Street Fighter Alpha/Dan

Click here for more information about Dan's other fighting game appearances.

Dan Hibiki (火引 弾) was introduced in Street Fighter Alpha. Dan is consistently portrayed as an arrogant, overconfident, yet utterly weak character in many of the games he is featured in. He is widely considered to be the comic relief of the series because of his over-the-top poses and battle cries.

After the release and success of Street Fighter II, rival video game company SNK created their own fighting game Art of Fighting. The principal character of this series, Ryo Sakazaki, not only bore a striking resemblance in appearance, fighting style, and name to Ryu, but had similar attire to and hair of the same color as Ken.

In humorous retaliation, Capcom included Dan as a secret character in Street Fighter Alpha. Dan's pink clothing is a spoof of Ryo's orange attire, while his head is a spoof of Robert Garcia's. His fireball is telling: instead of using both hands to unleash his Gadouken (as Ryu, Ken, and even Sakura do for the Hadouken), he propels it with one hand, like Ryo, Robert and Yuri do for the Kooh-ken. Dan can also taunt infinitely like the Art of Fighting games, unlike his fellow Street Fighter characters.

In Street Fighter Alpha 2, Dan is Ken's secret challenger (reached by finishing several fights in a row with super combos) and they exchange dialog, one line of which is Ken asking Dan if he knows the "art of fighting." One of Dan's win quotes in Street Fighter Alpha 3 is "I hate the art of fighting, but I want to be the king of fighters!" a direct reference to Art of Fighting and The King of Fighters series by SNK.

Dan has a similar outfit to Ryu and Ken, wearing a traditional Karate gi. Dan also wears a black undershirt like Ryo. His head and face closely resemble Robert from Art of Fighting, while his outfit is bright pink, reminiscent of Ryo's orange outfit in Art of Fighting. Though his fighting stance is similar to Ken and Ryu's, it is more "loose" and animated.

Due to his weak and slow moves, Dan is widely regarded as a joke character, not to be used for any serious competition. He is also popular as a handicap to skilled players, as his weakness makes winning matches more difficult when against notably powerful characters such as Ryu, Ken and Charlie. As such, selecting Dan can in itself be seen as a taunt, since doing so implies high confidence that a player is superior in skill to his or her opponent. Strangely enough, all these weaknesses and the sheer comedy value have combined to make Dan a campy fan favorite of sorts.

Story
Dan's father, Go Hibiki (火引　強), was a rival of Sagat. Go gouged out Sagat's eye and Sagat beat him to death in retaliation. Because of this, Dan sought revenge on Sagat, training to become a fighter, but was expelled from Gouken's dojo when his motivations were learned. Dan thus developed a unique fighting which merged the techniques he learned with Gouken with Muay Thai elements, which he calls Saikyo-ryuu (サイキョー流), "The Strongest Style", despite the complete weakness of his techniques.

After the events of Street Fighter Alpha 3, Dan believed he had achieved his revenge by defeating Sagat (who had actually thrown the fight), and his motivation switched to promoting and expanding his Saikyo-ryuu school, even to the point of offering exercise videos and correspondence courses. He has seemingly had some limited success promoting Saikyo-style. In SFA3, he was Sakura Kasugano's supposed sensei, who followed him around in order to meet Ryu. He's also good friends with Blanka too, since Blanka saved Dan when he was young.