SNK VS Capcom Chaos Volume 5

By Mark Rodriguez

This crazy comic pits fighters from SNK and Capcom in a parallel world tournament, where the only way to enter is by dying in the real world. Due to Bison nuking the world, most everyone of note ended up there. You can die three times, with the third being fatal... and the winner of this tournament will have their one wish granted. The bad guys team up to take down the good guys. The good guys team up promising that if one of them does win in the end, to wish everything back to normal.

Along the way, Ryu has lost his self confidence after his death at the hands of Sagat. Ryo Sakazaki offers to help, while Dan tags along. Elsewhere, Ken has emerged with a strong desire for power. Bison has his science team power him up, but Ken is so powerful he couldn't get brainwashed. In a battle to test his new skill, Ken kills Bison with a simple Hadouken!! Elsewhere, Geese Howard's overconfidence seems to be his undoing as he challenges all the good guys all at once. Terry Bogard, Mai Shiranui, Guile, Dhalsim and the rest kick the crap out of Geese so hard, they send him flying off a skyscraper. What will happen now, and is Geese really going to die? Let's find out.

The comic opens with Bison's scientists and Choi being shocked that the Master of Shadaloo has been killed so easily. Red Arremer reveals his plans to Ken, he doesn't care wether the good or evil team wins, he wants to bring chaos and destroy the cosmos. And Ken will be his main weapon of destruction. Arremer tells Ken that he is beyond fighting in some tournament in exchange for a wish, he would gain greater strength by fighting cosmos. Ken agrees and runs off laughing insanely. The scientists say that the brainwashing worked, turning Ken from a hero to a psycho. Choi asks what they should do now. Arremer will go help Geese fight against the heroes, and ends up challenging Kyo.

Kyo's fire attacks do nothing to Red Arremer, since the demon controls actual hellfire. Kyo is knocked back and bombarded by fireballs. Kyo is completely engulfed in flames.... but when the smoke clears, he is alright, having absorbed all of the flames inside him. Kyo explains the demon's flames have abandoned him and want no part in his plans to destroy chaos and cosmos. Arremer charges in and decided to fight him with physical attacks. Kyo soon overpowers Arremer with his special techniques. The demon tries to use his own fire again, but Kyo is able to control them now and yanks Arremer to him by his own flames ala Scorpion. Kyo prepares to finish him off with his Super Special Move.

Meawhile, Ryu, Ryo and Dan continue on their quest. Ryu and Ryo feel great strength on the area and know the ones they are looking for are near. Dan calls out for Akuma and Mr. Karate, and Ryu and Ryo split up, sensing that they are coming. Dan tries to follow, but trips and falls like a big dumbass. When he gets up, the other two are gone and he is left alone. Suddenly Akuma appears right behind Dan, looking bloodied up, and demands that he help him if he doesn't want to die. Why does Akuma need Dan's help?

Elsewhere the heroes continue the fight against Geese. Kyo arrived to help and a badly wounded and defeated Red Arremer lands nearby. With both of the villains badly wounded, Tessa declares that the battle will soon be over. Geese gets an evil idea and kills the monster, absorbing his demoinc powers. Guile charges towards him to attack with his Sonic Hurricane. The attack dissolves and Geese walks past Guile. The military man suddenly explodes due to Geese's unseen attack. Geese announced he has just returned from the gates of hell and is ready to show everyone the true meaning of horror. Sounds like Freeza.

Geese remember his childhood and how he grew up to become a crime boss in South Town, until he was killed. He continued to see the same dream over and over, being unable to open a door in front of him. When he finally managed to open it, he saw the spirits of all the people he killed, and he understood that he controls death. The heroes don't know what to do now as Geese starts walking towards them. Kim Kaphwan waits no longer and jumps at him with his Phoenix Kick. Geese merely touches his foot with his fingertip, and the tae kwon do master soon explodes. Kim has died for the second time.

Terry flies into Geese with his Power Dunk (always sounded like he said Power Dive to me) and Geese easily catches him and throws him to the side. Geese has always considered Terry to be his greatest nemesis and will tend to him after he's done killing the others. He stares at Dhalsim and Terry and his power is so great, they become destroyed as well. Kyo wonders how he can kill such a monster.

Akuma grabs Dan and uses his teleport dash to travel across the woods and into a cave. There Akuma tosses Dan to the ground, and Dan notices that his wounds are getting worse. Akuma explains that he was fighting against Mr. Karate in the real world when both of their powerful techniques killed the other and they ended up in the parallel world. They've been fighting it out ever since and have both died twice. This wounded Akuma is the final one. He asks Dan to kill Mr. Karate for him.

Akuma offers to teach Dan how to be stronger and tosses a Gou Hadou Ken at him. Dan fears the worst, but Akuma manages to make it dissolve seconds before hitting him. Akuma explains that Dan has not learned to control his aura, and he tells him to try to use it to destroy one of the cave's stone walls. Dan is surprised that he actually smashed the wall, but he also ended up destroying the entire cave. Now with more power, Akuma sends Dan to find and kill Mr. Karate.

Ryu finds Mr. Karate, meditating against a tree and in bad shape. Ryu tells him that Ryo is looking for him, and Mr. Karate says he doesn't know him. He gets fed up with Ryu and attacks him with a Haou Shikou Ken.

Geese stands in front of Kyo and Terry, and the Lone Wolf steps up to finish their fated battle. Kyo steps aside. Terry powers up and dashes at Geese with his Burning Knuckle, but Geese manages to grab and counter it, and hit Terry in the face with a Shippuken. Terry musters up his final strength and tries to finish him off with his Power Geyser, but Geese deflects it in mid air. He then lands on Terry with a punch to the gut and then uses his Gates of Hell technique to kill the Lone Wolf. As he dies, Terry tells Kyo 'time, attack, heart'. But what does that mean?

Kyo trusts Terry's words and starts the fight. Geese manages to block Kyo's attacks, taking note of his strength. Geese then smashes his fist into Kyo's abdomen and jumps back. Kyo says he will now face the consequences of his actions, as the hits Kyo landed earlier start to burn up against Geese's chest. Kyo jumps in and follows up the attack, aiming all his strikes at his heart. Geese still grabs Kyo and tosses him into the air, getting ready to kill him with the Gates of Hell technique. While in mid-air, Kyo says he understands Terry's words and punches his own chest, stopping his heart... moments before Geese hits him with his deadly technique.

Meanwhile, Ryu blocks Mr. Karate's attack with his Shinku Hadoken. Karate says he has fought Akuma multiple time and knows they're from the same school. He says he has no chance to defeat Akuma and also senses that Ryu has lost confidence in himself. Ryu tries his best but is easily defeated by Karate's techniques. He catches Ryu's punch and throws him to the ground and is about to swing his fist down at his face. Suddenly he is attacked from behind by multiple fireballs that send him flying. Dan has arrived, now with actual power, and tells Ryu that he will help fight against Mr. Karate. Just as Karate gets ready to face Dan, Ryo shows up and asks him if he is really his father.I hope the comic has a good explanation for this one, cause the game sure didn't.

Violent Ken arrives in front of Genjuro, Shiki and Demitri, who all have similar goals... to skip the tournament and take the fight directly to Goddess Athena, Cap and Shiki themselves. Just then a violent wind strikes, strong enough to send a nearby battleship flying. Goenitz, one of Orochi's 4 kings has arrived and he tells them that if they intend to attack the heavenly team, they will need his help.

enter one of SNK's cheapest bosses

Kyo is attacked by Geese's Gates of Hell technique, but due to his heart being stopped at the moment, and thus technically already dead, the technique doesn't work on him and comes off as an ordinary strike. He charges at Geese to finish him off, but Geese prepares to use his Exceed attack. Kyo and Geese hit each other at the same time... who will win? Who will die?

Elsewhere, Akuma is meditating and healing up, when Bison appears before him, wanting revenge on Arremer. Bison flies at Akuma with his Mega Psycho Crusher, and Akuma dashes at him with his Tenma Gou Zankuu... and kills the Shadaloo dictator within seconds. Akuma smiles evily and hopes Dan finishes off Mr. Karate soon so his plans can be complete. Akuma then sense an aura with great wind, and soars off to find it.

Ryo asks Mr. Karate to remove his mask if he says he really isn't his father. Karate apologizes and Ryo seems to understand. Dan wants to continue the mission that Akuma sent him for, while Ryu wonders why. Ryo isn't going to let Dan hurt his father and tells him to step aside. Ryu steps up to also tell Dan to leave Karate alone. Dan doesn't want to fight Ryu, but has to in order to get to Mr. Karate and fires off a Ga Dou Ken at him, which Ryu counters with a Hadouken. Ryo offers Karate the chance to heal up, and he soon leaves to do so.

quite literally, Dan's dream come true

Ryu and Dan fight it out, actually on somewhat even grounds. Ryo notes that Dan does have some talent but he never had a real master to learn how to use it properly. Dan strikes with his Gadou Shokou Ken and Ryu counters with his Shakunetsu Hadouken. Between Dan having new power and Ryu's of confidence, the battle is looking bad for Ryu. Dan vanishes and appears behind Ryu and strikes him with his Kyuukyoku Tenchi Gadou Zuki.

Goentiz tells the others he will lead them in their battle against heaven, but Ken says he won't get that right so easily. He flies into Goenitz with his Tatsumaki Senpuu Kyakuu, but Goenitz stops him cold by summon a tornado right in front of him. Goentiz vanishes and appears right in front of Ken. He grabs him and slams him into the ground.

Something strange seems to happen between Ryu and Dan as Dan still his fist buried into Ryu's back. Karate tells Ryo to quickly separate them. Ryo fires off a Kou Oh Ken that separates the two, but now Ryu's eyes are full of killing intent. Karate says Akuma used Dan to awaken Ryu's darkness hidden within. Ryu, now consumed by the darkness, tosses a Killing Hadouken that destroys a big part of the forest. Ryo tells him to not give in to the evil, or he will have to kill himself. Just then Dan is suddenly killed by purple flames. Orochi Iori has arrived, being drawn by Ryu's power.

Elsewhere, Geese and Kyo are still locked in combat as they both hit each other with their killing strikes. Unfortunately for Kyo, he is the only one to die, as Geese somehow manages to survive. Geese laughs at his amazing nightmarish powers, until someone else appears to challenge him. It's Ryu. But.. this is happening at the same time that Ryu is back at the forest with Orochi Iori. Who is this other Ryu?

Kyo is resurrected in the Crystal Shrine in front of Goddess Athena who has summoned him there purposely. She tells him that something is horribly wrong in the parallel world and the rules are getting broken. She needs his help because if the parallel world is destroyed... all the fighters go down with it.

My Opinions- 

Things are heating up as the story now goes beyond who will win the tournament, but also the villains wants to destroy the parallel world for whatever reason, which threatens to destroy everybody. I'm not sure why they want to do that, unless of course, Red Arremer is using his team as pawns and plans to destroy Heaven... but why does Goenitz want to help?

The main battle in this part of the story (since these are basically 4 or 5 books into one volume) are the ones against Geese. Having gained the powers of a demon, he is literally Nightmare Geese, that what if character from some of the Fatal Fury games that brings Geese back from the dead as a demon. Now he is so powerful he can kill lesser opponents just by staring at them. It was surprising to see Kyo die in vain, since his intention was to die and take Geese down with him, even after that dramatic heart-stop strategy he had.

As for Mr. Karate, it's plain to see that he is Takuma Sakazaki, and Ryo seems to understand that he is up to something, but I hope they somehow justify why he's suddenly powerful enough to rival Akuma in this game. I also noticed his mask does change facial expressions, from smiling to gnashing his teeth in anger. But dude... it IS a mask right? There's even a scene where Ryo directly asks him to take off his mask. If it's a tengu mask, then why can it change facial expressions as if it was actually Takuma's face?

As for Akuma killing Bison in seconds.... that was actually kinda funny. Bison is so extremely arrogant and full of himself, he must be frothing at the mouth in hell that he died twice by cheap shots.

It's nice to see Dan get some actual power for once. I think some people did comment on how powerful he was as a playable character in the SVC Chaos game, so maybe this is their way of establishing that. It's funny how Ryo and Karate keep saying he has 'talent' since his moves are basically ripped off from the Art of Fighting games. Still don't like the ugly art style they use whenever they want to make Dan have those cartoonish anime facial reactions. It's they're trying to draw him do an anime wild take, while still keeping the art with realistic colors and shadings. It looks weird and those big lips are just.... no. Just no.

Ryu appears in two places at once. I did see some covers of the other volumes as I was ordering this one and noticed that one of them is Chun Li dressed as her yellow variant. This Ryu that appears in front of Geese is dressed as his blue-grey variant from SF 2 Champion Edition. That's actually a pretty cool concept as the character will face doppelganger versions of themselves, but dressed in the colors of their alternates from the games. I really want to see how this gets explained next issue or so.

I will try to get the next volumes as soon as I can, however some might be skipped. Some of these later volumes cost up to 400 bucks now and there's no way I'm dropping that much cash for a book. Hopefully I'll get lucky at a con or two and pick up some of these issues.

To read up on Volume 6 (which I eventually found at a decent price) go to SVC Chaos Volume 6