Not sure what you mean by this. The udon art style is clearly based on the artwork that bengus,nishimura, akiman,etc created for the series during the 90s. Not the other way around. They didn't even start publishing sf comics till the early 00s.

It's not quite his SF4 look, either, his hair in that game went to his shoulders and was a bit wilder. Figures like the Playarts Kai version captured that look a lot more accurately, this one doesn't match much of anything.

Yes, and the majority of Street Fighter stuff has come out after 2003. Sure, there was a few things (the before mentioned Hasbro Street Fighter toys, Resaurus line), but Street Fighter being seen as retro nostalgia, akin to Rainbow Brite or He-Man, is rather recent. I never said Udon invented the anime style for Street Fighter. As I said, quite clearly, Street Fighter 2 had anime-style artwork from the beginning. Udon's artwork, however, is what I see EVERYWHERE on the majority of Street Fighter swag from keychains to coffee mugs, so obviously Capcom tells licensors to look at Udon as the principle reference for characters, otherwise we'd be seeing a ton of the horrible "realistic" art from the western SNES instruction booklets.

I'm not doubting that you're seeing Udon stuff used on official merch (I have as well) but, I don't think its as one-sided as you're implying. I think there's still a fair amount of post-2003 merch that is based on the artwork from the 90s Capcom team. The Sota line, the stuff Neca did was from the in-game SF4 models, Pop Culture Shock have put out statues that look like they're based on old Capcom art...I remember commenting here recently on a PCS Ken that was almost verbatim to Kinu Nishimura's illustration for SF3.

http://sfgalleries.net/art/sf4/ssf4/...2/ssf4-ken.jpg
http://news.toyark.com/wp-content/up...-Preview-2.jpg

I doesn't look that much off. In fact it looks like a mirror version of the render pic to me.

Sakura and Ken SH Figuarts Street Fighter Update - The Toyark - News

http://news.toyark.com/wp-content/up...F4-Ken-001.jpg

http://news.toyark.com/wp-content/up...Sakura-005.jpg

I will get both, looking good.

Not sure if it's just me, but it looks like they tweaked the eyes on Sakura slightly since the last promo. They seem to be slightly smaller now on the static expression.

Yup the SF4 look, I wanna preorder this as soon as possible.

I think I will preorder this on Entertainment Earth.

The render maybe is close but it's not the in-game graphic look. Like I said Play Arts did it better. I've played enough SF4 to know how I expect Ken to look, and this isn't it.

Hmm, I've just started building my SF collection from off of eBay and I gotta say that the SOTA Ken face seemed like a better match and the fact that they included his long hair from SF3, which is now also in SFV, seems more desirable.
I actually like that Sakura actually looks young, compared to the Play Arts version. That one just seemed borderline inappropriate in that they sculpt was full grown woman squeezed into a 10 year olds clothes, which was probably a selling point for some, but not me.
That said I'll probably get all of this line by some point or another.

The Tamashii Nations site says it's based on it so that's enough for me.

Our look at Ken and Sakura are up:

S.H. Figuarts Street Fighter Ken and Sakura Gallery - The Toyark - News

And here's the line up so far. Who knows if it will continue...

http://news.toyark.com/wp-content/up...-Sakura-44.jpg

IMHO the line failed with releases as Rainbow Mika and especially Rashid being a new character without nostalgia. Maybe with Sakura Kasugano...
There were a lot of complaints how Cammy looks from the back in her famous pose. Not enough classic characters, trying to be a jack of all trades across the releases, design issues...
I'm glad I cancelled the rest of the releases I had pre-ordered. I only have Ryu, Ken and Chun-Li. I would get Cammy, Akuma and Sakura if Guile, Blanka, etc. The original SF2 WW cast gets released.

The Super Mario Bros. line failed with Bowser; too expensive and too small; way out of scale! Jakks Bowser is superior imo. so Figuarts decided to can the line based on 1 figure!!!

Where's TMNT Shredder? What happened to that?

No enemies for the Sailor Moon line... At least all inner and outer senshi's were released.

Figuarts frustrates me to no end with these properties.
Keep it up and I lose faith in any new properties they pick up and don't even bother.

Rainbow Mika isn't a new character. She was first introduced in Street Fighter Alpha 3, which originally came out in 1998. Unless you were JUST referring to Rashid being new, in which case I misunderstood you.

But regardless, Mika is a popular character, so a figure makes sense.

According to a video posted by Pixel Dan a while back, the Figuarts Shredder was put on indefinite hiatus (i.e. cancelled).

He was referring to just Rashid. The reason Rashid was selected because it started out as SFV line but then Akuma, Ken and Sakura deviated from that.

i thought i'd be all in on all of these...but some of them just don't make me want them.
i have 5 of the 8.
They do look good together though.

I think the females in the line look a lot better than the male figures.

They released a few enemy packs after Bowser, but the Mario line didn't seem to be a big seller. You can buy most of them at a discount without trouble.

Well there is Black Lady, but other than that, I feel the pain, but it's really not unexpected. Japanese toy lines just don't do a lot of bad guys.

Figuarts in particular only really does villains for DBZ, but that's probably because of it being their number one property and they make a lot of extra capital selling fans multiples of Gokus and Vegetas so they can afford more original and unique characters (kind of like what Hasbro does with Marvel Legends).

Blanka Possibly Joining The S.H. Figuarts Street Fighter Line - The Toyark - News

http://news.toyark.com/wp-content/up...rts-Blanka.jpg

Round 2, Fight!...BLANKA wins...

Bring them on!

Great release! Just wish the others would come first that are more popular like M Bison or Sagat, even E Honda would be cool!