Takuma Tsurugi

Takuma Tsurugi (剣琢磨, Tsurugi Takuma, referred as "Terry" Tsurugi in the U.S. dubbed version) is a fictional character and amoral anti-hero in The Street Fighter film trilogy, played by Japanese actor Sonny Chiba. He is a martial arts expert and a mercenary for hire. As opposed to many heroic figures portrayed in the chopsocky boom of the 1970s, Tsurugi is an amoral antihero who is willing to murder his allies if they are unable to pay for his services.^[1]

Fictional biography

Takuma Tsurugi was born to a Japanese father and a Chinese mother sometime prior to the 1940s. At an early age, he received martial arts training from his father, who had perfected a unique martial art that fused karate with Chinese boxing. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Tsurigi's father was tried and convicted of treason by the Japanese government due to his marriage to a Chinese woman, a charge based solely on racial prejudice. Despite his oaths of loyalty to the Japanese Empire, Tsurugi's father was executed by firing squad, an event that Tsurugi witnessed. The traumatic event proved to be the formative moment of Tsurugi's young life, causing him to grow up as a distrustful, amoral mercenary living only to prove his own fighting abilities. Tsurugi has little in the way of a moral code, and will resort to any means necessary to collect on debts owed to him, including selling his debtors' family into sexual slavery.

Skills and abilities

Like his father, Takuma is a master of Karate. As a skilled assassin, he possesses intense fighting abilities who ferociously dispense brutal and deadly bodily harm towards his enemies, the most notable incident is castrating an assailant with his bare hands. On multiple occasions, he has fractured skulls from a single punch to the victim's head and has killed a man by ripping out his throat. He holds an incredible resilience to inflicted injuries, capable of withstanding from a bullet shot to his back and a stab wound in the abdomen all together. While he tends to engage in hand-to-hand combat with his enemies, he is also proficient in many Japanese weaponry arts including the Sai and throwing knifes. On the field, he distinctly dons a black karategi, wrapped with a leather belt rather than a traditional obi (belt) and an armored wristbands to ward off sword attacks or deliver fatal forearm blows. He may also use disguises to infiltrate and reach his target undetected.

References

External links

• Takuma Tsurugi at the Internet Movie Database
• Grindhouse Cinema Database: Terry Tsurugi
• 10K Bullets review of The Street Fighter Trilogy