Blanka
Blanka is a character from the
Street Fighter series of
fighting games. Blanka has green skin and long orange hair, resembling a
monster more than a human.
As a youngster, the fighter known as Blanka was named Jimmy. Traveling on an airplane to visit his uncle, Jimmy's plane was sabotaged because it was also occupied by several cabinet members representing a country opposed to the criminal organization called
Shadaloo. Jimmy was raised by wolves; he learned from
electric eels how to use his
bioelectricity as a weapon. His mother, Samantha, was not on the flight, so it is presumed Jimmy was traveling with his father.
In
Street Fighter Alpha 3, Blanka hitched a ride on a poacher's truck and met up with his old friend
Dan Hibiki, who he had saved from wolves previously. He eventually met with Dan's 'student',
Sakura, and promised her a match. He eventually left for the jungle again, unenamored of the outside world.
In
Street Fighter II, Blanka was invited to and fought in the second World Warrior tournament, in order to make him famous and help him find his remaining family, and likely fought
Guile (see below). His mother was watching, and she recognized him from the anklets he wore. She immediately went to him and they had a tearful reunion.
In the non-canon
Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, Blanka becomes a friend of another green-skinned powerhouse,
The Incredible Hulk. The Hulk theorizes that
gamma radiation caused Blanka's mutations, as they did his.
Charlie: Charlie and Blanka are not one and the same; However, the
1994 live-action
Street Fighter movie combined the two characters into one (prior to Charlie's actual appearance in the games).
According to his ending in
Capcom vs. SNK 2, he thought he was flown home but when he got off the plane, he ends up in a zoo instead.
Blanka was originally going to look more like a caveman,
King Rasta Mon from the Capcom wrestling game
Saturday Night Slam Masters was one of the pre-Blanka character models. However, it was changed to make his look more beastly. In later games in the
Street Fighter II series, Capcom made him look more ferocious because they thought he was too "cuddly." However, in
Street Fighter Alpha 3, they decided to make him cuddly again.
*He's known locally as the
hombre blanco (
white man) and adapted the
blanco into his
nickname, Blanka. This is strange because the language spoken in Brazil is not
Spanish but
Portuguese (in which that expression would be
homem branco).
*In
Street Fighter Alpha 3, Blanka could only speak in growling noises that could only be interpreted by certain people like his friend
Dan Hibiki and the older and more wise man Marques. But by the time of
Street Fighter 2, Blanka has already grasped much of the English language to be able to speak properly thanks to Dan and Marques.
*Old sources from Capcom indicate that Blanka learned Shadoloo had been responsible for his plane crash and hated them for it, and the sourcebook
All About Street Fighter Alpha 3 states he was hunted by Shadoloo, even if the in-game events telling this weren't necessarily
canon.
*Blanka's fighting style is not
capoeira. This was invented by Capcom USA. Capcom of Japan disproved this when one employee bragged that
Elena was the first
Street Fighter character to employ the fighting style.
*In Nintendo's
Killer Instinct, the game's boss, Eyedol, has an ending that parodies Blanka's reunion with his mother.
