This is it; the end of the Street Fighter Tournament is here, in the last volume of Street Fighter Classic, aptly titled Final Round.

I must admit, I was less enamoured with this finale than I was with the rest of the series, mostly because it’s so heavily focused on the actual fights in the tournament’s grand finals. That said, there are some genuine surprises here, and though the ultimate victor is probably not going to be a shock, there are at least still some unforeseen twists to come before the last panel of this story.

Overall, I think UDON did an absolutely fantastic job with adapting the mismatched, kooky cast and sometimes very odd and incoherent back stories of the video game, into a form where it all kinda, somehow, sorta worked. Sure, it necessitated a very melodramatic and soap opera style narrative, but fans of the fighting game were hardly going to be expecting, or even wanting, some kind of densely layered literary adaptation. Street Fighter works because it knows what it is and isn’t embarrassed to just be a straight up, fun and knowing translation of video game to comic book, and it’s all the better for it.

Though I may not have enjoyed this last volume of the classic series as much as some of the others, it does give several characters some well earned climaxes in terms of their individual stories, while still remaining open for more adventures.

The Street Fighter comics get even grander and sillier from here on out too, and I’m already looking forward to catching up with them all!