During yesterday’s Street Fighter League Pro-JP matches, we saw something quite unprecedented.
C. Viper, the game’s newest character, who had been out for about two weeks at the time saw some absolutely huge representation with four different players picking her, in fact leading to her being played in every single team matchup. Given that this is a competition featuring Japan’s absolute best, it definitely bodes well for the character’s future prospects.
It started off with the very first match of the day between Victrix FAV Gaming and Nagoya NTPOJA where FAV|Fujimura picked her in his battle against NOJA|Otani’s Ken, with this pick being a clear homage to his original name Yukadon (which means “floor slam”, directly picked because of C. Viper’s Seismic Hammer).
While Fujimura ended up losing the match, it was a close one and definitely showed what C. Viper is capable of. Despite Fujimura’s rebranding some years ago, it’s clear that the Yukadon name is still one he holds dear, and we’re likely to see more C. Viper from him in the future.
The second set of the day saw Saishunkan Sol Kumamoto going up against Crazy Raccoon, and after being tied up with 10 points each the final match loomed. In this final match, CR|Kazunoko known far and wide for his status as a technical player picked C. Viper and made quick work of Saishunkan|Machabo’s Ryu in a very convincing 3-0 set.
Given Kazunoko’s reputation as one of Japan’s best players, also being known as a multi-game specialist, C. Viper’s technical nature hardly seems foreign to him and it seems like he’s set to thrive using her.
In the final set between Good 8 Squad and CAG Osaka we first had G8S|Kawano, one of Japan’s strongest competitors. He made a somewhat questionable post on X talking about how his entire life has been consumed by thoughts of Viper, leading to this possibly being something more of a meme pick for him.
Before the match, Kawano said that this will be the “first and last time” that he uses C. Viper in tournament, further lending credence to it being more of a joke than anything, and he unceremoniously lost to CAG|Takagi’s Blanka. Whether we’ll see the return of Kawano’s C. Viper in the future remains to be seen.
After tying up with 20 points each, the Good 8 Squad vs. CAG Osaka set went into a tiebreaker. This was perhaps the most surprising one because both G8S|Pugera and CAG|Uryo ended up picking the same character — C. Viper.
When you know both players, it’s not too surprising. Pugera has had a habit of picking the newest character as they come out for a while now in Street Fighter 6, showing prowess with both Elena and Sagat recently after their respective releases.
As for Uryo, he used to be a C. Viper player for some time back in the Street Fighter 4 days, though he’s perhaps most fondly remembered now for his Sakura play.
This storied experience of C. Viper play ended up being a decisive factor as Uryo proved himself simply much more competent with the character and swept Pugera in a 2-0 situation.
You can check out the full archive of the episode below, with timestamps in the video itself to bring you to specific matches. While the timestamps are written in Japanese, you can at least easily navigate between matches to find where they start and end.
This level of picking a brand new character is essentially unprecedented, and with Japan being the biggest region for Street Fighter 6 it speaks very well to the potential of the character’s growth in the future.
We’re looking forward to seeing what C. Viper brings to the table as the competitive season draws closer to its end with our eyes firmly locked at the final Capcom Pro Tour Premier tournament this weekend in Chengdu, China.