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The story
Street Fighter 6 tournaments have seen a string of wins by little-known young players, and it’s become a hot topic on 5ch. Some in the thread argued “it’s no fun without recognizable names,” while others got swept up in talk about the veterans’ generational shift — what Kokujin is up to these days, Umehara’s recent form, and the shock news of pro player Shou’s sudden retirement.
What people said
I haven't followed the fighting game scene in over 10 years — what's Kokujin even doing now?
I remember he started making and selling his own T-shirts.
These days he can't even crack the top 500 in the in-game rating.
That's not the point — what's boring is when it's just nerds winning.
Street Fighter 2 got popular with the general public precisely because it was simple. It's a shame when it shrinks back down to just otaku huddled together arguing over who won.
The guys who win tournaments have always been otaku though.
The ones with real staying power are the guys who back up decent results with an actual character/persona — like being known as "the ○○ user."
Being able to switch characters like Fuudo or Momochi is really the best.
Street Fighter 6's system is simple though?
Mago's basically comic relief at this point, but Sako's current situation is genuinely sad.
Tekken's basically been overrun by Pakistan these days.
That's just you — someone with nothing going for yourself — projecting onto Japanese developers and Japanese otaku.
Demon Slayer and Hunter x Hunter are basically a Japanese monopoly.
Well, more the "Heihoo" clique than "Japanese" broadly speaking (a nickname for a specific circle of Japanese players).
guys like Shinjuku Jackie or Bunbunmaru.
It's less that people forgot and more that they never knew.
You'd have to be in your 50s to recognize those names.
Bunbunmaru's showdowns against the Osaka crew were electric.
Is it a good thing or a bad thing that some random young newcomer wins over people who've grinded fighting games for decades? 🥺
Happy but sad.
But if Capcom keeps paying out real prize money, more pro gamers will keep transferring in from other scenes —
just like how Korean LoL rejects moved to Overwatch, and the Overwatch rejects moved to Apex.
Even back when I last paid attention, like 10 years ago, China/Korea were already stronger at KOF, Southeast Asia at Tekken, and America at Street Fighter 5.
Japanese players could basically only win in minor titles like Samurai Spirits, Vampire Savior, or Capcom vs. SNK — games where it felt like the organizers rigged things so Japan could come out on top.
I bet even Guilty Gear has America on top by now.
Ma-ma-ma-maaan~ (a mocking jab riffing on 5ch slang that paints the poster as thin-skinned)
That's Shou.
Great looks too.
Back in the Street Fighter 5 days he was lamenting that fighting games were a dying genre where no young blood ever comes in and guys in their 40s like himself were still the top ranks.
Umehara's basically become the "Hiroyuki of the fighting game world" by now (a once-sharp figure turned polarizing elder pundit) — people still worship him?
I was watching one of Dokura's "worst characters" videos and a clip of Umehara fretting about the future of fighting games showed up in the recommendations, so I only watched it out of curiosity.
Why's this guy suddenly trying to defend himself?
Nobody was calling you a fanboy in the first place.
he's simply weaker than the top tier now.
It's not even one specific weakness; it's more like every single one of his abilities is just a notch below the top players, which is kind of sad.
He just can't keep up with Street Fighter 6's gameplay mechanics.
He wasn't exactly mentally tough to begin with, and now he's saying unnecessary stuff on stream, making needless enemies, and basically cornering himself.
I get that results don't always come in tournaments, but it's not like they're living off tournament winnings alone.
They make their living streaming, yet all they stream is ranked matches.
What's the logic behind "running your own tournament grows the playerbase"?
Just showing yourself having fun running your own little tournament is promotion in itself — people see it and think "oh, that looks fun."
Of course you can't just have the same regulars entering every time, but if you don't put out a "this is fun, anyone come join!" vibe, the playerbase isn't going to grow.
You're probably better off just ignoring that guy.
Well then… see ya…
You expect the top pros in the industry to do that?
I don't know what dead-game scene you're pulling that from, but I've never heard of a single major game where the top pros run their own grassroots tournaments like that.
Background and Key Points
Street Fighter 6 competes under Capcom’s Capcom Cup and Capcom Pro Tour circuit, where prize pools have grown large enough (the poster’s cited “hundred million yen,” roughly $650,000+, went to a single FPS transplant player after one year in the game) to pull talent in from other esports entirely rather than build up through the old arcade-and-locals pipeline that produced Japan’s famous names. That older generation — Umehara “Daigo” (Street Fighter’s most internationally recognized pro, active since the arcade era), Tokido, Mago, Sako, Kokujin, all now in their 40s — built reputations over roughly two decades when Japan’s insular arcade scene gave homegrown players an edge international competitors couldn’t easily match.
The thread doesn’t split on whether young players winning is good — almost everyone agrees fresh blood is desirable in a scene the older pros themselves worried was dying out (post 64). It splits on whether winning without a “name” or a defined character identity behind it is worth anything: one camp says a title should reward recognizable rivalries and playstyles the way SF2 once did for a mainstream audience, the other says results are results and nobody durable wins tournaments any other way.
What’s easy to miss reading this from outside Japan is that the “insular home-field advantage” the posters credit for veteran success (post 34, 40) is already understood by them to be eroding country by country — Tekken to Pakistan-based players, KOF long ago to China/Korea — so the anxiety here isn’t really about these two players, it’s about Japan’s competitive-gaming infrastructure losing the last title it still dominated.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Anything Live G) thread “Street Fighter 6 is finished now that nobody-name newcomers keep winning.”
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