A 52-year-old Japanese YouTuber is learning karate by studying characters’ moves from Tekken 3 after his son inspired him to pursue a journey in martial arts.
AskJapan is a fairly popular YouTuber with more than 189,000 subscribers. He’s best known for his vlog-style videos where he chats with viewers and plays retro video games on old-school consoles, often while dressing up in low-budget cosplay of characters from the games he’s playing.
He’s been on a fighting game stint lately, taking on the likes of Street Fighter II and Tekken 3, the latter of which he’s using to help himself learn real-life martial arts moves. He explained this newfound interest in a November 3 video, saying one of his son’s recent karate demonstrations made him inspired to try it out for himself.
AskJapan says that his son is a brown belt, a rank that’s right beneath the black belt (the top level that signifies total mastery of the art). He’s only 10 years old, and has been training since he was 5. This fact, combined with his son’s latest “overwhelming” karate demonstration, made him want to try it out for himself. But rather than hitting the dojo first, AskJapan is taking an unconventional approach to the art; he’s taking ‘lessons’ from Tekken characters.
“His performance inspired my spirit, my motivation,” the YouTuber explained. “I thought, ‘Okay, maybe someday in the future, I [can] start karate, even though I’m 52. Why not? I realized that, to start, I have to practice karate with games. That’s why I was determined today, after watching my son’s performance this morning. Why not start today, and practice with Tekken? This is my way of improving.”
Throughout the rest of the video, he took notes from Tekken 3 as he played through the game on a homemade ‘arcade cabinet’ that he’d fashioned out of cardboard. It’s an extremely charming watch — but his second foray into the game was downright hilarious.
His next video, which he uploaded on November 4, shows him fashioning a Heihachi cosplay out of a helmet and cardboard paper. His goal was to unlock the boss character by attempting to beat Tekken 3’s arcade mode, but he unfortunately failed.
Fans are rallying behind the YouTuber on his latest mission, sharing words of encouragement for both his martial arts goals and his journey to becoming a better Tekken player.
“There is no age to start karate, and you still look in shape,” one viewer wrote.
“I hope Harada and the gang see this and appreciate it like I do,” another said, referencing the former Tekken boss.
It’s true that having martial arts experience can come in handy; earlier this year, a member of the fighting game community went viral for using skills he’d learned from sumo wrestling to fend off a knife-wielding man at his local gaming cafe. And despite the shocking ordeal, he returned to his Twitch stream straight afterward, complaining that the incident had cost him 14 LP in League of Legends.
Virginia (she/her) is IGN’s News Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she’s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at @TheeMissGlaze.