E. Honda

**Edmond Honda** (エドモンド本田 *Edomondo Honda*?), more commonly known as **E. Honda**, is a video game character from the *Street Fighter*series, first appearing in *Street Fighter II*. He is an honorable champion Sumo wrestler that values tradition.

## Biography

### Concept

In initial designs for *Street Fighter II*, Honda was dubbed simply "Sumo", and stated that he would be a character recognizable by Americans and popular in Japan.[*citation needed*]

### Appearance

Edmond Honda is an obese yet very muscular Japanese man, seemingly in his late 30s to early 40s. While not having the same height as T. Hawk, Sagat or Zangief, Honda is notably tall, despite not looking so due to his fighting stance with flexed knees and hunchback. He has black hair in a *chonmage* hairstyle and wears only a white and light blue *mawashi* with a striking red *fundoshi* underneath (the later is rarely seen). His face is painted in the *kumadori* style of red makeup used in kabuki. As a sumo wrestler he always fights barefoot, though many artworks depict him wearing a pair of *geta* (traditional Japanese wooden sandals with two "elevated" clogs).

### Personality

E. Honda is an honorable and friendly man who warmly welcomes people he sees as good; he is also ambitious in regards to displaying the strength of sumo to the world, and to that end he always gives his all during his training and fighting regimens. He also enjoys hot steaming baths between training sessions, his favorite spot being Kapukon Yu.

Despite his apparent lack of agility and portrayals in other media as clumsy or silly, Honda is a very powerful sumo grand master. He takes both his sumo art and his "*Rikishi*" title very seriously, considering it a sacred martial art just like any other; Honda often throws a handful of salt in front of him before he begins to fight, in reference to the real-life sumo ritual, often performed as a means of purification (specifically called "shubatsu").

## Gameplay

### Fighting style

Honda's fighting style, as mentioned above, is based on sumo wrestling, although several of his techniques are either entirely unique additions to his basic sumo training or would be outright prohibited in a formal sumo match, as noted by Dan Hibiki and Rufus (who are the only two to bother pointing this out). This undercuts his stated goal of promoting sumo wrestling, though Honda himself seems to be oblivious to his (presumably unintentional) hypocrisy.

### Moveset

In his first appearance in the original *Street Fighter II*, he has two special attacks, the Hundred Hand Slap and the "Super Zutsuki" (commonly referred to as the Flying Headbutt). In *Hyper Fighting*, Honda gains a third special attack, the Flying Sumo Smash, as well as the ability to move while performing his Hundred Hand Slap. In *Super Street Fighter II Turbo*, Honda gained a fourth special move, the Smashing Oak Tree Throw.

Honda's overall style revolves around baiting jumps and surprising opponents with sudden attacks; he can also use the Hundred Hand Slap as a keepaway or pinning option. Like Guile, Honda has a solid mix of offense and defense, but lacks agility as his moves are rather slow and difficult to execute, and many are unsafe on block. Despite being able to rush his opponent, he is vulnerable to counterattacks from various projectiles, and his attacks can be avoided with a proper jump.

### Super/Ultra Combos

In *Super Street Fighter II Turbo*, Honda gained the Super Killer Head Ram (also known as the Oni-Mu-Sou), a powered-up version of his Flying Headbutt. In *Street Fighter Alpha 3*, Honda gains two additional Super Combos, the Fuji Drop and the Orochi Crush. In *Street Fighter IV*, he gains a new Ultra Combo called the Ultimate Killer Head Ram, in which he does a Sumo Headbutt with so much force that he pushes the enemy to the other end of the stage. After the enemy is cornered at the other end of the stage, Honda uses his Hundred Hand Slap many times until he does one final slap against them causes them to crumple.

## TMNT X Pokemon

E. Honda always look for a worthy challenger. When meeting the Turtles, he has taken interest in Michelangelo and declares a challenge. Though at the end Mikey failed, he still had a fun time doing so

## Trivia

* E. Honda is the only one of the original World Warriors not to appear as a playable character in the *EX* series.
	+ Honda is also the only one of the eight world warriors to not appear in *Street Fighter X Tekken*.
	+ In fact, Honda has the fewest crossover appearances of the original world warriors.

* In *Street Fighter X Tekken*, Jack-X has a Swap Costume that is based on E. Honda's design.

* He is one of two people in the iPod Touch version of *Street Fighter IV*, the other person being Sakura, to use their second Ultra Combo instead of the other characters, who have their first one.

* In UDON's *Street Fighter* comics series, all of E. Honda's speech is rendered in red text which, against the white speech bubbles, is evocative of the Japanese flag. The idea is to show E. Honda as a fervent patriot, the same idea behind Zangief's yellow text on red bubbles resembling the colors of the Soviet flag.
	+ Also, in the aforementioned comics, Zangief nicknames Honda *Blue Tsunami*, parallel to his own *Red Cyclone* moniker.

* In the live-action movie, he is from Hawaii instead of Japan.

* The *Street Fighter IV* series is one of the very few games (or perhaps the only one at all) in which Honda's crouching heavy punch does not have sweeping (i.e. crouching heavy kick) properties.