Karin Kanzuki

**Karin Kanzuki**is the master of ??? in the ??? Holy Grail war.

"I'll show you the divide in our class!" —Karin (Street Fighter V)

## Profile

### Background

Karin is the daughter of Daigenjuro Kanzuki and his wife Nadeshiko Kanzuki; their butler is Ishizaki‎, and Shibazaki is the family steward. Karin's father Daigenjuro is a rather strict man as he constantly pushes his daughter into becoming a better heir to the Kanzuki family fortune, as he wanted a son.

The wealthy Kanzuki family's mottos are "All you need is victory" (also interpreted as "Be the winner in everything") and, alternately, "The worst we'll ever be is the best" (a bonus short in the Street Fighter III: Ryu Final manga takes this further with "Victorious, therefore Supreme! Supreme, she is Karin Kanzuki!"). Her family's private estate covers 200 miles of land, and not only has its own geographical features but its own climate. The Kanzukis are even wealthier than the Masters, so rich that they have their own satellite called "Red Spider-Lily". Karin was given a son's upbringing because her father always wanted a male heir to his conglomerate.

Additionally, Karin was given several tests by her father to complete or else she would be disqualified from inheriting the family fortune. Her first test was when she was nine years old, where she was taken to the woods with meager food and water; she had to come home safely or else she'd be disowned (her father struggled two weeks to accomplish this when he was her age, but Karin polished the trial off in four days). Another test, based solely on her gender, was that if she didn't charm at minimum 5,000 of the world's gentlemen she cannot inherit the family fortune (she passed this test too, and her mother Nadeshiko is said to have charmed 50,046 gentlemen, including her husband, to see if Nadeshiko would qualify to be Daikenjuro's wife). Yet another test required her to stop a stampede of fifty wild bulls, single-handedly stopping a running of the bulls at age fourteen. Karin subdued fifty bulls in all, beating her father's record by one.
The Kanzuki corporation is threatened by Shadaloo, which makes demands of the dynasty. She uses the family fortune in an attempt to track down Shadaloo, as well as confronting a roving Sakura to challenge her again. Along the way, she encounters Blanka and defeats him in a friendly match, musing that "the world is so vast" for such a beast to exist. She also encounters R. Mika and battles her, and is so impressed by Mika's ability that she offers the wrestler her sponsorship. Karin eventually finds and defeats Sakura, but realizes the victory was a fluke, and that the fight itself is more important, not winning or losing (as Ken Masters told her this previously).

A few years later, she is now the head of the Kanzuki Zaibatsu, having succeeded her father; it is also confirmed that she still is R. Mika's sponsor.

### Appearance

Karin's outfit appearance has been altered from her original school uniform into a business suit-esque outfit but has still a resemblance to the original in palette and design. She wears a red long sleeve jacket with a blue frill shirt and white frill folded sleeves underneath and a white ascot tie at the center of her collar, a red frill skirt, and black tights.

### Personality

Karin's laugh and mannerisms are derived from the unpleasant "ojou" stereotypes common in anime and manga as well as the "rich person"/"popular schoolgirl"/"spoiled brat" stereotypes of Western fiction; while she typically remains snobbish and haughty as per the standard, other aspects of her personality can vary wildly in other media. In Namco x Capcom, Karin is calmer, more level-headed and cynical, and serves as the voice of reason for the impulsive Sakura (though she still retains her trademark laugh and condescending comments during battle sequences). In the UDON comics, on the other hand, she is extremely hateful and competitive to the point of obsessiveness, making her much more of an antagonist. Throughout the franchise, she does retain her mannerisms and snobbiness and a habit of acting before thinking.

Typical of some rich girls in fictional media, Karin usually refers to other people as "commoners", or inferiors. She lives by her family's motto more than the rest of her family, as she takes majority control of her father's company from under his nose in a hostile takeover (ironic, since he was the one to drive that philosophy into her).

After Karin finds and eventually defeats Sakura in a rematch, she feels that she won only "by chance" and finally admits that Sakura is actually the best of them. Karin then decides to ditch her family's motto of "always winning" (at least when concerning martial arts) and starts to praise fighting itself as more important than victory or defeat, showing a bit of humility.

One of Sakura's Versus mode win quotes in the Street Fighter IV games implies that she and Karin have become friends sometime after Street Fighter Alpha 3.

In Street Fighter V, her character has somewhat changed. As new head of the Kanzuki Zaibatsu, she is proper and polite at all times, but her haughty demeanor has been replaced, to a degree, by a new respect towards her opponents, and an interest in new and unique fighting styles; while still capable of making unflattering comments towards them if they don't meet her expectations, she seems to have lived up to her previous realization that it is the challenge, not the victory, that is important. By this time, her friendship with Sakura is confirmed, although their rivalry is very much present still. It is shown in the character stories of some characters that she is truly interested in fighting and usually greet people with a fight, even when they didn't really want it, like Ibuki or Dhalsim.

## Abilities

Though she styles herself as a rival to Sakura, Karin uses the Kanzuki style martial arts, a style she created herself, instead of the "original" style Sakura uses. Karin has a wide array of strikes, throws and potent reversals, and she prides herself on being able to handle any opponent she faces. She prefers to keep her opponents guessing by varying the speed of her attacks, and also makes them second-guess their own choice of moves for fear of her powerful counterattacks.

She is well versed in various forms of Bushido, military arts, and "combative sports". This was probably mistranslated from a term that meant "combat sports", which includes various events (e.g. Japanese pro wrestling and Mixed Martial Arts groups). The sum of all her accomplishments in the field of martial arts is equivalent to 100 dan and 8 kyu (the Japanese ranking system for martial arts, among other things).

Though in-game her style is explained as the result of a mixture of several disciplines, her moves actually reflect a big influence of the real life Chinese martial art of Bajiquan, having the hallmarks of the style such as elbow attacks, palm strikes, explosive motions, double front kicks and most importantly, the Tetsuzanko move, a powerful shoulder smash.

# References

https://streetfighter.fandom.com/wiki/Karin