Time travelers without any fighting
After more than three decades, Street Fighter and its world warriors are still recognized as icons all around the globe though it’s also cool to see the franchise get official support where everything began too.
The hometown of Capcom’s founder and president recently erected a bronze statue of Chun-Li in the city and apparently won’t be the last Street Fighter character to be immortalized there either.
Kenzo Tsujimoto was born in Kashihara City in the Nara prefecture of Japan in 1940, and though he left for Osaka over a decade before starting Capcom, they are all still intertwined.
The bronze Chun-Li statue stands around 70 cm / 28 inches tall by itself and 150 cm / ~59 inches including its stone base after receiving around 5.5 million yen (~$37,000) in donations for its creation according to the city’s website.
Chun was set up outside of front of the Kashihara City Hall, which wasn’t made to celebrate Capcom’s 40th anniversary, but rather the 30th anniversary of the educational short film Street Fighter II: Return to the Fujiwara Capital that you likely never heard of before.
いや、やはりカッコいい。ひょっとして「春麗（チュンリー）」が難敵を倒したときの決めポーズでしょうか。
ついに春麗登場 「ストリートファイターの街」、激シブ銅像設置：朝日新聞デジタル pic.twitter.com/TJgLxt4BWk— 朝日新聞奈良総局 (@asahi_naraken) March 9, 2024
The film was created to highlight the ancient capital of Japan from over 1,300 years ago where Kashihara is today with Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li and E. Honda slipping back through time — and without doing any fighting.
Ryu got his golden statue outside of the city’s Tourism Exchange Center last year, and it seems they plan to do the same for Ken and Honda in the future too to round out all of the characters from the short.
Back in 2022, Kashihara and Capcom agreed to allow the city to use Street Fighter characters to help promote the area and encourage more tourism where they’ve also made other items for the fighting game including manhole covers of all things.
Though it remained largely unknown outside of Japan for many years without a DVD release, Street Fighter II: Return to the Fujiwara Capital is now readily available online and even with English subtitles.