Ryu (Street Fighter) - Character Design

Character Design

In the first Street Fighter game, Ryu wears a tattered white karate gi with a white hachimaki (headband), red gloves, and red shoes. Also, a constant trait in his design is the Fūrinkazan (風林火山?) kanji motif (meaning Wind, Forest, Fire, Mountain), battle standard of the historical Japanese military leader Takeda Shingen, embroidered into his obi, simulating Karate Dan degrees. In Street Fighter II Ryu is shown to be older, with brown hair, brown gloves, and a red hachimaki. He also fights barefooted this time. The Alpha series features a Ryu much like the one depicted in the original Street Fighter, with light red hair and a white hachimaki. In the Street Fighter III games, Ryu has black hair and facial stubble to show his growth in age. Street Fighter IV is chronologically set between II and III and so Ryu has a more mature look than he does in Street Fighter II but still not as aged looking as in Street Fighter III.

Ryu's name was based on designer Takashi Nishiyama's name. This was due to the fact that, when written in Chinese, "Takashi" could also be read as "Ryu". Furthermore, Ryu's Hadoken energy attack was based on the wave motion gun from the titular spacecraft of the sci-fi anime series Space Battleship Yamato, which Nishiyama watched during the seventies. His other two techniques from the first Street Fighter game were inspired by actual martial arts moves which were exaggerated for the character. Because he was the only playable character in the original Street Fighter, Ryu's designer, Manabu Takemura, wanted to make him easy to identify with. In Street Fighter II, the character was selected for inclusion due to his presence in the first game, symbolizing the concept of a Japanese martial artist. As the series progressed, the design was made more muscular to coincide with the concept, while his white gi, considered his most defining characteristic by the development team, was meant to let viewers know he was "a karate master at first sight".