Blanka

Biography

Personality 

Blanka is generally passive and docile, and is fond of family connections and friendships as well as children, as seen in the animated series. Yet, when angered, Blanka attacks like a wild animal let loose from a cage, ferociously attacking his opponents with predatorial rage.

Concept 

Designed by Akira "Akiman" Yasuda, the concept behind Blanka emerged in an early design as an African man named Anabebe who was raised by a lion. After the release of Final Fight, Capcom again approached Street Fighter II and considered several designs for the Blanka character (including a masked wrestler modeled after Tiger Mask and a ninja-style warrior). His prototypical name was "Big Dean Caves". His design later changed to a large man with thick hair and sideburns, named "Hammer Blanka". The staff then adopted Blanka's feral appearance, because they felt the game would be "dull" with only human characters.

Appearance and characteristics 

Blanka's most prominent physical characteristic is his green color, initially attributed to his consumption of chlorophyll from plants to blend into his jungle environment, a color change that eventually became permanent. However, when Street Fighter was brought to the US, Blanka's coloring was attributed to his being struck by lightning during the electrical storm in which his plane crashed. In Street Fighter II Blanka's skin is yellowish-green, but later versions of the character are bright green. Early Street Fighter II artwork of Blanka showed him having pure green skin, despite the in-game renders showing him with yellowish skin color. Aside from his green skin, Blanka also has vivid orange hair.

In the non-canon Marvel Super Heroes Vs. Street Fighter, Blanka appears in the ending of another green-skinned powerhouse, The Incredible Hulk. In the ending, Bruce Banner theorizes that gamma radiation caused Blanka's mutations, as they did his. He is also seen in the background of one stage, sitting in front of a campfire, in a crouch and face affixed in a snarl, across from The Beast, who mirrors his expression.

Story

A feral man from the Brazilian jungle with green skin and the ability to generate electricity, he is a friend of Dan Hibiki.

His in-game story, just like the in-game stories of the other characters in the series, serves as a precursor to the events of Street Fighter II. The game tells a tale of how Blanka ate a melon on a poacher's truck and unwittingly traveled to civilization for the first time. Playing the game as Blanka, the player eventually faces Dan Hibiki as one of Blanka's mid-bosses. It is then revealed through in-game dialogue that the two know each other and that Blanka had once saved Dan's life. Dan addresses Blanka as "Jimmy", and tells him that if ever he needs help, he can ask Dan.

Blanka faces Zangief as his second mid-boss, and unwittingly prevents Zangief from helping to destroy the Shadaloo criminal organization. He then faces Shadaloo member Balrog before facing M. Bison. After Bison is defeated, Blanka, Dan, and Sakura work together and destroy Bison's Psycho Drive. It should be noted, however, that since many characters' endings in Alpha 3 each depict a different destruction of the Psycho Drive, Blanka's ending might not be canon.

In Street Fighter II, Blanka has apparently developed a taste for street fighting and competes in the second World Warrior tournament. In his ending, he reunites with his mother, who recognizes him on televised broadcasts of his matches by the anklets he wears. She addresses him by his birth name, Jimmy, and reveals that she gave him the anklets before he was in a plane crash as a little boy. This crash caused him to grow up in the wild, although he has connections to a local village. Ever since the crash, Blanka/Jimmy had been separated from his mother (who is seen wearing clothes more resembling traditional Thai wear).

Between his previous and this appearance in the series chronology, Blanka also learned to speak human language, presumably from Dan.

Street Fighter IV series 

Blanka leaves his mother because people kept staring at him, and goes to Hong-Kong with Dan. Dan quizzes him on what the second World Warrior tournament was like. He, Dan and Sakura then decide to enter the S.I.N. tournament, each for their own reasons, with Blanka himself wanting to win and earn people's respect.

After he loses in the final stages, he is wandering through S.I.N.'s HQ. There he bumps into Dan only to see flames heading towards them. The flames die before they can reach them, however, as they are extinguished by Sakura's and Ryu's Hadokens. It is revealed that his mother went looking for him and they are reunited, with Blanka resolving not to be concerned by the staring faces, since everything will be okay as long as he's with his "mama". He goes home, but isn't there long before he finds out that local visitors have arrived at his home to meet him and that he now has many new friends in town.

Trivia

• Blanka is Ono's favorite Street Fighter character, and he is often seen with a Blanka toy that he uses to hide spoilers.
  • According to an interview with Nintendo Channel, Ono obtained this toy along with a few extra, from the hamburguer restaurant Jollibee's Kids Meal set in the Philippines similar to the Happy Meals from McDonald's. Currently one of them is broken and Ono keeps the other close to him.

• The meaning of Blanka, in esperanto, is "white". It is similar to "blanca" in Spanish, which also means white but in feminine form.
• Blanka shares a birthday with the Naturalist Charles Darwin who postulated evolution by natural selection. Many of Darwin's facts were collected during his expedition of South America. Darwin has been depicted as a monkey-man (like Blanka) due to the implications of his theory on man's evolution.

• His 10th alternate color bears a striking resemblance to his original color scheme in Street Fighter II: the World Warriors.

• Blanka and Adon share some similarities with each other: they have orange hair, they are both voiced by the same person in English (Taliesen Jaffe), and their 10th alternate colors represent their former color schemes from when they first debuted. Adon first appeared in the original Street Fighter, and Blanka first appeared in Street Fighter II.

• His Japanese voice actor, Yuji Ueda previously voiced Urien in Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact.

• In Felicia's ending of the original game Darkstalkers: The Night Warriors, she says she wants Blanka as her co-star.

• According to Blanka's SSFIV win quote towards Ken, he is the only electric fighter, which is not true as C. Viper fights with (among other gadgets) her electric gloves. Other fighters who have also made use of electricity are Ryu, Urien and Laura.
  • It should be noted that Blanka considers C. Viper to be a cheater because of her gadgets.

• Blanka is one of the few characters in the original Street Fighter IV to have one rival (in his case, El Fuerte) throughout the whole game series.