How To KILL A Promising New Street Fighter

Necalli's gimmick was that he fights to devour souls in a universe where NOBODY is allowed to die or even drop blood. He had no chance.

Step 1. Design a character to show off your new hair physics. Step 2. Don't implement any hair physics.

I actually love Necalli's design and fight style and his vtrigger as well, but holy crap they did him dirty. He is literally Tekken's Ancient Ogre but a jobber. He lost to everyone in the story and wasn't all that intimidating by the end of it... What a disappointment.

Should have made him like Majin Buu and absorb some old street fighters. It would have explained why some didn’t return in SF3

Necalli in trailer: Epic Aztec Warrior who eats Warrior souls for breakfast. Necalli on actual story: *Gets bodied by literally every other character, including Balrog (the boxer) of all people.

The fact everyone in the comments has come up with a better story/lore for him than Capcom says a lot.

Necalli's biggest issue (beyond being in a story mode that Capcom completely flopped on) is that he's a character whose entire in-universe goal doesn't mesh with how Street Fighter operates as a franchise. Like, at all. He wants to consume worthy warriors. Cool idea in theory. The problem is, Street Fighter isn't a universe where characters usually die, and most of the warriors he'd want to consume are characters who Capcom isn't going to let die to him and/or are known to still be alive later in the series chronologically. He was never going to consume the likes of Ryu or Akuma. Bison was never going to be killed by some newcomer. Necalli was pre-destined to not only fail, but never even get any meaningful victories towards his goal, and that takes all of the tension out of it. He's just a "jobber". And because he has no affiliation with any of the characters in the game (he's not Shadaloo, he's not with the Illuminati or Mad Gear, and he's definitely not one of the good guys; he's operating entirely on his own) he doesn't even have an interesting faction or interactions with other characters to fall back on. And to top it all off, the only personality he has is his aforementioned pre-destined failed ambition. So what do you get when you have a character whose entire story purpose is absolutely meaningless, who doesn't mesh with the setting he lives in, and who has no opportunity for character development? You get a walking punchline and a waste of an admittedly cool design.

I think the SF writers have a real fear of upsetting the status quo, which is why SF6 actually feels like a step forward narratively. For the longest time, Bison and Akuma were the big 2 villains of SF, and Necalli could have been that too. Or at least Gill level. But he had to share the story with Bison, which is disappointing. I would have rather Necalli just be the main bad guy of SF5.

The first scene sets him like he's going to be pursuing Nash throughout the story since Nash is supposed to be dead and Necalli is supposedly some sort of warrior grim reaper, but then it's like he gets distracted or something.

When a scrapped Akuma skin looks so cool you have to use it as a separate character, but you forget to give him a worthwhile story

1:45 "Defining traits", shows Juri's foot. Yup, sounds about right.

Beginning “Sheep: Devour” End “Melts into a pile of shit”

Capcom was really like let's make a cool new villain and fumble him super hard

The sad part is they very easily could’ve pulled off all of this by just adding extra lore, like if Necalli was receptive to some ancient version of either the Satsui No Hado (which is why he dipped after seeing Ryu successfully contain it on two separate occasions and tried to eat Akuma) or Psycho Power (which is why he was in the opening scene with Nash, a corpse who has residual psycho power), OR whatever the Illuminati uses (which is why he went after Urien). Literally any of these options (or hell, all of them) would’ve worked just fine, but then they made him lose every fight in increasingly embarrassing ways to the point where even if he comes back in SF6 and they tie Akuma, JP and/or Gill together through him, it’s gonna be hard for Capcom to give us a reason to feel intimidated.

they turned a all consuming warrior, that lived for thousands of years (literately 1000 of years of battle experience). Into cannon fodder, insane.

I THOUGHT with his CHARACTER TEASER he was the FIRST SATSUI NO HADO PRACTITIONER. That he would have bigger roles with Akuma and Ryu based on their Dark Hado powers. I wanted to believe he was the Raw Incarnate form of SATSUI NO HADO and that Akuma along with Ryu would learn something new to defeat him I.e. Power of Nothingness, Satsui No Hado next tier 🤷🏿‍♂️

What I dislike most about Necalli being an Emissary of the Gods is how complicated it is. Detailing the pantheon of SF is a massive amount of work. Mortal Kombat's is a mess with demi-gods, elder gods, and titans. Necalli being just a satsui no hadou user who goes so hard he's now just a savage is easier to understand.

So obviously Necalli's big problem is he's a soul-devouring warrior in a setting where characters are NOT allowed to die (seriously, Capcom wouldn't even let him kill a nobody to the story like Birdie). But if you can't have him kill, you could at least have him be the "incarnation of battle" where he tests the mettle of warriors by pushing them to their absolute limit and encouraging growth in skill that would be necessary to surviving an encounter with him. Necalli pushing Ryu could be the reason Ryu ultimately realizes the Satsui No Hado is not something to pursue, and he could even lead to Bison burning out his soul due to Psycho Power being a dangerous and unreliable shortcut to power. Street Fighter really does love that incredibly basic "I need to get stronger" goal for a lot of its characters, if Necalli can't kill he could've at least been used as a means to push both the heroes and villains to their limits and make both sides all the stronger for it.

Necalli was my main in Sf5. I would like for him to be rebooted in Sf6 but that is unlikely

The sad part is it's not like he's even hard to do right! Have him be drawn to Bison's Psycho Power (PP), and since Nash died right after fighting Bison, his body still had trace amounts of PP, which allows Necali to follow him into the physical world. He hides in Nash's shadow until the raid on Shadowloo, where Dhalsim senses and expels him, but Necali is now in the open tearing a path to Bison, whom he eventually finds having just beaten Guile. They fight, and Necali devours Bison (which also prevents his resurrection), then faces Ryu to consume the Satsui-no-Hado. Ryu, backed into a corner, unlocks the Power of Nothingess and destroys Necali (again taking Bison with him). Throw in some exposition about Necali being a Devourer of Gods/Heroes/whatever, and BOOM: Necali is used just enough to have an impact without having to job to the rest of the cast, gets Bison out of the way going forward, helps Ryu reach his new plateau, and earns his role as the face of the game.