load-bearing personalities
terry bogard may be the only main character of any fighting game whom i’ll gladly spend a significant time playing.
ryu? lol, no. akira yui? the kazamas, sophitia alexandra, kasumi mugen tenshin, haohmaru, amongst my last choices.
(weirdly, morrigan isn’t the central darkstalker until game 3. 🦇🤓)
even kyo kusanagi, i enjoy his shitty personality and the bleary antagonism he bounces off everyone in his life—iori, chizuru, shingo, saisyu, even yuki. it’s fun for a long-suffering central character to actually be a total asshole who needs to be dragged into doing anything that could look heroic.
i like how drastically his moveset and play archetype have changed over time. i kind of like the overly complicated, distinctive core of his move list since 1996. i like his changing outfits. the musical evolution of “esaka” is one of my very favorite Video Game Things to go back and fuss over .
i like how deep kyo’s original actor masahiro nonaka’s voice slowly grew, year after year. i liked seeing his character teeter toward totally losing himself over the course of the nests saga; how he began to borrow iori’s moves, a darkness would fall across his face, and his animations grew alarming
as with morrigan and darkstalkers, kyo’s popularity has long been eclipsed by his rival iori—and iori is my precious grumpy snarling gumdrop, who first got me interested in kof, snk, and fighting games in general back in the neogeo pocket/dreamcast days. i absolutely will play iori.
but kyo? ih. 🤷🏻♀️
i’m all over his successor kaydash, and take a fae sort of delight in ash crimson, both of whom technically count as central characters even as kyo, like ryu, remains squarely in the middle of things, anchoring each new era in familiarity and kind of taking the steam away from whoever it up for lead
it’s like, “main character energy” tends to exert on me this unconscious magnetic repulsion. why on sub-con would i pick mario, when the princess and toad are *right frickin there*, you know.
it’s not a thing i think about or intend; it’s just, my mind bounces right off any sort of guided decision.
terry, though?
he’s terry. he’s the guy. why would i not want to hang with such a good bro? one with such a strange yet effective playstyle, at that.
he’s just wander around, doing his thing, and we can come along if we want. or not. no biggie.
the same goes for the wolves games, despite rock.