Marvel Tōkon’s anime inspirations flip the script on the Capcom era

Whether you’re mourning Capcom’s absence or thrilled that Arc System Works is taking the reins of a major franchise, the reveal of Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls made waves across the gaming world. Its connection to Marvel vs. Capcom is unmistakable, not just because of the Marvel branding, but due to its fast-paced, multi-character tag team 2D fighting style that Capcom helped pioneer. While Capcom broke new ground by blending Marvel’s comic book flair with innovative storytelling, Arc System Works is set to do the same, this time by infusing heroes like Iron Man and Captain America with bold, anime-inspired re-imaginings. It’s a stylistic shift that signals the end of Capcom’s comic-inspired Marvel era and the beginning of Marvel’s bold new chapter in anime.

In the 1990s, Capcom was already reigning as the king of 2D fighters with multiple iterations of Street Fighter 2 and pushing deeper into anime aesthetics with the Street Fighter Alpha series. Capcom’s partnership with Marvel was groundbreaking, and it led to standout titles like X-Men: Children of the Atom and Marvel Super Heroes. That partnership also led to X-Men vs. Street Fighter, the first crossover between Capcom’s fighters and Marvel’s heroes, which hit arcades in ’96 and gave Capcom a sharp Western appeal. Superhero comics were the epitome of cool in the ’90s, and Capcom took full advantage of that by creating a comic book-esque narrative complete with speech bubbles, aesthetics like comic book paneling, and Easter eggs only fans of the genre would understand.

Although comic book influences began to fade by the time the partnership peaked with Marvel vs. Capcom 2, it was that early charm that first captured fans’ hearts, carried through in titles like Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter. Even by the time Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 launched in 2011, those comic book roots were still present. The game’s character select screen and versus portraits echoed bold splash-page layouts, while victory quotes and dialogue pulled from classic Marvel lore. With its vibrant color palette, flashy special moves, dramatic hyper combos, and an over-the-top announcer, the game still felt like a living, breathing Marvel comic in motion. Plus, Deadpool and his fourth wall breaks would always be a constant reminder of the world the game was living in.

This time, Arc System Works aims to do for Marvel what Marvel once did for Capcom, by immersing Marvel’s characters in Japanese culture, particularly anime and manga, which have largely overtaken Western comic books in terms of sales and popularity. Due to the MCU and titles like Marvel Rivals, Marvel characters’ brand recognition is on fire and has far outgrown the comic panels that made them famous. Anime is one of the few forces truly rivaling Marvel in global popularity, thanks to the success of several key franchises. Anime has become so popular that even corporations and Japan itself are turning to AI and cybersecurity to combat the millions lost to piracy. But the tangled web of anime and manga licensing is a whole other story.

In Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, Kamala Khan has googly anime eyes, Captain America is spouting Shonen one-liners about freedom, and Iron Man has Gundam eyebrows for heaven’s sake! Even the trailer uses the Japanese dub (although SAG-AFTRA shenanigans may be the culprit). The material for this crossover was all there from the start, it just took a dev team steeped in Japanese culture to bring it forth. Arc System Works has long since overtaken Capcom in the tag-team 2D fighter subgenre, especially after the misfire that was Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, the franchise’s prolonged absence afterward, and MvC2’s eventual replacement at EVO by ArcSys’s own Dragon Ball FighterZ in 2020.

Capcom’s partnership with Marvel once opened doors to Western audiences, but now Arc System Works, the new leader in 2D fighters, is the one reaping the rewards with the power of Marvel and anime on its side. The more things change, the more they stay the same.