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Dan Hibiki (火引 弾: Hibiki Dan) is a character from Capcom's Street Fighter series of video games. Dan is consistently portrayed as an arrogant, overconfident, yet utterly
weak character in each game he is featured in. The name "Dan" is not short for "Daniel" but is Japanese for "bullet". However,
English-speaking fans often pronounce the name as though it were short for "Daniel", rather than its proper pronunciation
"Dahn".
Dan Hibiki is actually a parody of the games and characters of rival game producer SNK. He
was first seen in an illustration of the Street Fighter character Sagat, who was depicted holding the limp body of a fighter who
has the body of Ryo Sakazaki and head of Robert Garcia, the two protagonists of SNK's Art of Fighting. Later, in the game Street Fighter Alpha, there is an animated sequence of Sagat holding
and throwing aside a character resembling the Ryo/Robert combination. Dan himself appears in the game as a secret character, and
can either be selected as the player's character or fought as a CPU opponent. He could be seen with an orange Gi (like Ryo's) or
his now-trademark pink Gi. In the game, Dan was distinguished by his ineffective special attacks, such as a fireball with a
comically short range, and his ability to taunt his opponents infinitely, much like the characters in Art of Fighting. Despite
this clownishness, he is generally a decent character in most of the games in which he's featured.
In Street Fighter Alpha 2, the character was made into a normally-selectable fighter. In later games, Dan's ability
to taunt was expanded into a number of various techniques, special moves, and even super moves (hence introducing the term "super
taunt" to the fighting game vernacular). He still exists to mock and parody other games and characters, and his satirical nature
makes him popular among fans.
The parody continued in the SNK VS. Series, where both Capcom and SNK games had a running gag where Dan was often mistaken for Ryo or Robert, or,
especially in the SNK games, where Dan parodied even more of Ryo's attacks.
In Dan's backstory, his father Go Hibiki was a rival of the character Sagat. It is revealed that after Go put out Sagat's eye,
he was killed in response. Because of this, Dan sought revenge on Sagat, training to become a fighter, but was expelled from his
dojo when his motivations were learned. Dan thus developed his own style of Ansatsuken (mistranslated as Shotokan) Karate merged with Muay Thai elements and called Saikyou-ryuu, or "The Strongest Style." After the evnets of Street Fighter
Alpha 3, Dan believed he had achieved his revenge by defeating Sagat (who had actually thrown the fight), and his motivation
switched to promoting and expanding his Saikyou-ryuu school, even to the point of offering exercise videos and correspondence
courses.
Dan was briefly an instructor to Sakura Kasugano, and was a
childhood friend of Blanka. The character Ran Hibiki in the game series Rival Schools shares a number of similarities with Dan and is inferred that the
two are related. A partner of Ran is Iincyo,
who learned to fight from a Saikyou-Ryuu correspondence course. In his ending in Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street
Fighter, an unnamed sister of Dan appears, parodying the ending of Art of Fighting. Go Hibiki appears in Pocket Fighter and Card Fighters Clash,
wearing a Tengu mask, a parody of Mr. Karate from Art of Fighting, who also
wears a Tengu mask and was actually Takuma,
the father of Ryo Sakazaki.
Memorable Quotes
Related Characters
See Also
External links
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