Street Fighter X GI Joe #5 Review

Welcome back to Street Fighter X G.I. Joe. We open with Ryu giving Jinx a little pep talk before her final match with M. Bison. We also learn that Storm Shadow had been working with the good guys all along, explaining why he turned on Cobra in the earlier issues.

The match begins and at first, despite Jinx’s speed, M. Bison has the definite strength advantage. However, when Bison sucker punches her, Jinx reveals a surprising ace in the hole, the Satsui No Hado. The Satsui No Hado, for those not in the know, is a powerful and dark form of energy that skilled martial artists can tap into. However, the price of such power is steep, as the Satsui No Hado consumes one’s soul and transforms one into an inhuman monster like Akuma. Bison is powerful, but he is no match for the Satsui No Hado and is quickly dispatched. As Jinx is about to deliver the killing blow, Ryu, Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow try to calm her down, claiming that they chose her for this task because she’s the only one among them who could control the darkness within. More on that later, but now’s when we learn that Ryu, Guile and the others had been working behind the scenes to fix the tournament to ensure Bison’s defeat. Guile and Storm Shadow’s jobs were to damage the Psycho drive and Snake Eyes’ job was to throw the fight against Rufus so that Jinx would have an easy opponent for the semi-finals. Rufus, pissed about being thought of as a pushover angrily challenges Guile to determine the third place winner.

Elsewhere, Baroness, Crimson Viper and Croc Master try and steal Destro’s backup Psycho drive, but Viper turns on Baroness and in the scuffle, the Psycho device is badly damaged and starts leaking residual energy.

Guile and Rufus have their match and Guile wins with a single kick, but the residual psycho energy from the damaged device is absorbed into Rufus’s body and he goes berserk, shrugging off all attacks, including heavy weapons fire from Guile and the Joes, ending the comic.

What Works: I was honestly expecting this to be the final issue of the mini-series but the cliffhanger ending and the fact that I have no idea where this is going reignites my excitement over this comic. What Doesn’t: Okay, I have several questions here. First of all, there’s the Satsui No Hado. Look, I get that it’s one of the few ways equal Bison’s psycho power, but the fact that Ryu would casually agree to it’s use seems out of character, as most of his character motivation in the later games as well as the Street Fighter Unlimited comic we’ve been covering revolves around defeating Akuma and purging himself of the Satsui No Hado. With that in mind, I highly doubt that Ryu would willingly subject someone else to that corruption. On that note, they claim that Jinx is the only one who could use the Satsui No Hado without succumbing to its corruption, to which I say: How do you know that? I don’t doubt that Jinx is a great fighter, but why what makes her so special compared to Ryu and the others? What’s more, how was she able to tap into the Satsui No Hado? In the games, there are very few who have actually trained in the dark style enough to even use it, and thus far, the only one who seems to have mastered it is Akuma, but this seems to imply that just anyone can use it, which I believe cheapens it as a plot device.

Finally, there’s the whole Rufus thing. If the point of Snake Eyes throwing match against Rufus was to ensure that Jinx make it to the finals, wouldn’t it have been easier for Snake Eyes to win the match and then throw the match against Jinx in the semis. Assuming Jinx was in on the plan, she trained side by side with Snake Eyes, so the two could probably put on a decent mock fight. I’ve made it no secret that I dislike Rufus and Jinx is clearly the superior fighter, but remember, Rufus still beat the Baroness in the first issue so he still could have gotten lucky against Jinx. Overall: 3/5

This is better than some of the earlier issues and I’m happy that we’re finally getting an actual story and some explanations to some of the questions I’ve had up until now, but this comic still has a few plot holes and a lack of depth that I don’t care for.