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maxwell-grant · 1 year ago

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Reading you post about Seth made me imagine a world where Ryu winds up taking Seth on as a student. I thought Ryu's journey to overcome the Satsui no Hado could give him insight on how to help Seth overcome their own hatred, and meta-textually, becoming the main character student is about as far from trying to be the final boss that you can be

Hmm, you know, that is frankly pretty damn inspired and I don't think it's something we've ever really seen before in a fighting game, a former final boss getting kicked so far down the ladder that they wind up being the main character's student. It's the kind of sheer indignity and downgrade that would destroy most villains, but also, you can't destroy or make Seth less dignified than they already are, and their SFV story opens up a number of possibilities to take them afterwards if brought back. There's even some existing parallels between Seth and Akuma that could be worked into this, and Seth's already dropped out of official villain status enough to not be missed as one.

Main issue I have with this though is that "Final Boss gets beaten by Ryu, changes himself to become more like Ryu, and becomes a redeemed pseudo-ally to Ryu while still being plenty intimidating and arrogant to stay in in-character and remind you they used to be a Final Boss" is already very much Sagat's thing and you are never, ever, on your best day, not coming up short next to Sagat. Honestly even Akuma started heading there a bit in V. And it works for them because their appeal as characters isn't really mandated by them remaining full-on villains, they are cool badasses who get to sit in more morally grey clubs. Seth's humiliated and tragic aspect is what sets them apart from all the other main villains and I wouldn't want to see it done away with, but you can't really have them stay static, especially with 6 being serious about developing and pushing all of the characters forward in a way the series never really did before.

I've never been super in love with the idea of Ryu sitting down and training a new character to take his place, part of why I'm glad that Sakura turned out the way she did and that both her and Ryu were freed from the burden of the most tired story idea you could possibly think of with them. But there is a world of difference between "Ryu mentors a rookie who looks up to him into a new fighter because, idk he's just nice like that", and "Ryu has to mentor a monster that once tried to kill him and lay waste to the world with his exact power, to help them as he was helped and try to stop them from being consumed by hatred just as he once was". The former is just, eh, you can get a decent version of that by playing World Tour, but the latter, well, there's a pitch there, there's stakes, there's a story worth telling.

Ryu putting himself on the line, abdicating from his journey, possibly getting on really bad terms with people he knows (Is Chun-Li gonna be okay with this after all the work she put into destroying Shadaloo for good? what about Ken, who's JUST had his life ruined to shit by Shadaloo leftovers, how's he gonna feel? At minimum he's gonna have C.Viper and Juri and Abel and Guile on his ass 24/7 because they are not letting this pass), to stop the Shadaloo-Satsui cycles of violence and help a victim of them who can't be trusted, but also can't get up on their own and has no one even trying to save them, no one. Ryu had Ken, he had friends, he has Sagat to eternally remind him of the consequences and push him to be a better man, he had Dhalsim, he had Gouken (which I think was too much, old man should have stayed dead, not a single story in the franchise wouldn't be better served by Gouken staying dead), in the manga he even had Birdie and I like that so it happened shut up, where as Seth has nothing and no one other than people who tried to use them, and people who very justifiably think Seth needs to stay dead and only endangers others by being alive.

Nobody on the planet is gonna think Seth is remotely worth the effort of saving, except for Ryu, who wouldn't wish what they're going through even on his worst enemy. There's like an interesting tension here, of whether Ryu is doing something incredibly stupid because he doesn't understand firsthand what Shadaloo scum are actually like and is just empowering a monster to kill them all eventually (something that Guile would probably say to him), whether he's just trying to help someone the way he wishes he'd been helped and not thinking about the risk, whether he's actually being very practical because redeeming Seth is a net positive for humanity that only he can achieve (well really it should be Dhalsim and Gouken's jobs but, they can't be fucked), how much of this is him acting from pure kindness versus a pragmatic understanding that he is in a position to stop the next Akuma or Bison from forming even if no one is gonna help him do it, the toil it takes on him, and so on.

Again, there's a story here. Not sure if I'd want this like, canonically, but there's something really good here. That could be as good a justification as there ever was for a story to remind us why Ryu is the Hero even when they're not actively at the center of things.

#replies tag #street fighter #fighting games #ryu #sf ryu #sagat #seth #capcom

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