Udon Street Fighter Comics Street Fighter Legends Ibuki # 1

By Mark Rodriguez

We've already seen Sakura's first 4-part story which dealt with a lot of characters from the Alpha games and Rival Schools. Now we're going to look at Ibuki, the adorable ninja girl from the Street Fighter III series. She's also appeared in Street Fighter 4, Street Fighter X Tekken and Street Fighter 5.  She's also a schoolgirl, so like Sakura, she has to mix in her ninjitsu training with classes.

The issue starts with a Geki ninja reporting that they are close to finding the Enjo village, but the clan doesn't care until they get results. Then they move on to kill one of their enemies.

Meanwhile Yuta goes to wake up Ibuki, and finds her sleeping pet raccoon instead. Ibuki is clinging to the ceiling and waiting to strike. Yuta manages to avoid her strike, and they both go to report to their sensei. Ibuki and Yuta train by balancing themselves on bamboo poles... when the schoolgirl ninja's cellphone goes off. Their master catches Ibuki before she can fall, but also catches her cellphone. Ibuki has to train with them until she graduates secondary ninja training, then she will be free to do whatever she wants. Even though she is allowed to go to regular school, technology is still not allowed in their training grounds. Ibuki has to ditch her phone, but for now she has get set for school.

Ibuki is now dressed in typical schoolgirl attire and hops onto the bus. She soon meets up with her friend Sarai. Their teacher welcomes the students back from holiday vacation and introduces their newest student, Makoto. She declares herself the master of the Rindouken Martial Arts dojo and will take on all comers, and the class laughs at her.

Ibuki and Sarai discuss how crazy and wound up Makoto seemed during their lunch. Just then they hear Makoto getting pissed at a classmate that was messing with her. She socks him out but doesn't notice a big guy behind her about to grab her. Just then a kunai blade smacks him. Though it was too fast for everyone else to see, Makoto did notice that Ibuki tossed it, and is in turn, a very skilled martial artist. She then challenged Ibuki to a fight after school to see who is the best.

After school, Ibuki texts Sarai that she'll be fine, as Makoto await to fights her. Just then, the schoolgirl ninja is grabbed by a Geki ninja, but she warps out of his grasp and tosses kunai blades at him. Ibuki and Geki have a mid-air battle and then she sends him falling. The ninja lands right in front of Makoto. The Rindouken master is shocked to see a real ninja, when suddenly another ninja arrives and kicks him down. Ibuki is surprised at who this other ninja is that 'stole her victory' and dashes after him. Makoto then asks what happened to her fight.

Ibuki later rests in a tree, thinking about all the stuff that's happening to her on her first day back in school. She figures she has to stay away from 'all these crazy martial artists'. Meanwhile in Kenya, Elena discovers that she's just been accepted to go to school in Japan!

My Opinions:

This was a good read and a good set up for what's to come. I almost didn't pick this up since Ibuki was never a character I cared or knew much about. But hey, Makoto and Elena are in the story too, so I might as well check it out. I'm not sure how much of her story is shown in the SFIII games, but we do catch a little of her life and how she mixes her school work with her ninja training. She's also the opposite of Sakura in which while she wants to jump into the world of Street Fighting inspired by Ryu.... Ibuki just wants to be a normal girl and is forced to train based on where she was born.

Makoto is um... wow. She's loud and insane, basically the Karin to Ibuki's Sakura. She acts like she just stepped out of an anime, and is treated accordingly by her classmates. However, her ability to detect that Ibuki threw a kunai so fast that the untrained eye couldn't see (as well as taking down a guy with one punch) shows that she isn't all talk. It's also funny how she was left hanging and waiting for her fight.

And then we have Sarai... who is basically the Kei of the story. The normal girl and kinda/sorta straightwoman to all of Ibuki's antics... or rather misadventures. Again, it seems Ibuki just wants to live her normal life and stuff just happens to her based on the fact that she's a ninja.... while Sakura basically dashes out and looks for trouble herself. She's also more supportive to Ibuki's weirdness, like when she smiled after Ibuki tossed the kunai and save Makoto from an attack from behind. I think Kei would have either sighed or facepalmed that Sakura got involved.

And finally we have the bad guys, the Geki ninja clan. They've already appeared in some Udon comics in some back-up stories, and now they'll take center stage for this story. In case you guys forgot, Geki was one of the characters from the original Street Fighter game. People say the designers were inspired by his claw when it came to designing Vega. And now the character has been expanded to being one of many in an entire ninja clan that's enemies with Ibuki's clan.

Overall great issue, let's see what happens next! And bring on Elena!