Sean Matsuda

• 1. Introduction

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  Sean Matsuda is a playable fighter in Capcom's Street Fighter series, and he exists because another character was not finished in time. While making Street Fighter III: New Generation, the development team realized they were running out of time to complete a character named Hugo. In an interview, Tomoshi Sadamoto explained that they filled the empty slot with Sean, a headswap of Ken Masters. A headswap means an existing character's body with a new face. A fighter born as a stopgap could easily have been forgotten. Instead, Sean became a figure that critics argued over and scholars read for what he says about Brazil. This documentary asks what it means to be built from another character's body. It also asks who Sean turned out to be once players got hold of him.

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• 2. A Borrowed Face

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  Kinu Nishimura designed Sean's look, but she drew only his face. The direction she received was to make the character "dark skinned". Sean stands 175 cm, or 5 ft 9 in, tall. He is a young man with the sides of his head shaved and the top styled into vertical dreadlocks. His outfit is a yellow karate gi with a black belt, and red fingerless martial arts gloves cover his hands.

  The team had trouble with his pierced ears, which they felt were difficult to portray properly in the artwork. They also considered making his palms and the soles of his feet paler. That idea was scrapped during development. Sadamoto, meanwhile, had a specific purpose in mind for how players would use him.

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• 3. The Handicap Question

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  According to Sadamoto, Sean was intended as a "handicap" character. Players could pick him when playing against friends who might not be as skilled. That purpose invited comparison with Dan Hibiki, a joke character introduced earlier in the Street Fighter franchise. Nishimura felt Sean was compared to Dan too often. She did not want him seen only in the context of an older character.

  Time softened the problem. As the years passed, fans began to see Sean as his own character, someone trying to live up to another character's image. Nishimura appreciated that reading. The idea of living up to someone else also runs through his story in the games, which begins with Ken at a local tournament.

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• 4. A Student of Ken

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  In the 1997 game Street Fighter III, Sean Matsuda is a young man of Brazilian and Japanese descent. He is gifted in sports, but he develops an interest in martial arts after seeing Ken Masters perform at a local tournament.

  Martial arts already run through both sides of his family. His grandfather Kinjiro teaches him traditional Japanese jiu-jitsu, and his uncles practice capoeira. Sean begs Ken to take him on as a student, and Ken's friend Ryu assists in his training.

  His endings, however, stress how much he still has to learn. In them, he does not even make it past the qualifying rounds of a local tournament. Isshin Chiba first voiced him, and Mitsuo Iwata took over the role for his appearance in 3rd Strike. A prequel to the game would later widen his family.

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• 5. Sister and Spin-offs

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  Street Fighter V, a prequel to Street Fighter III, introduces Sean's sister Laura Matsuda. She is a fighter who uses their family's jiu-jitsu style. In this game, Sean acts as a supporting character in Laura's storyline. Chris Rickabaugh voices him in English, and Ayumu Murase voices him in Japanese.

  Sean's Basket is a basketball-shooting minigame that was released exclusively in Japan. Sean also appears as an available card in the SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters series. He is a card in TEPPEN too, the mobile game from GungHo Online Entertainment.

  To promote the release of New Generation, merchandise featuring Sean was made, such as phone cards. For the Online Edition of 3rd Strike, player avatar items of the character were released on Sony's PlayStation Network. His image was also used for in-game cosmetic items in Street Fighter 6. The critics who looked back at him reached very different verdicts.

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• 6. Critics Divided

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  Suriel Vazquez and Eric Van Allen of Paste noted that Sean swung from being one of the best characters in 2nd Impact to one of the worst in 3rd Strike. They added that once Ryu and Ken were part of the series, he became a "shadow of everyone". In their view, he was not popular enough to carry his fighting style and not enough of a character to stand on his own.

  Jasper Gavin of Den of Geek felt that Sean took up the role of "the guy that sucks" in Street Fighter III. Gavin also said the role was played in an effective manner. He set Sean beside Dan, noting that both characters took their fighting style in a unique direction. Dan, he wrote, plateaued in ability. Sean "goes for style points and doesn’t understand why he isn’t succeeding". Gavin read that as someone overcompensating for inexperience who still had potential.

  On a podcast about Street Fighter III, the Retronauts team said they were initially quite pleased to see a Brazilian person of color in Sean. Because of how New Generation was developed, though, they saw him as a mishmash of attacks from Ryu and Ken. They felt that suited his role as a "handicap" character. His lack of a proper projectile, compared with Ryu and Ken, struck them as an interesting experiment. It gave players a short-range version of those characters who had to rely on basic attacks for damage.

  They also saw an underlying problem with Street Fighter III as a whole. In their view, the developers were "not respecting the player" by handing over experimental and half-formed characters that broke their own rules. Sean was "the sweetest looking character", they said, yet playing as him was a miserable experience. Researchers asked a different question, one that began with a basketball.

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• 7. Brazil Through Capcom's Lens

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  Rafael Arrivabene and Richard Perassi, professors at Federal University of Santa Maria, wrote a paper on Brazilian characters in the Street Fighter series. Postgraduate student José Roberto Cordeiro was their co-author. They observed that although Sean is defined as Brazilian, he is portrayed as American. His red, white and blue basketball carries those colors, and the sport reflects American culture.

  His fighting style was shown as exaggerated, comical and incomplete. His in-game dialogue, however, shows someone driven and youthful, which they saw as symbolizing Brasil Moleque culture. His use of a headbutt alludes to Vale Tudo, a fighting style iconic to Brazil.

  The authors argued that his talent and dedication, joined with his youthful demeanor, reflected the state of Brazil in the 1990's as a developing culture. They judged it a positive depiction of Brazilians overall. Two other writers looked at the backgrounds behind him instead.

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• 8. Stages and Skylines

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  André de Oliveira Matumoto wrote in Tecendo Sentidos, a journal published by the University of São Paulo. He argued that Sean's stage in New Generation, set in New York City, acted as an erasure of his Brazilian identity. He compared it with the stage of Oro, another Brazilian fighter in the game. Oro is a hermit, and his stage was illustrated in the cave system of Brazil itself.

  In that reading, the game presented America as a place where Sean could pursue his dreams fully, in contrast to an exoticized Brazil. Matumoto felt this effect diminished as the series progressed. Both characters are now located in Brazil, but they show different aspects of who they are as fighters. The sun rises on Sean's stage to represent his role as a pupil. It sets on Oro's to represent his search for an apprentice.

  Bruno Costa Guimarães, in an analysis for Revista Geografia, felt Sean represented another aspect of Brazilian life. He saw the thriving metropolis and the verticality of the country. Sean's "typical" appearance, in contrast to Oro, furthered that reading. Soccer, which Guimarães counted among the Brazilian cultural aspects on display, sits beside the basketball that another paper read as American.

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