The 1994 Street Fighter film was a big success for Capcom and continues to make them quite a bit of money though its remained largely separate from the actual mainline fighting games.
That is, however, except for one character original to the movie, who just had some new artwork revealed and was left unused up to this point.
Street Fighter 6 Director Takayuki Nakayama recently showed off a trio of new illustrations for Captain Kenzo Sawada in what may have been the latest push at the developer to put him in the games.
After apparently being discussed on the latest Capcom TV stream in Japan, Nakayama posted these images to his X account from an illustrator who he says loves Sawada though doesn’t name them directly.
Captain Sawada was originally written into the Street Fighter movie with the reported intent off adding another strong Japanese lead to the cast to serve alongside Jean-Claude Van Damme’s Guile even though his actual role would end up quite diminished and only appeared in a few scenes.
While he didn’t leave much of an impression on the international audience (besides appearing in the western Street Fighter cartoon), Sawada seems to have grown some more dedicated fans in Japan.
Capcom technically already made him part of the official Street Fighter world by giving him an official Shadaloo C.R.I. character profile as well as listing him as part of the U.S. Air Force along with Guile, Nash and Byron Taylor in a Street Fighter 5 book.
Most recently, a feline version of Sawada was included in the SF5 April Fool’s Day game Neco Drop 2 as Sawanya back in 2021.
The captain has been playable before as well in the Street Fighter The Movie fighting games where he was given a katana in the console versions.
This was apparently enough to get him on on the polls for the recent MVP Street Voter event in Street Fighter 6 for players to pick their favorite character.
Sawada managed to score 54th out of 93 choices in the final results ahead of the likes of El Fuerte and Falke as well as even Blanka and Rashid — while our own dream DLC poll had him near the bottom.
Click images for larger versions
If we were to see Sawada make it into SF6 at this point, he’d most likely be a World Tour NPC like we’ve seen previously with some other characters that haven’t been seen in a long time like Retsu and Carlos Miyamoto.
Capcom is currently moving forward plans with Legendary to produce a brand new Street Fighter film that recently received a release date despite losing its directors.
Would you like to see Sawada become an official member of the Street Fighter cast or even just a background character? Let us know in the comments.