Annon-Guy: Related to the Guest Character Poll I made for Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves I'm regards to characters using weapons
What are your thoughts on characters who use weapons in a martial arts game? Billy Kane uses a three section bo-staff while in Garou, Freeman weaponizes his nails like they're claws. Yamazaki even carries a knife on his person.
It's also noticeable in Tekken as Yoshimitsu [a sword], Victor [another sword user], Alisa [chainsaws, exploding head and rocket punches] and even Anna [A bazooka as of Tekken 8] carry a weapon into a fist fight not to mention Guest fighters like Noctus, Negan and Clive. Even Item Moves are weapons.
There's even a reverse case in Guilty Gear. It is promently a weapon fighter, yet Potemkin, Jam, Slayer and Giovanna (when when she merges with Rei) fight unarmed with just punches and kicks.
In most cases, outliers like these have unique reasons for fighting the way they do, and it is often tied to the story behind the character.
Speaking directly about the cases involving Jam, Slayer, Giovanna, and even Kum Heihyun, each has an Ancient Martial Arts heritage that is so rich and powerful that they do not need weapons to express their strength in battle. Giovanna and Slayer in particular have ties to supernatural gifts that make them especially strong.
Jam, much like Venom and Kliff Undersn also has a rich history in using Ki in her Martial Arts, which is tied to the history of Magic itself among humans. For Potemkin in particular, he uses a marriage of technology, martial arts, and Magic in his fighting style.
However, in the world of SNK games, the reasoning behind techniques and weapons is slightly different.
Fatal Fury and King of Fighters express many events in the form of a Tournament, or even just a Street Brawl. Characters (and most street thugs) like Billy or Mr. Big do not abide traditional honorable rules between martial artists during a fight, even if Billy’s former boss Geese Howard was once a proponent of them. Brass Knuckles, Switchblades, and Stun Batons are fair game in their underworld.
Of course, to such individuals Strength is the only thing they answer to, by any means necessary.
For Tekken’s case, it’s anticipated that the Outlier characters are actually the “normal characters”, with the Mishimas being the exception to the norm! That being the case, Yoshimitsu, Gun Jack, Alisa, and even Bryan Fury are technically Cyborgs: living weapons in their own right, not unlike Lucy from Cyberpunk or even Robo-Ky!
In other words, unlike Guilty Gear, where most of the cast wield weapons out of necessity… the main cast of Tekken are so powerful that weapons aren’t needed, much like in Slayer and Jam’s cases!
Of course, Tekken is slightly more absurdist with how it explains things, but most fans simply accept it that way. By contrast Soul Calibur made the attempt at making semi-realistic weapon combat along with rich history to match it, which is why games like Samurai Shodown and Assassin’s Creed synced up with Soul Calibur so well.
Outliers like 2B from NieR Automata and even Spawn were chosen because of the unique settings Soul Calibur had which mirrored the themes of the characters and worlds they came from (at least, at the time). Of course, characters from Final Fantasy and The Legend of Zelda and even For Honor (maybe even Dark Souls?) were chosen for similar reasons in their respective games.
A lot of it boils down to what the developers want to express in their games. Yoshimitsu in particular has a strange bizarre fighting style not unlike Dr. Faust! In that regard, even if he wields a Katana, he does not always use it in conventional ways.
Yoshimitsu in the Tekken games more frequently uses kicks and the butt of his sword while he fights, while his Soul Calibur counterpart is more prone to using sword slashes as part of his moves.
Yoshimitsu is somewhat similar to Hakumen in the Blazblue series, in that Hakumen does not use fast sword strikes unless they cut with purpose. Hakumen is known for slow and powerful strikes, which are covered by his Zanshin Counter Attacks.
Contrast to those who wield weapons in Tekken, most raw strength from the Mishimas can either be attributed to the Devil Gene or a Devil Hunter bloodline that resists it, similar to how Riot of the Blood was a result of Iori Yagami and Leona Heidern resisting the Orochi Blood in their respective families.
This is also similar to how the Japanese Bloodline can resist the influence of Demihumans and Youkai in Guilty Gear, which is why Justice considered Japanese people (like Baiken, May, and Anji) dangerous and why the P.W.A.B. began researching the Colonies.
Most fighters have a history in how they learned to fight, though some (like Slayer and Kliff, and even Gabriel) could specialize in many styles, not unlike Mokujin, Olcadan, and Edge Master!
