The Secret Narrative of Blanka Delgado

As seen on their official website, Epic Games recently released two additional Street Fighter character skins for Fortnite. The first is Sakura, who comes complete with her iconic victory dance, Alpha 2 theme, and Street Fighter IV gym uniform. The second is Blanka, who comes into Fortnite with his backflip, SFII theme, and Blanka-chan doll.

https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/street-fighters-blanka-and-sakura-touch-down-in-fortnite-compete-in-the-blanka-and-sakura-cup

Sakura is pretty straightforward, coming into Fortnite with everything you’d expect her to have in the game (except Karin Kanzuki). Blanka, on the other hand, has lit social media on fire with his amazing alternate costume.

As stated on Epic Games’ official website, this costume is “the Blanka Delgado alt Style inspired by Rival Schools’ Boman Delgado.”

For those who don’t know, this is Boman Delgado:

Boman is a relatively minor character in the Rival Schools’ series. As a student of Pacific High School, he teams up with Roy Bromwell and Tiffany Lords to investigate the kidnappings of students in the area in United by Fate. He returns in Project Justice to “set out to find the perpetrators who were responsible for disrupting an inter-school athletic competition”, eventually reuniting with Roy and Tiffany in his story. https://streetfighter.fandom.com/wiki/Boman_Delgado

The idea that Blanka would wear Boman’s suit in Fortnite is an interesting one. There are a couple of obvious reasons for this. The first is it makes Blanka less feral-looking and more memeable. No one expected Blanka to be in Fortnite, let alone to be in Fortnite wearing a suit. The second is that it pays homage to the Rival Schools series, which takes place in the same universe and timeframe as Street Fighter.

However, look a bit deeper and you’ll see something else by comparing Blanka and Boman’s characters. Blanka is a wild man who lived off of the earth and understands nature. Boman is a devout Christian who is studying to be a preacher.

Earth? Preacher? This looks awfully familiar….

Did they just put G into Fortnite without putting G into Fortnite? In a way, yes, but there’s something else to it – Capcom may be subtly hinting at the future of Street Fighter 6, and Boman (along with other Rival Schools characters) could be involved.

There are strong religious undertones to the story of G. He’s taking up something of an anti-Christ/faux Noah role in contrast to Gill’s Jesus/messiah traits. Their individual qualities and the differences between them are, as a whole, reminiscent of the clash between God and Satan in the Christian bible. As God and Satan both claim they are what’s best for humanity, so do Gill and G.

Blanka doesn’t appear to be particularly religious, so while he may be the one in Fortnite, it’s Boman’s influence in his alternate costume that tells me Boman’s the one we should be focusing on here. Since Boman is studying to become a preacher, the clash between Gill and G will present something that many religiously devout practitioners will experience at some point in their lives: a crisis of faith.

If Boman is in Street Fighter 6, as either a playable or non-playable character, what we could see is him having to choose the side he believes is on the side of God. Neither Gill nor G are what anyone would call saintly, but Boman would have to ally himself with some faction. Boman would represent the symbol of the struggle of people to do what they think is right.

I’ve stated in several of my theories that Street Fighter 6 will be a game of factions. Overall, Blanka wearing Boman-influenced suit is a subtle nod to the idea of choice. Both Blanka and Boman would be forced to pick a side and, as the Blanka Delgado costume suggests, their overall styles and personalities couldn’t be more opposite. Blanka, who is already “one with the Earth” as G would say, would likely take G’s side and Boman, who would see proof of God’s existence in Gill’s qualities, would likely take Gill’s side.

So why would the non-canon Fortnite be the place to bring this kind of subtle story? Two simple reasons. The first is that they’re not doing anything else with Street Fighter at the moment outside of working on 6, so they can keep Street Fighter at the front of social media and the consciousness of gamers. The second is that Capcom is trolling people under their noses. No one would be able to pick any of the hints up that they’re dropping, so when they do finally reveal how meta they’ve been, they’ll reestablish their reputation as gaming geniuses.

And they’ll have done it through Fortnite.