Dan Hibiki (火引 弾: Hibiki Dan) is a character from Capcom's Street Fighter series of fighting games. Dan is consistently portrayed as an arrogant, overconfident, yet utterly weak character in each game he is featured in. The name "Dan" may be short for "Daniel", but in Japanese it can mean "failure" (断), or possibly "theatrical stage" (壇), though Dan would probably say it means "bullet" (弾). English-speaking fans often pronounce the name as though it were short for "Daniel" rather than its proper pronunciation "Dahn."

According to his official biography, Dan was born in Hong Kong with no date of birth given, stands 177 cm tall, and weighs 74 kg. His blood type is O. He is skilled at breaking tiles, enjoys karaoke, and loves taunting his foes. He dislikes seaweed, vain people, and evil. His fighting style is Saikyoryu, an amalgam of Ansatsuken, Muay Thai, and relentless taunting. Originally Dan was suppose to die when he fought Sagat in Street Fighter Alpha, however fans fell in love with Dan so he returned as a regular character.

Dan is actually a parody of the games and characters of rival video game company SNK. He was first seen in an illustration of Sagat, who was depicted holding the limp body of a fighter who has the body of Ryo Sakazaki and head of Robert Garcia, the two protagonists of SNK's Art of Fighting. Later, in Street Fighter Alpha, there is an animated sequence of Sagat holding and throwing aside a character resembling the Ryo/Robert combination. Dan himself appears in the game as a secret character, and can either be selected as the player's character or fought as a CPU opponent. He could be seen with an orange Gi (like Ryo's) or his now-trademark pink Gi. In the game, Dan was distinguished by his ineffective special attacks, such as a fireball with a comically short range (which he calls Gadoken, a pun on Hadoken), a dragon punch move where he flashes sometimes (called Koryuken, a pun on Shoryuken) and his ability to taunt his opponents infinitely, much like the characters in Art of Fighting. Despite this clownishness, he is generally a decent character in most of the games in which he's featured.

In Street Fighter Alpha 2, Dan was made into a normally-selectable fighter. In later games, Dan's ability to taunt was expanded into a number of various techniques(including parodies of characters like Chun-Li and Yuri Sakazaki), special moves, and even super moves (hence introducing the term "super taunt" to the fighting game vernacular). He still exists to mock and parody other games and characters, and his satirical nature makes him popular among fans.

The parody continued in the SNK VS. Series, where both Capcom and SNK games had a running gag where Dan was often mistaken for Ryo or Robert, or, especially in the SNK games, where Dan parodied even more of Ryo's attacks.

In Dan's backstory, his father Go Hibiki was a rival of Sagat. It is revealed that Go put out Sagat's eye and Sagat killed him in retaliation. Because of this, Dan sought revenge on Sagat, training to become a fighter, but was expelled from his dojo when his motivations were learned. Dan thus developed his own style of Ansatsuken (mistranslated as Shotokan) merged with Muay Thai elements and called Saikyou-ryuu, or "The Strongest Style." After the events of Street Fighter Alpha 3, Dan believed he had achieved his revenge by defeating Sagat (who had actually thrown the fight), and his motivation switched to promoting and expanding his Saikyou-ryuu school, even to the point of offering exercise videos and correspondence courses.

Dan is also a childhood friend of Blanka. Ran Hibiki from the fighting game series Rival Schools shares a number of similarities with Dan and is inferred that the two are related. A partner of Ran is Iincyo , who learned to fight from a Saikyou-Ryuu correspondence course. In his ending in Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, an unnamed sister of Dan appears, parodying the ending of the original Art of Fighting. Go Hibiki appears in Pocket Fighter and Card Fighters Clash , wearing a Tengu mask, a parody of Mr. Karate from Art of Fighting, who also wears a Tengu mask and was actually Takuma Sakazaki, the father of Ryo Sakazaki. As a result there is an on going theory that Akuma is actually Dan’s father back from the dead as an evil spirit. This theory is backed by the fact that Dan’s father’s name is Go Hibiki and Akuma’s original Japanese name is Gouki. There are also several game events where Dan Hibiki calls Akuma his father and Akuma acting disappointed in response.

Related Characters

• Robert Garcia
• Ryo Sakazaki
• Sagat
• Blanka
• Sakura Kasugano
• Ran Hibiki
• Iincyo

See Also

• Art of Fighting
• Marvel VS. Series
• SNK VS. Series
• Street Fighter

External links

• Dan's Super Dojo