• Source: Yuri Sakazaki

Yuri Sakazaki (Japanese: ユリ・サカザキ, Hepburn: Yuri Sakazaki, sometimes written as 坂崎 ゆり, "Sakazaki Yuri") is a fictional character from SNK's Art of Fighting series of fighting games. She first appears in the original Art of Fighting being kidnapped by Mr. Big, a criminal from the city of South Town. The players, Yuri's brother Ryo and his friend Robert Garcia spend the game searching for her. In the sequel, Yuri appears for the first time as a playable character, having been trained by her father Takuma in the art of the Kyokugen Karate. Yuri has also starred in the anime adaptation from Art of Fighting, in which she reprises her role from the first game. Yuri was created originally as a weak damsel in distress who would become one of SNK's first female fighters following positive response from Mai Shiranui in their related IP Fatal Fury. In order to make up for her weak body, SNK designers decided to make her copy other fighters' moves, most notably the ones from Capcom's Street Fighter. Several voice actress have shared their lent their talent into voicing the character since her debut.
She has appeared in most games from The King of Fighters series, with the notable exception of The King of Fighters XII, participating in the annual tournaments from each title. She initially starts in the Women Fighters Team, but she later moves to the Art of Fighting Team along with her family. She was also featured in the SNK vs. Capcom crossover series as well as in SNK Gals' Fighters. Critical reception Yuri has been mostly positive for her transition from damsel in distress to a fighter in the Art of Fighting series. Her inclusion in The King of Fighters series was noted to give her more variety in her movesets which would appeal to gamers as well as a positive portrayal of fantasy karate and female inclusion in gaming.




Creation and design



Yuri was created to by the SNK member woman spoiled by her older brother Ryo Sakazaki who has to rescue her in the first Art of Fighting video game. Although she was given a tragic past due to her mother's death and her father's disappearance, SNK gave her an upbeat character. For the character voices, they used all pro or semi-pro voice actors. Yuri and King were done by the same person: Harumi Ikoma. Kaori Horie provided her voice since Art of Fighting 2 to The King of Fighters XIII. SNK developer Yasuyuki Oda reflected that both Art of Fighting and the other IP Fatal Fury seemed to appeal to fans of male-oriented series like Fist of the North Star and Dragon Ball. The inclusion of portraying several macho fighters led to dilemma of including more female character with Mai Shiranui standing out as SNK's first female fighter. With Mai's high popularity in Fatal Fury, SNK decided to include Yuri in Art of Fighting 2 as a playable character which received similar response. Yuri's popularity led to the creation of unique characters related to her but none of them made it to the actual game until her ending sequence. Additionally, the Art of Fighting staff wanted Yuri to appear in the game, thus, she was added to the Women Fighters Team as the leader. Once it was announced Yuri would be a playable character in Art of Fighting 2, the staff behind The King of Fighters '94 wanted her to be as part of the cast. She replaced the character Big Bear from King's team due to memory issues. Afterwards, the team added Mai Shiranui to the team and form the Women's Team. Yuri's designer said the character had some bosom animation but not as much as Mai; she spent much work on Yuri's calves. During the development of The King of Fighters '94, there were no female fighter teams, and King, Billy Kane, and Big Bear were planned to appear as the "British team", but due to the development staff's request to include Yuri, she was replaced with Big Bear, who required a lot of space, and Mai was added to form the female fighter team.
According to a staff member, Yuri in the KOF series learns techniques that are reminiscent of someone's technique with each new title. This was done by director Toyohisa Tanabe as he believed Capcom was ahead of their company when creating the Ryo's parody character Dan Hibiki in Street Fighter Alpha. Ever since her introduction in Art of Fighting, Yuri was a weak character who becomes a fighter in a year, using her family's Kyokugen Karate style. Tanabe decided to make Yuri a strong character despite her background, and often borrow techniques from Capcom fighting games out of respect and a fast fashion. The King of Fighters writer Akihiko Ureshino describes Yuri as a "the greatest genius," probably because, although she was originally a girl who was good at sports, it only took her one year to master the secret techniques of her father after she started to train in karate seriously. However, that does not mean that Yuri is the strongest. When discussing genius in the sense of being able to quickly grasp something, then Yuri may indeed be the best. However, Ryo's dedication to the Kyokugen Ryu made him become the strongest student from the dojo. While Yuri's adult life was portrayed in SNK games besides small mentions in the Fatal Fury series, Ureshino believes Yuri might become a mother such timeline and her child would either succeed Ryo's dojo once her brother has retired.
By 1997, when The King of Fighters was at its peak with the Orochi story arc, new works in the Art of Fighting series had already stopped being released. As a result, he recalls fans believing Ryo and Yuri were original KOF characters. They tend to be unable to get involved in the main story and end up in comical roles, but Ryo and the others are more serious characters. For this reason, Ureshino thinks many fans do not want to accept Ryo and the others in KOF. KOF: Maximum Impact marks the first time since Art of Fighting 2 that she has received a new outfit. Such outfit is composed of a green camo print shirt, short pants, dark green gloves and green shoes. In KOF: Maximum Impact 2, some of her extra normal outfits make her look like fellow Kyokugen practitioners; color scheme B makes her look like Ryo (blond hair, orange gi and black tights), while scheme F resembles Robert Garcia's outfit from The King of Fighters '99 to 2002, which consists of brown hair, orange gi with black long-sleeved tights, and no headband.
In making Yuri for The King of Fighters XIII, director Kei Yamamoto stated Yuri wanted the character's moves to focus on kicks something which clashed with Robert Garcia's style who also used the same fighting style . Due to the skill required to perform some of her special attacks, Yamamoto feels Yuri's players to train themselves in order to use her properly. There was originally an attempt to give the character one of Robert Garcia's moves because of both of them handling their lower limbs, but was removed due to not fitting Yuri. Yuri's redesign gave the staff a good impression in how she her sprites changed, especially liking the universal lower body due to her combination of white gi and blue pants. For The King of Fighters XIV, while Yuri retained the same look, SNK aimed to give her character a relaxing theme song when the player fights against the Art of Fighting Team. Similar to previous games, if Yuri is defeated with a special attack, part of her white gi is damaged. Her voice actress was replaced with Ai Kakuma. While in The King of Fighters XIII, Yuri was given a short hair, the SNK staff decided to give her back her braids for The King of Fighters XV in order to make her look more beautiful and give the game a more nostalgic view while still retaining tomboyic style. Outside gaming, Ayumi Hamasaki voiced Yuri in the TV anime special and portrayed her in an Art of Fighting commercial. Veronica Taylor dubbed Yuri in the English dub. In a drama CD, she was voiced by Sakura Tange.




Appearances






= Video games

=
Although Yuri is not playable in the first Art of Fighting game, she plays a big role in the plot as she is kidnapped by the Southtown criminal Mr. Big, causing Ryo Sakazaki and Robert Garcia to search for her throughout the game. In the end, Ryo and Robert fight Mr. Karate, a soldier from Mr. Big taking Yuri as a hostage, but they are stopped by Yuri who reveals that he is Takuma. In Art of Fighting 2, Yuri becomes a playable character, being trained by Takuma after the events from the previous game. Yuri enters into the King of Fighters tournament along with Ryo, Robert and Takuma in order to defeat Geese Howard, the criminal who turned Takuma into Mr. Karate, wanting him to kill people. Yuri uses the lowest-grade Kyokugenryu movelist in the discipline, called the Raiou principle, which taught only the basic and low-level moves and encouraged personal instinct to be used in conjunction with the tutelage. Among Yuri's personally-crafted moves are the Slipstream Handslap and the Big Butt Press. Because of Yuri's ability to craft techniques based on basic Kyokugen principle, Takuma is slowly acknowledging her as a true Kyokugen disciple. In Art of Fighting 3, Yuri is once again unplayable, but she appears along with Ryo searching for Robert, who was helping a childhood friend known as Freya Lawrence. Yuri starts also to be attracted to Robert, something noted by Ryo to the point of telling her to accompany of a journey in the ending.
Yuri is also a playable character in The King of Fighters series first as part of the Women Fighters Team along with Mai Shiranui and King participating in the annual King of Fighters tournaments. In The King of Fighters '96 among other games, Yuri is requested by Takuma to participate in the Art of Fighting Team along with Ryo and Robert as Takuma decided to retire from the team. The King of Fighters '98 too features Yuri playable with her Art of Fighting 2 moveset as a hidden character. However, by The King of Fighters XIV, Takuma fell ill as he had to not only manage the dojo but also his restaurant named "Kyokugen BBQ", thus prompting Yuri to not only leaving her '94 team members for her '96 team members Ryo and Robert, also to surpass her family. Her latest appearance is in The King of Fighters XV alongside Athena and Mai as part of the new "Team Super Heroine".
Yuri appears in the spin-off game The King of Fighters Neowave with the original Women Fighters Team. In The King of Fighters: Kyo the lead character Kyo Kusanagi finds Yuri telling Takuma and Ryo that she wants to return to the Women Fighters Team. After a long discussion, Kyo proposes a fight with them to decide if Yuri can leave. Yuri later appears helping Kyo to find his kidnapped girlfriend Yuki along with Ryo and Robert. She appears as an assistant character in The King of Fighters EX for the Art of Fighting Team, and as a playable character along with Ryo and Takuma in The King of Fighters EX2. She is also featured in the spin-offs KOF: Maximum Impact and Maximum Impact 2 participating in new tournaments from Southtown. The spin-offs King of Fighters R-1 and King of Fighters R-2 feature Yuri as part of the Super Babe Team alongside Athena Asamiya and Kasumi Todoh. Although Yuri does not appear in the Fatal Fury, she is mentioned of having her own fitness gym in the upcoming Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves as Ryo's student Marco Rodriguez uses her gym to train.
Additionally, she stars in most games from the SNK vs. Capcom series except SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos (where she makes a cameo appearance in Ryo's and Mr. Karate's endings). In the crossover SNK Gals' Fighters Yuri appears as a playable character with her wanting to start her own gym, while she also appears in SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy. She is furthermore present in the cellphone games such as KOF Gals Mahjong, The King of Fighters '98 Ultimate Match Online, The King of Fighters All Star and Kimi wa Hero. Her character design serves as downloadable content in Dead or Alive 5 Last Round, as well as Lucent Heart. In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, she has a cameo appearance as a background character on the King of Fighters Stadium stage.




= Other appearances

=
Yuri appears in various SNK manga and in the Art of Fighting anime adaptation which retells the story from the first game but with Mr. Big wanting to obtain a diamond that Ryo and Robert found. She is voiced by Ayumi Hamasaki in the Japanese version and by Veronica Taylor in the English dub. In Shinkiro's manga, Yuri's backstory is told as it is revealed Ryo raises following Takuma's disappearance. She is briefly mentioned in Buriki One by a middle aged Ryo. For The King of Fighters Destiny, Yuri has a disagreement with her family over the idea of competition, resulting in the formation of the Women Fighters Team. Additionally, a oneshot retells the first game but with Ryo saving Yuri from King. She is also featured in The King of Fighters: A New Beginning, facing Meitenkun. An alternate Yuri also appears in the isekai light novel The King of Fantasy siding with fellow character Iori Yagami who finds himself lost in this world where Yuri lives. An action figure of her character was released by SNK Playmore. Many statuette figures have been released by various manufacturers.




Promotion and reception



A The King of Fighters maid cafe was done in 2017 in Osaka, where not only drinks inspired by Yuri's character were made but maids also appeared wearing Yuri's outfit. In an Art of Fighting commercial, Yuri was portrayed by her own voice actress Ayumi Hamasaki whom the writer praised for keeping in-character during the entire video.
Tiago O. Frosi from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul regarded Yuri as one of the most impactful female characters in fighting game history due to how she initially debuts as a damsel in distress only to become a playable character both in the sequel and SNK's crossover video games. She was compared with Street Figther character Sakura Kasugano for having similar archetypes as well as an imitated fighting style from veteran fighters. Manga artist Nobuhiro Watsuki designed the character of Makimachi Misao for the Rurouni Kenshin manga series with similarities to Mai Shiranui and Yuri, comically saying he was "making his own grave" due to the similarities with the SNK characters.
Gavin Jasper of Den of Geek described her as adding to her family's "wonderful comedic existence", but felt she was more at place there than in King of Fighters as part of the Women's Team. He added "She’s not quite Sakura and she’s not quite Dan Hibiki, but she’s fine for what she is," and praised her departure from a damsel in distress to a full character as the games progressed. Den of Geek also noted that the Art of Fighting Team in general has been characterized as more comical characters in The King of Fighters than in Art of Fighting though in XI they accidentally created their own rival which further expands the humor. In retrospect, Tiago Oviedo Frosi wrote that Gichin Funakoshi's "Shōtōkan" is the most practiced style of Karate in the world, this was the style chosen to characterize most of the Street Fighter characters. The Kyokugenryu the cast from uses in Art of Fighting instead comes across as a fantasy version of the "knockout" Kyokushinkaikan created by Mas Oyama who serves as an influence for both Ryu's and Yuri's characters. However, most of Yuri's variation of the Kyokugen style are deemed as comic gags which she copies. DieHardGameFan referred to the young fighter as "wonderful adorable obnoxious completely batshit ludicrous Yuri" due to how hilarious she is, making it his favorite SNK fighter as well as superior to the Dead or Alive characters he also enjoys. As a result, he enjoyed Yuri's debut in Art of Fighting 2 as a playable character due to her hilarious interactions.
Elvortex noted that Yuri became popular for acting as SNK's own response to Dan Hibiki as she also starts parodying Street Fighter characters especially Ryu by imitating their own moves in several The King of Fighters games. Geek.com considered this a "game wars" as the two companies kept referencing each other since the creation of Street Fighter and Art of Fighting and the latter characters felt like jokes in general from each side.




References






External links


Quotations related to Yuri Sakazaki at Wikiquote

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