Character from Street Fighter Alpha by Capcom
A Japanese high school student who taught herself a rough approximation of ansatsuken by watching Ryu fight on television, and who now travels the world tracking him down to demand formal training he keeps not giving her.
Sakura is the Alpha series' heartbeat — the person who loves the art purely, without trauma, without agenda, without darkness. She saw Ryu fight, thought it was the most amazing thing she'd ever seen, went home and started copying it from memory, and has been getting better ever since at a rate that is frankly alarming given that she has no formal instruction. Her Alpha storyline is a road trip: she leaves Japan with her friend Kei, follows rumors and tournament brackets and whisper networks to find Ryu across multiple countries, gets into fights with everyone she meets along the way, and remains relentlessly cheerful about all of it. She briefly studied under Dan Hibiki, which she doesn't mention when she can avoid it. She idolizes Ryu specifically — not romantically (or not only romantically, depending on interpretation), but as the Platonic ideal of what a martial artist can be.
A teenage Japanese girl in her school uniform — navy sailor fuku with a red ribbon, often with the jacket tied around her waist during fights — wearing a red headband and red gloves. She is small but fights with enormous enthusiasm that compensates considerably for the rough edges in her self-taught technique. Her Hadouken is smaller than Ryu's and sometimes wobbly.
Also known as: Sakura Kasugano, Sakura, Ryu's Biggest Fan