Who doesn’t love some Street Fighter content! A cool read a solid artwork. I would have probably connected better had I read the previous volumes, but that is on me.

I dug it. Thank you for the opportunity.

4 stars

A solid start to a new Street Fighter saga!

This graphic novel delivers a thrilling prequel to the game. The artwork is stunning, with dynamic action sequences and expressive character designs.

The story introduces Ken Masters as he embarks on a new journey, encountering familiar faces and new challenges. The inclusion of bonus stories featuring other fan-favorite world warriors adds depth and variety.

While the plot wasn't groundbreaking, it's engaging enough to keep you hooked. The pacing is good, and the characters are well developed. However the story was a but predictable at times.

Overall I enjoyed this read very much! I'm a big fan of Capcoms work since i was a child. I played many Street Fighter games so it was great to read about the characters again!

Thank you NetGalley and Udon Entertainment for the ARC!

Honestly as a longtime fan who played Streetfighter most of their life, I feel this book was relatively weak. A good amount of the pages are just solely on promotional art of possible covers, special covers, and covers for specific releases for the book alone. The art style changes constantly through the book that ended up throwing me off from the flow of the comic, and while I was initially interested in what was the story before SF6 and how it got to that point, this was led by nothing more than to a disappointment. The whole 'master plan' felt 2 dimensional. JP who is meant to be an intimidating and cruelly evil villain seemed nothing more than your stereotypical cookie cutter villain for 'being bad because I'm evil', making the whole plot feel bland and surface level.

The panels of the comic itself felt bland as well, most of them sticking to the basic square and rectangular panels. If they wanted to give more dynamics to their comics, use of different panel shapes they could have used, the art style as I mentioned before was way too different for each issue that it didn't seem cohesive enough. some going for a more American styled comic style with little to no sound effects, others going for a more anime or webtoon art style that made a whiplash for the reader to try and adjust to each art style before it changed again in the following issue. The combat in the comics felt rushed or felt so hollow. 'Fight for the sake of fighting' but also, avoid fight scenes as much as possible. The two ideas clashed that it didn't make the combat in the least bit entertaining or fun to read, more of view piece you can glance at before skipping to the next page.

The pages were also cluttered with dialogue early on in the comic, sometimes obstructing the background or a good chunk of the characters, and was more info dump than a cohesive story narrative. I understand that issues are short and need to give all the context to the reader before the next issue, but it would have been nice to have more dynamic scenes with the characters and have the story flow better than have a whole headache seeing multiple speech bubbles filled with extensive infodumps that the reader has to process quickly before reading the next page that may have the same amount of information or less than the page they are currently on only for there to be little to no dialogue later on when context matters.

Overall, this could have been a great read, but with so many flaws, its hard to love the comic despite it being something I hold dearly in my heart. I wish next time, Capcom decided to pick artists that have a similar vibe or art style for their issues to make them all feel a bit more connected than have the reader feel each issue is disjointed compared to the last issue they read.

Great companion to the Street Fighter 6 game. It has some really good artwork and some great character moments.

This is an interesting story, based on the street fighter stories. The stories have action and adventure and alot of fighting. Definitely an interesting read even if you are not a street fighter fan.

For such a large company and to assumedly build interest for fans and newcomers I was expecting much better. This feels more like an obligated creation or cash grab instead of a purposeful creation. Unless you're a hard-core SF fan I can't recommend this. It won't make you intrigued. If it wasn't for Netgalley needing a review I'd have DNF'd it. While I'm not a large SF fan (frame linking is the death of me) I am a large fighting game fan and came expecting something that gave me that vibe. However, I didn't get that except for the inclusion of SG 6:Evolution at the end which is a single issue that's added in and has no connection to the rest of the trade.
Interestingly, the main SF 6 issues don't have a credited writer which I made me hesitant. That hesitance was for not as the writing feels uninspired and uninteresting to me especially moment to moment with bland character voice. I was expecting Street Fighting not international politics. The action thriller with politics has a decent setup but weak payoff and is weird. If it's meant to hype me for the game it does not. If it's meant to give me another side of Ken and Luke I guess it does but the story is still not interesting. Maybe they wanted a more serious side of Luke which does happen here but it's so boring. It definitely doesn't make me interested in JP as a villain since he is so blandly written I honestly I thought he was a comic original throw away villain but apparently he's actually in SF6.
Part of the writing's issue might be on the localizer and editor. There are numerous grammar and spelling issues (“Its a your problem” and “ didn't' “ in the first issue alone and Nayshall (the country the entire comic takes part in) gets misspelled once). SF 6 also has weak lettering with frequent issues. There is a lack of sound effects and the ones that are there are large and distracting (one wasnt even translated properly leaving the original Korean sound effect slapped behind the English one garrishly). It's most notable in how they do that wavy lettering thing to represent a voice wavering but it is done super poorly and inconsistently.
Artwise each issue has a new artist. They do try to create a cohesive style that reminds me of those SF4 anime cutscenes as well as Korean webtoons but each artists does give their own flair. While the art isn't bad it firmly sits in the passable/middling category. It also seems like the artists were either told to not draw action or really don't want to draw it with blows always seeming off panel and panels focusing on thoughts, flashbacks, dialogue, and anything really else than the action. Which for a story with an action thriller plot is just a poor choice.
The one strong point was the issue of SF 6 Evolution. It was so good I almost brought it up to 2.5 stars. Written by Moylan it goes for pure vibes that emulate the electric energy and arcade-y fun of SF with fun characterization and dynamics. The fun mix of artists in Evolution help add to the fun vibes-only feeling. I do wish the quality was a bit better as they also do edge a bit on just passable though I preferred the artists more than the ones chosen for the mainline comic.