Storm Dragons and Personal Brands

Ryu is one of the most boring fighting game characters ever, except that he’s not. 

It’s hard to argue with the idea that a guy in a white gi with a black belt is a pretty blank character design. It’s the sort of uphill battle you willingly take on when you decide to debate something that just boilerplate Is, like water is wet, like arguing that Ryu from Street Fighter is a very simple design, visually. IFC Yipes called him Ordinary Guy back in the MvC3 days, and it’s hard to argue with that, because in a game that puts him beside comic book superheroes and character action game protags, he looks like a dude that showed up to spar.

Except by my estimation, that’s why he is the interesting character, compared with the others.

Mmh-hmm, yeah, why don’t you just soak in that, enjoy that editorial audacity.

Single sentence paragraphs drive home the sense of significance you want to get across with all the subtle grace of a cheap pop, and you should be sparing with them, unlike me.

Video game discourse, yeahhhhhhhhhh.

yeeeeeeeaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Maybe it’s that part of me that, like Homer Simpson, wants to know what the short stoic guy who hasn’t done anything yet is going to do, because yeah, it probably is gonna be pretty good, or at least something significant. Because that’s a line from back when The Simpsons was good and Homer wasn’t just Dumb Dad, he had instincts and reasoning. You like him understood why you should be looking at that guy, because he’s out of place, but also seems totally at ease. In fact, too at ease, so at ease that you start to realize that ease is the product of the sort of self-confidence that projects a field. That field disrupts the norms of surrounding social pressure, the social pressures that say you should seem ill-at-ease dressed like you are, calm as you are, surrounded by what you are. Why would you be so calm why a gang fight is happening? Why would you show up dressed for kumite when you’re keeping company with a guy in cybernetic armour, an anti-undead commando and a Norse god, among others?

The reason is, because that motherfucker knows something we don’t, and that something is going to be what ends the fool that squares up with him thinking he’s an easy mark. Because war gods don’t need heralds to announce their presence, they just start fighting. That’s when fires ignite and storms start occurring because of the movements of their limbs. That’s when the nature of the war god becomes self explanatory, and any embellishments to their form suddenly are revealed as unnecessary, little chromed decorations and paint pinstripes that would only break off or flake away when their full force is brought to bear in real combat, and the fabric of reality buckles against their manifest and focused will. Purity of purpose cannot be achieved by some dick trying to argue a point they came to from reading about something they’ve only read about in a book, it has to be embodied. Become the storm to understand the storm as only a force of nature can, and do so without human ego to taint the transition and corrupt the processes. 

When you’re up against someone who has eschewed all else in the full embrace of just one of their potentials, to the point that they are the embodiment of that single concept, you come to a realization: this is the fire you can’t fight with fire, so you’re going to have to fight with something else. Problem is, how do you fight fighting?

Fig 1. Focused and Manifest Will.

Ryu started life as a man in a white gi with a black belt, a red headband and matching red booties, he started that life 30 years ago in arcades in a machine that, while not the first game of its time, would be the effective prototype to an entire genre. Since that time, he has only started going barefoot, and basically that’s it. He’s had alt costumes, yeah, of course, but the canonical image chosen for him is what it largely has always been, except progressively more aged and weathered. The Street Fighter team at Capcom has made this choice for a reason, and it’s just right there, laying in front of you in the guise of a guy who actually hasn’t gotten with the time and worked on his branding.  His gi jacket is now ragged to the point the shreds blow freely in the wind and some scuff marks are now just permanently dyed by dirt and dust, ditto the pants. His obi is starting to fade down to the white threads at the edges. He’s the ordinary guy, who walks around the world in bare feet, picking fights to some vague goal, to us outsiders. Internally, he’s a philosopher that is seeking answers to questions in a language that isn’t words, but stances and body motions, grappling and strikes. He is beyond caring about how at odds he is with the world around him, a true postmodern practitioner of deadly and secret martial arts, because he is privy to forces that we don’t have senses to perceive, we can only detect the hinting at by reading his instincts through him. 

He is a man in a dirty gi. He the dragon-power that lies at the eye of an unending storm of combat which strikes down only the evil, and internal strife over his great power and sometimes tenuous self control. He is ridiculous and at odds with both our contemporary world, and the played-up and stylish hyper-reality of videogame worlds. And I’m pretty sure that’s the entire point. Because Ryu is Fighting, noun, verb and adjective, and to such a degree that it’s only right that it should be so plainly worn on him.