Let me tell you a story of how I lost my mind trying to fit a Haudoken-shaped peg into an Avatar State shaped hole.
Pictured Above: Me realizing how few characters in ATLA/LOK have sleeveless or ripped sleeves.
I, of course, like both series and I thought it would be fun to make character designs and a basic story of what would happen if the events of the Street Fighter series took place in the Four Elemental Nations. I did this before with One Piece, and my psyche remained intact for the most part.
My first obstacle was, of course, tone. The Last Airbender and Korra are action-adventure fantasy shows that were aired on Nickelodeon. Street Fighter has its origins as an arcade game meant to steal your quarters. Refusing to tone down the cast of SF to be more grounded, realistic, and relatable, I instead made the rest of the world just as crazy as the characters. This includes its history. There has to be something kind of wrong with a world wherein street fighting is not only decriminalized but idolized and respected.
And then we come to everyone’s favorite homeless bum, Ryu. I am not exaggerating, his special talents outside of his fighting prowess are the ability to sleep anywhere and hitchhiking.
Of course I have to make this guy the Avatar-it just makes too much sense! Just say that he is from one of the isolated islands off of the coast of the Earth Kingdom. Kyoshi Island is incredibly Japanese, so it almost fits!
Of course, there is a lion in the room with us. Ryu was trained in a revised variant of Assassin’s Fist by his master/adoptive father, Gouken, who took out the assassin part. This does not mean that Ryu does not ever feel the urge to kill other people and lashing out.
I respect and appreciate the series creators, Miles and Brian for everything they have accomplished and I hope that they will accomplish even greater things in the future. I say this because I do not believe that they would touch a protagonist who struggles with murderous intent as a key part of their character art. On that topic, I also do not believe that they would ever create a protagonist that loves fighting.
TV Tropes calls this character “Blood Knight” as they forever seek awesome fights against strong opponents. In the West, they are usually villains or antiheroes. In the East, they are often heroes. The idea of a wandering warrior seeking tough opponents to fight against because they like to fight people and get stronger is everywhere in the Sinosphere (Chinese Area of Influence including Northeast and Southeast Asia) but hard for English-speaking people to understand. I’m a Dragon Ball fan, I know the struggle of having to explain how Son Goku is Earth’s hero by circumstance due to constantly fighting stronger and more dangerous foes over actively seeking to eradicate evil from the universe.
All of the Avatar studios that have been made so far, and probably will continue to be made in the future are all about protagonists fighting against evil and danger in order to survive and protect what they hold dear.
“But what about Avatar Kyoshi?” you are no doubt thinking. “She killed people.”
There is a million light years distance from making an earthquake right under Chin the Conquer’s feet and wanting to win so badly that you become blinded with homicidal rage and forever scarring your opponent. I can already hear the ATLA fans reading this thinking “Wow so dark, much edge” but this is something that real life martial artists struggle with. And even non-martial artists like me can relate to.
Unless Seven Havens does the subversion of the century and makes Avatar Pavi the second coming of Kid Goku, which I highly doubt, I don’t think that there will any Avatar who fights because they love it anytime soon. Korra is the closest they may ever come because she loves her bending and beating up bad guys, but that is more related to her hero complex and ego than anything. Aang had the whole world telling him to kill the Fire Lord but at no point did he ever seem to actually want to do so.
And then there are the villains of Street Fighter. If you thought that the heroes were larger than life, wait until you see the villains.
In this case, literally.
The villains of ATLAverse are very grounded characters overall, to the point I even complained about them being kind of boring. Fire Lord Ozai is less of a character and more of a plot device, but at least he has the grace of staying as a distant threat for most of the series, having his kids do his dirty work for him. And then we have Legend of Kora where the villains are primarily defined by the ideologies they are supposed to represent. Amon is a Communist, Unalaq is a Theocratic Satanist, Zaheer is an Anarchist, and Kuvira is a Facist.
The same is true for Street Fighter villains…to a degree. M Bision wants everyone to suffer in order to strengthen his already immense Psycho Power, Vega wants to kill ugly people and be beautiful forever, Akuma wants to fight to the death against worthy opponents, Rolento wants to create a utopian society where everyone is a soldier, and Balrog wants a big paycheck. Their motivations are less so aligned with actual revoltionaries and politicians and closer to classic supervillains or even horror villains.They fit perfectly for the story that Campcom wants to tell with Street Fighter but the tonal whiplash from Amon’s utopian ideals to Rolento’s utopian ideals is insane.
I left Sagat off the list of villains because he eventually has a redemption arc that isn’t too far off from Zuko’s…except for the fact that Zuko is a young teenager forced into military service by his father and Sagat joined Shadaloo in order to get a rematch with Ryu. A lot of the characters in Street Fighter have extremely selfish motivations that they don’t even attempt to justify with ideology. At least, a real world ideology.
Even then, they have a fair bit of depth. Akuma’s entire reason for existing at this point is to kill people, but he makes a humble living selling fruit.
When I said all he wants is to fight and kill worthy opponents, I meant it. Otherwise he is pretty chill.
The depth that is given to ATLA characters vs the depth given to SF characters is completely different. It’s trying to fit a Haudoken shaped peg into an Avatar State shaped hole. And it is driving me crazy.
I hope you enjoyed this long post and share your thoughts in the replies.