Ukyo Tachibana is one of the main protagonists from Samurai Shodown series of fighting games.
He was voiced by Eiji Yano in Samurai Shodown~V Perfect, Kazutaka Ishii in Samurai Shodown VI, Shinjiro Sakurai in Samurai Shodown (2019) and The King of Fighters: All Star and Show Hayami in Samurai Shodown Dengeki drama CD series in Japanese.
Biography[]
Ukyo is an expert iaijutsu swordsman, body tuberculosis. Although several women chase his feelings, he only cherishes his only confidant Kei Odagiri. Due to his limited life and noble status, Ukyo avoided developing further feelings for her, but continued to fight for her as a manifestation of her love for her. When he heard about the ultimate flower stored in Makai and decided to present it to Kei in a thank-you manner. Throughout the series, Ukyo continued to fight for Kei until she married another man.
At the beginning in Samurai Shodown 64-2, Ukyo move to another woman named Saki, who also suffered from the same disease. In his ending, he found a cure for both diseases, but chose to hand it over to Saki instead of taking it for himself. He died shortly after.
Much like Genjuro, his death is thought to reappear in a new sequel. He heard that Kei's husband participated in an informal inspection of American ships. However, the shogunate lost contact with the party, making Kei very worried. Since he knew the mysterious foreign ship, Ukyo decided to ensure the safety of Kei's husband and ease her pressure.
He is successfully achieved his goal. After seeing Kei's grateful smile, Ukyo left and lamented the longevity of his life.
Personality[]
He is the embodiment of a Japanese gentleman of the 1700s. As an archaic show of romanticism, he often composes haiku to best describe his thoughts during and after fights to avoid sounding brash
Fighting Style[]
Ukyo is relatively defensive, relying on his quick sword strikes to punish his opponents' mistakes. Much of it focuses on quick draws of both battōjutsu and iaijutsu; in older games, Ukyo's stance was rather unique since it faced towards the background, while in later games it has been developed more into being akin to a battōjutsu-styled stance; both examples were stances that had him somewhat facing away from his foe (most likely due to his tuberculosis) which was a unique thing at the time in fighting games.
Though his sprite is of average size, Ukyo jumps slowly, almost as slowly as bigger characters like Earthquake or Tam Tam, and may be an open target if he jumps carelessly.
One of his moves, Hiken: Tsubame Gaeshi (Secret Sword: Swallow Return), is a direct reference to his historical inspiration. Players may use this move whilst in the air to counter most aerial or ground assaults, but it is only airborne-based despite this. His version of the famed technique is also often written in either hiragana or katakana instead of kanji.
His unique move is the Hiken: Sasameyuki (Secret Sword: Small Snowflakes), a move where he tosses an apple out of many he eats (as a diversion) only to rapidly slice up his target as it falls down. The fake version makes him throw up the apple with no followup (which also follows a pun-styled prefix akin to Haohmaru's fake Senpuu Retsu Zan). He also tosses up an apple for one of his stronger techniques, the Tsubame Rokuren (Swallow Six Links). Other techniques are named via a mist/fog-motif.
In VI, he also gains more iaijutsu techniques in his arsenal that are named after different breezes.
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