile, with many techniques that can end the fight instantly and don’t even require direct contact
Aura and Muso Tensei’s automatic activation make it unlikely Ryu would ever land the Raging Demon in any way
Highly likely to be responsible for your favorite Shounen
Disadvantages:
….but far slower in the soft-compositing round
Raging Demon can instantly end him if it lands in the soft-compositing round
Victim of whitewashing
Will not fight Ryu on Death Battle because of Goku
His manga gets worse after the timeskip
Conclusion
As skilled and impressive as Ryu is, he’s always gonna fall short to Kenshiro where it matters. In every scenario, Kenshiro holds great advantages in the form of a massive power gap, superiority in skill and many game-ending abilities. In the canon round, Ken’s speed massively eclipses Ryu’s and that seals the deal. In the soft-composite round, Ryu has a pretty good edge, but that’s not enough to give him the win over Kenshiro’s other much more useful abilities and the instant win button that is Musou Tensei, especially considering his movement speed is not good enough to blitz Kenshiro’s reactions.
To put it simply, Kenshiro is just massively superior where it matters, and Ryu’s canonically situational single advantage doesn’t allow him to circumvent Kenshiro’s options to end the fight in an instant.
In the end, Ryu’s assassin’s fist was just not Kenough to trump the greatest successor of Hokuto Shinken, and his chances of winning were already dead. The winner is Kenshiro.
Final Tally
Ryu - (1) (T0m - pity vote)
Kenshiro - (8) (Kaiser, Flip, door-kun, Why am I here, Br3ndan5, Lunge, IbukiFanboy, Tony)
Kinnikuman - (1) (Flip - REAL vote)
Bonus: Street Fighter and Fist of the North Star matches overview
Whew, that was a lot. Now you know where these series should land in terms of stats, both in canon and soft composited. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some popular matchups for the Street Fighter and Fist of the North Star Series (and maybe some new ones too!)
Ken Masters vs Terry Bogard
Kaiser: A classic. Easily my favorite Capcom vs SNK matchup and features my favorite fighting game character ever (Terry). The episode was fun for its time, and is still correct in my opinion (I think stats are either relative or in Terry’s favor, and that he takes every other advantage), but seeing this matchup redone in either a new episode or a blog would be really cool. These characters have gone through so much and it’s cool how the recent collaborations between Street Fighter and Fatal Fury acknowledge this classic rivalry. Chun-Li vs Mai Shiranui occupies a similar spot to me, although I think the result would change this time thanks to Chun-Li’s superior skill and experience.
Door: This is just the best matchup for either series, fight me. Does basically everything you’d want for both, has a really fun fight dynamic, has Terry Bogard the absolute GOAT in it, what more could you possibly want? The episode’s pretty fun animation wise, even if the analyses aren’t the most interesting or compelling - I really like the progression and how it shows exhaustion, and it’s just got a fun beat to it. I think, however, this would have EXCELLENT rematch potential. Garou Terry vs. SF6 Ken kinda writes itself, and a relook would be nice… though, uh, Ken’s still pretty much totally screwed. Stats are, best case for him, relative, and Terry takes every advantage besides stats. For the series pairing, besides the big other Capcom vs. SNK MU, I think there’s a lot of other fun potential ideas in store, and I’d really like more SNK ideas in general on the show, I really like their games.
Flip: Goated MU. I lean more into Chun-Li vs Mai Shiranui, but I have nothing ill to say about this one. It’s really the perfect idea for both characters. Ryu vs Kyo is also really good.
M. Bison vs Rugal Bernstein
Door: It’s fire. Really awesome matchup - admittedly, Bison had a pretty good episode already, but a runback would be dope as hell, and Rugal provides that expertly, while also having a lot to differentiate this from Bison vs. Khan. In addition, more SNK is something I desperately crave on Death Battle, and this provides it. As for the debate, this one’s interesting, as it’s one of the only fighting game matchups where abilities actually matter, as these two are on the hax-loaded side. Unfortunately for my boy, Bison probably has a bit of an edge. Rugal being able to mimic Bison’s fighting style is helpful, and his energy manipulation definitely gives him quite a bit of versatility, but he doesn’t have the hax wincons like possession and hypnosis Bison does - though, who knows. Bang, a very good friend of mine, is going to host a blog for this, and I’m joining, so maybe Rugal can turn it around? We’ll see.
Kaiser: Based MU for the greatest fighting game bosses of all time. The vibes are incredible and the dynamic is great. The debate is also interesting, as it is one of the few fighting game vs fighting game matchups where hax actually matters a lot. I’m inclined to think Bison should win. While stats are in my opinion (again) either relative or favoring Rugal, I think Bison’s ability kit is much more versatile and has better wincons (possession, hypnosis, etc.). My friend Bang is hosting a blog for this pretty soon. Hopefully this blog makes the work there easier, and that this match becomes an episode someday.
T0m: It’s pretty peak tbh, i’ve always been looking for a Bison return in the show since he has a lot of stuff that his original ep didn’t cover and he has a lot of potential with their new animation. And Rugal, despite his short appearances in KOF (which I’d like to see return someday from the disappointing ep that was GeeseHachi), is a pretty cool villain so you already have two incredibly imposing terrorist bad guys to keep the vibes immaculate. Some pretty cool ideas like both characters doing ping pongs with Bison’s own projectiles like Rugal’s reflector and Bison hitting them back, or Super Psycho Crusher vs Kaiser Wave. I personally think Bison wins for a lot of similar reasons as Kaiser, either is incredibly relative in stats or potentially is higher. And he’s a lot more haxxy to booth with his possession, hypnosis and what not. IMO atm I don’t think Rugal has a “real way” to kill him.
Cody Travers vs Axel Stone
Door: MY BELOVED! Cody vs. Axel is my most wanted Street Fighter matchup and up there for one of my most wanted fighting game episodes to happen, period. Streets of Rage is one of the best beat ‘em ups, as are the Final Fight games, so having a pairing with the main characters, who do have quite a few similarities and fun fighting styles to work off of just makes sense. I’d love to incorporate both Cody’s old and new Street Fighter movesets too in the animation; I am a bit attached to Prison Cody for a reason, after all. The fact Streets of Rage came back also makes me hopeful we can get more from that series and maybe hopefully DB can do it (probably never lmao). As for who wins, uh, there’s literally zero reason to not give Cody Revenge scaling, so he just kinda statstomps Axel, even if Axel would probably have a fair shot in equal stats.
Kaiser: One of the best arcade video game matchups of all time. It’s just perfectly really there’s not much to add. Wish it could happen as an episode. Personally, I’d focus on the 80s/90s vibes that this era of gaming brings, just like the many action movies that inspired them. The presentation should have the same energy as those japanese live-action Final Fight ads. As for who wins, yeah I think Cody takes it. Not convinced on the higher Streets of Rage arguments that would make Axel match canon SF stats, much less FFR.
Ryu vs Kinnikuman
Kaiser: A relatively new MU that I like quite a lot. It does well covering the massive legacy between the Kinnikuman and Street Fighter franchises and offers a relatively unique fighting dynamic for a Ryu matchup while keeping connections decent. They’re both the fighters that represent Japan in a setting full of tournaments featuring stereotypes from multiple countries. Both have an American best friend and were taught their most iconic special move by an old bearded master. Ryu is no stranger to grapplers, so it’s easy to see how a fight between them would play out, especially considering Ryu’s stern personality and Kinnikuman’s tendency for silliness. Unfortunately, though, it’s not fair at all, as Kinnikuman just statstomps and takes every advantage with relatively conservative ends (he made a big fucking hole on the moon by throwing someone there), but it’s not really as jarring visually. Still, a fun MU, definitely pretty high among my favorite alts for both characters. Way better than Composite Ryu vs a certain other alien Shounen Jump fighter protagonist too.
Flip: Great gyudon for 300 years. Quick, tasty, and low-priced! (I heavily fw this MU)
Vega vs Warsman
Flip: You can probably make a lot of Street Fighter VS Kinnikuman related matchups, but personally, this one easily takes the cake. Both are fighters that were introduced in cage matches, that wield claws and masks, and their fight style is a mix of brutal slashes, grappling and jumping, and their most iconic special move is a jump where they start flying through their opponent with their claws (with SFV the attacks are even more similar since both have drilling attacks). Their series are also all about fighting in tournaments with martial artists from all around the world and represent a country in Europe, being Spain and Russia. But honestly, the best thing is the mask comparison, given both absolutely hate when their masks are broken or removed, but for entirely opposite reasons: Vega hates to have his mask removed because it leaves his beautiful face unprotected, while Warsman hates to have his deformed face exposed because he's ashamed of it. Instead of having Vega fighting another narcissistic character, you have a really cool contrast with someone that has a lot of insecurities with their ugly appearance. Also, it’s a neat hero vs villain idea, given Warsman became BFFs with Robin Mask after his early antagonistic entry. Also it’s just really cool to see how Capcom took HEAVY direct inspiration from Warsman to create Vega, even if it’s not the only inspiration (just look at Yuda).
Kaiser: NITORYU SCREWDRIVER!!!!!!!! Really cool matchup, and a rare contrast/hero vs villain matchup involving a fighting game character, since they’re usually put against very similar characters from other fighting game franchises that fit their gameplay function. This pairing is just goated.
Ryu vs Jin Kazama
Kaiser: Another classic. The original episode was pretty great and, in my opinion, correct at the time. Back then the only way to reliably get Tekken to gigatons was through JACK’s ending in Tekken Tag Tournament 2, a spinoff with similar continuity and canon issues to Final Fight Revenge. From there, Ryu could reliably get the upper hand because Haggar’s feat is >>>> JACK’s. However, Tekken 8 happened, and… yeah. Not even by soft-compositing Ryu with UDON, EX and Final Fight Revenge can you make up for this absurd AP gap. From there Jin just stomps with his massive power and range superiority. Not to mention he’s faster in canon too. But hey, Tekken 8 made the fight progression much cooler, with Angel Jin playing off Mu no Ken Ryu pretty great narratively.
Door: This matchup is basically the best you can get for these two, besides Kenshiro for Ryu, honestly. Classic rivalry, amazing choreography potential, good story comparisons, the works, I don’t think you can top it for Jin in particular. The episode is also one of my favorites of the show, with an incredible fight, great analyses, and being right at the time. As for now, uh… Feng Wei’s feat AP stomps Street Fighter… man… And with soft comp SF, the Kazuya feat and the Devil Jin feats both get well above even Haggar, so Ryu is uh, fucked lol. However, I think Jin winning with Tekken 8 feels a lot more right; back when the episode came out, Ryu had overcome his inner demons, while Jin never had, so it felt more “right” for him to win, but with Angel Jin existing now, it feels more narratively right for Jin to take the win. Very good MU though, I really dig it.
Iroh vs Toki
Kaiser: I created this one. It’s pretty neat. Goes well enough into both character’s arcs and personalities, and offers a pretty good dynamic potential. Avatar’s bending and FOTNS’ martial arts are similarly fantastic and Toki’s use of ki in combat could play off ranged attacks pretty well. Should Iroh be used in Versus? Maybe not. But as blogs and Versus ideas in general do not have to abide by the “has to end in death” rule that Death Battle does, I can see this being a cool sparring session and philosophical talk between benevolent martial arts masters. Not sure how the community would handle such a beloved character like Iroh getting stomped by someone relatively unknown like Toki, though. Toki’s other matchup, Ukyo Tachibana from Samurai Shodown, is also pretty good. Tsunade exists.
Flip: When we started this blog, Kaiser came up with this one in my DMs, and at first we thought it was mostly vibes. Then suddenly the “brother of Raoh/Ozai” parallels hit and we realized that we were looking for copper and came up with gold. This one is a solid versus idea, and honestly a perfect crossover one. While Avatar isn’t on the same levels of desolated Earth like Hokuto no Ken, the series explore how cruel Ozai’s rule was to other nations and even the genocide from the Air Nomads, so I think it could match the tone to some extent, even if HnK is obviously more violent. Not only that, both are the most peaceful characters within the series, so it’s not like this matchup appeals with the gore. You might think this one is a stomp, but… all of Iroh’s ideas are stomps, and his main one is Oogway (solid idea too btw) which probably uses the KFP show to make the latter have enough material… yeah… This is probably the fairest in hindsight. Pacifist characters are weird to be included in versus, and I think you should avoid any idea that ends up being tone-deaf by existing, but like Kaiser mentioned, not all fights need to end in gruesome slaughter. Some matchups end up contributing to the theme of pacifism both characters have (we might cover another one of these eventually), and this one is no exception, just making a simple spar between two masters that achieved serenity. I personally like how they were feared warriors in their prime but stepped away from the path of conquest after personal tragedy, and how they evolved from the past selves. Toki in particular is very interesting, and is my favorite Fist of the North Star character. The idea of a character that tries to find a peaceful application of deadly techniques is a really cool concept.
Door: Holy shit, another really good Iroh alt? Yeah, this is an awesome idea. While I wouldn’t be the most into it for a Death Battle, I think it’s probably the best for Iroh generally. Raoh/Ozai is a really natural comparison, talking about the tragedy in both’s lives and how they try to make a positive impact regardless is really cool, and the dynamic is probably the best for any Iroh matchup. Ki and bending play off of each other really naturally, and you could have a lot of great interactions between the two as well. Is it a stomp? I mean, I’ve never really cared about stomps - but also, literally every Iroh matchup is a stomp. Oogway stomps or gets stomped depending on if you use shows or not, Asgore gets bodied (my personal favorite for Iroh on DB itself), and Dhalsim annihilates him. Point being, they’re all washes, so this one’s fine too. I’d like to write a script on it at some point (as a crossover, not as a death battle) because it just has a lot going for it.
Splinter vs Ryuken
Flip: What a surprise, I’m talking about the Ninja Turtles. I’ll admit that this is a… rather strange series combo, but this matchup in particular makes so much sense. Bear with me for a second. First and foremost, the focus here is on 2012, but ig people will softcomp these characters on MUs all the time, and the IDW render looked so cool… Anyway, both are wise, aging martial arts masters who raised exactly four adopted children as their own and passed down their deadly art with the hopes of preserving balance and discipline in a world of chaos. Both were caught in bitter clan rivalries, as Splinter led the Hamato Clan against the Saki’s Foot Clan, while Ryuken had to deal with the split ideologies of Hokuto Shinken and the corrupted Hokuto Ryuken. Both viewed violence as a means to an end, never the end itself. To top it off, both of their deaths lead to a pivotal point to their four adopted sons. These connections are so weirdly specific that it’s hard to ignore. But what about dynamic? It’s really good too. While TMNT of course doesn’t go to the level of bullshittery that is Fist of the North Star’s hax, Splinter specially has a lot to cover in terms of abilities that can play out well in a fight against a Hokuto master: enhanced senses, pressure point usage and even with an air manipulation variation, a transformation that lets him glow white aura from him, and even Kuji-Jin, a healing technique via his hands that might remind you of Toki. Seriously, this works dynamically, it’s very thematic and is very fun. Splinter is likely dropping dead (again) tho😞. OK now it’s the time I will talk about Jagi vs Raphael and Shredder vs Kaioh
Kaiser: I may have made this one as well while talking to Flip, I don’t remember exactly. The connections are bizarrely specific and it’s probably the most thematic for Splinter. The dynamic isn’t half bad either. Ryuken mainly suffers for not having much screen time and only two fights in the series (although both are pretty cool). The best version of Splinter to use here is 2012, as you cover both the fact he was actively participating in the fight between clans in his prime and the impact of his death on his sons. Where I have TMNT in general currently, Ryuken should win, which feels weird, but it is what it is. Debate wise you should obviously take Ryuken at his prime, and not the old frail version that had a heart attack when fighting Raoh. The fact Kenshiro is technically the Michelangelo of the four Hokuto brothers is funny, but also makes Ken vs The Last Ronin make a lot of sense (please videogame, make TLR island or something so this one becomes more fair).
Kanan Jarrus vs Shu
Flip: Huh, a Star Wars MU? The theme here is that both are blind self-sacrificing warriors who become mentors to a younger generation of heroes in post-apocalyptic wartime settings, Ezra and Ken respectively, and they died protecting the people they cared the most. Prior to that, they were part of a greater order related to a spiritual martial tradition, the Nanto Seiken and the Jedi Order respectively, that fell to overwhelming force and tyranny, so that’s also a neat connection. The dynamic feels functional enough, as Nanto Hakuroken is all about slicing kicks, serenity and elegance, with a lot of specific stances for this fighting style, mirroring what we have with the Jedi. I have no idea who wins as I’m not really aware of what canon Star Wars media gets, but I would bet on Kanan. Using soft-comp for Hokuto feels like an excuse for people to use Legends as well, even if both materials aren't really comparable in usability and idk what would be the justification for scaling Kanan to anything.
Kaiser: Weirdly thematic and functional. Shu is an underrated character, shame he got killed off so early. Kanan probably stomps from what I hear of canon SW stats, Shu doesn’t scale to anything notable unless you soft comp Hokuto and use Jagi’s nuke feat to get multi-cont. No clue if it’s good enough to beat out whatever nonsense people push for Star Wars these days.
Jotaro Kujo vs Kenshiro
Kaiser: The only time FOTNS had a chance to get on Death Battle. The more this blog progressed the less I started to like this matchup, to be honest. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still one of the best alts for Ken in my opinion, but there’s a lot that stops it from being truly great. The gigantic AP gap in Ken’s favor wouldn’t bother me as much if Kenshiro couldn’t just deactivate Star Platinum or just frighten him back into Jotaro with his aura alone, as stands are spiritual fighting energy which equates to Ki in FOTNS. Star Platinum not having pressure points makes the physical clashes more believable at least, as Ken can’t use Hokuto Shinken shenanigans on him, just Jotaro. Nowadays, I vastly prefer Momotaro Tsurugi for Jotaro, personally. This MU’s little sibling, Rei vs Polnareff, is pretty great, however.
Door: This matchup is kinda… okay? I think it’s a bit surface level for both, and I also think the fight dynamic is just kinda boring? I think while you can justify no pressure point wackiness, you also have the issue of, well, being able to just neg Star Platinum, and I don’t think Jotaro plays off all the stuff Kenshiro can do the best, and the AP gap is pretty bad too. It’s just kind of a fine matchup, and I think you can do better for both. Oh yeah, also the episode is dogshit lol. Worst of the season, the animation does the absolute bare minimum for both and has poor analyses and… somehow fumbles Kenshiro winning??? How??? For Jotaro, I prefer the aforementioned Momotaro, and think it’s pretty easily the best for both - I’m also pretty okay with Yuta for Jotaro, and that’s probably what I’d want for a runback.
Flip: Never really understood why this one is considered the legacy JoJoXFotNS MU given it should technically be Jonathan… but this one feels more fair to a little extent. Just a little, because Jotaro can’t really do much here. I’ll deviate a bit from Door and Kaiser’s comments, I think these two can do so much more with other matchups that I can’t really force myself to like this one at all, it just feels like a disservice to both of these guys in my opinion. I think Rei vs Polnareff is a cool mu tho, likely the better combo with both of these series. Jotaro vs Yuta is getting traction and is possibly the best idea for a Jotaro runback being honest, it would get a lot of casual traction given the giant appeal of JJK to the Gen Z and younger.
Guts vs Kenshiro
Kaiser: Perhaps the rawest pairing from Kenshiro’s MU spread. As I mentioned, the legacy between Berserk and FOTNS is gigantic and a matchup celebrating it would be pretty nice. If you know me, you know how much I love these two and how much they mean to me. This idea has a bunch of art and thumbnails already and the connections should be easy to understand, the vibes are on your face. The problem is… the fight itself. Guts can’t do much of anything. Not only because of the gigantic statstomp in Kenshiro’s favor, but how versatile he is and how many of Ken’s techniques can just one tap him instantly. Guts is fairly limited in comparison and doesn’t offer much to play off Ken’s billions of techniques. It’s the same dynamic problem I have with Kenshiro vs Samurai Jack, another character I love very much. If this was close at all or at least had a workable fight I could see it being my favorite for both characters even, but oh well, gotta wait 10 years for the Multi-Continental Guts buffs. Hey, at least my current favorite for Guts is pretty great and balanced. Maybe I could do something with it in the near future…
Door: This matchup is so, so close to being really good. Thematically it plays into the themes of both Fist of the North Star and Berserk very well, the aesthetic is incredible, it’s got great legacy, it’s just good in almost every regard - and if you know me, you know how much I love Guts in particular. Genuinely one of my favorite characters in fiction. In terms of the rest, though… yeah, the fight dynamic is kinda off. To its credit, I think it works a BIT better than Kenshiro vs Jack, but ideally I’d like Guts to be able to do more dynamically before I can be fully sold on this one. My sell would probably be pushing Guts as the dominant force in the fight that Kenshiro has to overcome, and his armor should make pressure point wackiness hard to do, but for an episode it’s a tad awkward to argue that when Kenshiro AP stomps. Still probably my favorite alt for Kenshiro, which is… kind of depressing. As for Guts himself, well, my favorite happened, but I’d really like to talk about the aforementioned Hyakkimaru… oh well, maybe some day…
Afterwords (By Kaiser)
(Art by SirusStuff)
Oh boy. First off I’d like to thank everyone for helping with this, especially T0m, Serge and IbukiFanboy for helping with the longest anime stuff for Kenshiro. Huge shout-out to Door for buying the World Warrior Guide, that was… absurdly important for Street Fighter research. As always a big thanks to the art team with Flip, Floor and L.A.D too. And finally, Rina for helping me revise all the important calculations.
This matchup means a lot to me, maybe because Kenshiro means a lot to me, and I always wanted to analyze him over other characters because of how he is the pinnacle of FOTNS so you get to talk about everything. I also really like Ryu, and it was cool to give Street Fighter a (sort of) deep dive. I feel this matchup is more interesting Ryu MU to me than his other blog options. Unfortunately, since people have spread so much misinformation about the series since forever, and Death Battle definitely didn’t help with the past episodes (looking at you, Akuma vs Shao Khan), we noticed there was a lot to cover.
Being honest, I’m not really expecting this one to be super well received. Not because it isn’t well made, but I know some people are very opinionated about this pairing in particular, and will absolutely not agree with the winner (not that the last blog was so much different from this situation). To be honest, I couldn’t care less at this point, especially after so much work. I don’t think I want to talk about Hokuto in versus any time soon either.
…speaking about Hokuto and versus, you might be curious about the lack of mention of Akuma vs Raoh. That’s because Akuma vs Raoh is already posted.
Yeah, we made it an extra blog. Was it necessary? Probably not. But I wanted to give it it’s fair analysis beyond who I think wins and for what reason. Go HERE to check it out. It’s basically the New Super Luigi U of Ryu vs Kenshiro, so expect a “DLC” with a lot of shared stuff from the predecessor. It will also be posted in the comments. If you’re curious about the lack of a next time trailer, it’s gonna be there.
There will also be a Q&A that will be posted after this and linked in the comments. See you there.
Resource List
Street Fighter:
Street Fighter
Street Fighter 2 (multiple ports and editions)
Street Fighter 3 (multiple ports and editions)
Street Fighter 4 (multiple ports and editions)
Street Fighter 5 (multiple ports and editions)
Street Fighter 6 as of 2025
Street Fighter Alpha 1
Street Fighter Alpha 2
Street Fighter Alpha 3
Street Fighter EX 1
Street Fighter EX 2
Street Fighter EX 3
Final Fight
Final Fight 2
Final Fight 3
Final Fight: Revenge
Rival Schools
Rival Schools 2
Street Fighter 2 (Movie)
Street Fighter Zero The Animation (OVA)
Street Fighter Alpha Generations (OVA)
Super Street Fighter 4 (OVA)
Street Fighter 4: Aftermath (OVA)
Street Fighter 4: The Ties that Bind (OVA)
Street Fighter (UDON comics)
Street Fighter 2 (UDON comics)
Street Fighter 2 Turbo (UDON comics)
Street Fighter 4 (UDON comics)
Street Fighter Legends: Cammy, Chun-Li, Ibuki and Sakura (UDON comics)
Street Fighter Remix (UDON comics)
Street Fighter Unlimited (UDON comics)
Street Fighter Super Combo Special (UDON comics)
Super Street Fighter (UDON comics)
Street Fighter Origins: Akuma (UDON comics)
Street Fighter X Darkstalkers (UDON comics)
Street Fighter One Shot: Akuma vs Hell (UDON comics)
Street Fighter Alpha (Manga)
Street Fighter: Sakura Ganbare (Manga)
Street Fighter 3: Ryu Final (Manga)
Street Fighter World Warrior Encyclopedia - World Tour Edition (2024)
Fist of the North Star:
Fist of the North Star
Fist of the Blue Sky
Fist of the Blue Sky: ReGenesis
Fist of the North Star Jagi Gaiden
Fist of the North Star Rei Gaiden
Fist of the North Star Garuda Gaiden
Fist of the North Star Ryuken Gaiden
Fist of the North Star Toki Gaiden
Fist of the North Star Yuria Gaiden
Fist of the North Star Juza Gaiden
Fist of the North Star (Anime)
Fist of the North Star 2 (Anime)
Fist of the Blue Sky (Anime)
Fist of the Blue Sky: ReGenesis (Anime)
Fist of the North Star (Movie)
New Fist of the North Star (OVA)
Fist of the North Star: Legend of Raoh parts 1 and 2 (OVA)
Fist of the North Star: Legends of the Dark King (OVA)
Fist of the North Star: Legend of Toki (OVA)
Fist of the North Star: Legend of Yuria (OVA)
Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage (Game)
Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage 2 (Game)
Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise (Game)
Fist of the North Star: Legends ReVive (Game)
Hokuto no Ken Special: All About the Man
Hokuto no Ken to Souten no Ken Official Guide Book
Credits:
Rina and Normal for help with calculations
The Gwen vs Sakura G1 blog
So tiny question, did you come into the research already knowing FOTNS had stuff like making separate realms and distorting space?
ReplyDeleteIf not, how much of a punch to the face was it? Cause even with all the insane stuff that I know happens there, I wasn't expecting the series to go THAT far.
I was already a fan of the series since I was a kid so it wasn't new to me, I was mostly surprised by the weirdly consistent multiplier chain really
DeleteThis was an amazing blog, even if the outcome was kind of a stomp. It's great to see how thoroughly researched both were.
ReplyDelete