We may be only four months into Street Fighter 6’s life so far, but the game is half way through its first year of content already.
New concept art for the remaining two DLC characters, Ed and Akuma, has now appeared online for SF6 that shows off the most detailed look we’ve seen for the upcoming fighters.
This concept art is apparently being featured in the Capcom X Osamu Tezuka museum exhibit in Japan currently and captured by Io_Hosenka, who shared the images online.
Although we have seen a couple snippets of Akuma show up in the past months, his overall design is looking much fuller and complete than the previous bald head and underwear artwork.
He’s still rocking the white hair instead of the red from the initial leaks, and now we can better see that Akuma has some layers to not only his beard but also the furs he’s wearing around his shoulders and waist, making him look pretty wild even with his blank expression.
Click images for larger versions
We also get to see the ten (heaven) kanji glowing on his back like he just performed a Raging Demon, which is unsurprising to see back but still cool.
As for Ed, his appearance is basically spot on with the initial leaks except now he’s shown wearing a necklace.
Although the wings are similar to the original Shadaloo logo, the design seen all over Ed’s jacket is some sort of bird with a sideways lightning bolt on top of it.
撮影可能スペースから pic.twitter.com/Igl4vPoVFk
— イオ＿鳳仙花 (@io_housenka) October 9, 2023
It’s difficult to tell from the image quality, but what looks like an owl could also be a falcon considering that’s what his partner Falke’s name translates to from German.
Perhaps this is the new Neo Shadaloo logo or some different faction Ed created or joined up with between Street Fighter 5 and 6.
Given that they are both just months away from being revealed / released now, we should expect these to pretty much be the final designs present for Ed and Akuma in SF6 (unless these happen to be pretty old internally at Capcom).
How that actually translates over from 2D art to 3D models in the RE Engine remains to be seen, however, and it’s probably going to be a while still before we get to witness them in motion.
It’s already been confirmed that Ed won’t be dropping until after the New Year for his Winter launch while Akuma is still slated for a Spring 2024 release to close out SF6 year one.
あるよ～ pic.twitter.com/ZnO8hsmSoP
— イオ＿鳳仙花 (@io_housenka) October 9, 2023
If you’re in Japan or planning to in the next few months, you too could see this artwork and tons more at the Osamu Tezuka museum since the Capcom exhibit is scheduled to remain up until October 29, 2023.