Sawada

"Sometimes I am so powerful it frightens me!"

- Sawada

Captain Sawada is a character from the 1994 Street Fighter movie and the fighting game Street Fighter: The Movie. Sawada is a soldier with the A.N. (Allied Nations) who served with Guile a few times prior to battling against General Bison in Shadaloo. He has the distinction of being the only character exclusive to the film to appear in both versions of the game and the latter cartoon.

Street Fighter (film)
He served as Fei Long's replacement in the aforementioned movie and game. Additionally, Sawada's voice is the only one dubbed in the film, as Sawada himself only speaks a little English.

Capcom at the time pushed heavily to promote actor Kenya Sawada in any means possible, giving the staff behind the film and game the impression that he was to be the "face" of Capcom, their own action hero to star in later material.

Sawada's actual role in the film is very minor. He's shown only a few times actually speaking and fighting in the film, and has command of a small amount of ground troops in the assault on Bison's base. Yet at the end, he's shown amongst the main characters as they take a pose at the very end of the film.

Design
His design varies somewhat from that in the film. The game developers had him go shirtless, based on the fact he was "buff" and inspired a bit from Mortal Kombat II characters of the time. Had this presented a problem, the staff would have opted to have a shirt painted over his sprites. The design resembled in many ways that of Fei Long, and led to the actor being involved in digitizing sessions for both Sawada and Fei Long. For Fei Long, the design itself took little need to alter outside of a change of pants, shoes, and hair. However Fei-Long's frames were never cleaned due to time constraints, leaving only Sawada.

Despite speculation to the contrary, Sawada is unarmed in the arcade game. The "katana" shown was intended at the time to be "motion blur": given a conflict between the two capcom branches however, flicker transparency was not applied and it was instead left solid. His slashing attacks were intended to have an ethereal appearance to them, akin to the Hadouken. The designers argued for the flicker effect but were instead denied, and as a result opted for a look based on Mortal Kombat's effects at the time.[8] Later appearances from the console version of the game changed this aspect of him giving him an actual katana.

Gameplay
Sawada's fighting style is based on a hybrid of Guile's and Fei Long's, based on his status as an Allied Nations soldier and him replacing the former. As a result, he retains moves akin to Guile's Flash Kick, while keeping a martial arts aspects. His special moves rely primarily on his legs for axe kicks and similar attacks, and his energy slash has the ability to reflect projectiles back at the opponent.

The console version of Street Fighter: The Movie however presented a much different game. While this version was modified to be identical to Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Sawada was left in, with a modified movelist, one that turned him into a bit of a parody fighting akin to Dan Hibiki, as well as making this the point he is actually armed with a katana. In one of his special moves, Gokusatsu-Jibakujin, Sawada uses his katana blade by stabbing himself making a crescent shaped blood (sometimes flaming blood) barrier, sitting in a pose akin to one committing hara-kiri. His super move, Kamikaze Banzai, involves Sawada, standing straight up, putting his hands in the air and sliding into his opponent. During the move, he is invulnerable to projectiles.

Street Fighter (USA cartoon)
In the US Street Fighter cartoon, Sawada remains with the A.N. after Guile was discharged from the military and began working for Street Fighter (a group consisting of Ryu, Ken, Blanka and others). While in the movie he wore a blue T-shirt, blue camouflage pants and army boots, this version wears a tan uniform, similar to Rolento's, and even his voice is completely changed, possibly due to the including of Fei Long in the cartoon. Additionally, instead of Flash Kicks like his game counterpart, he's shown with a Sonic Boom attack and a move akin to Alex's Flash Chop. Later in the series, he also uses a katana to fire blade-shaped projectiles instead of the Gokusatsu-Jibakujin, with said projectiles appearing very much like those for Guile's Flash Kick. He appeared in only two episodes: "Keeping the Peace" and "The Hammer Strikes", and was voiced by Michael Dobson.

Sawada is portrayed here as a rival of sorts instead of Guile's ally, unlike the games. Both times they meet in the series they come to disagreements and subsequently heavy blows with the second bout supposedly a training session that results in a large amount of destruction to surrounding equipment (including one entire hangar), though the two men are able to work together towards the same goal as shown later.

Partly fueling this is the fact that after the events of the film, Guile was discharged from the military, with Sawada testifying that Guile put his own troops in danger and disobeyed a direct order. Now overlooking events happening in a boom town from a farmer finding a fortune in emeralds, the now Colonel Sawada proceeds to arrest Guile when he becomes involved, though the men work together later on. Adding insult to injury, from the series' second season on, Sawada takes over as head of the A.N. Special Forces, a position that formerly belonged to Guile.

Much like many events in the cartoon this contradicts the events in the film, as Sawada was not shown to have any antagonism towards Guile's assault on Shadaloo, and even assisted. Neither endings in the games make mention of this either, and even showed the exact opposite, with Guile praising Sawada.[1] The exact reason for the change, as is the case with other conflicts between the film and the cartoon, is never explained.