The Epic King Of Fighters Story: The Ash Saga - Approved By SNK 

Why skip the 2002 game?

Ash saga is basically Orochi saga but they became better at storytelling

Shingo is the man!

@@NeoGeoNow shingo is actually a beast if you know how to use him and get around his weaknesses.

@@NeoGeoNow if only he was in KOF XV

I think Mortal Kombat has the best story mode out there, and I like their lore, but it doesn't hold a candle to KOF lore, not nearly as interesting as even NESTS saga, which is the one I like the least

@@rubemevangelista3868 kof is more of shounen anime.story

I believe that SNK can grow their company even bigger by making games based off each team. They can even make games off solo characters. Too many possibilities

@@realamericannegro977 There used to be games based on different series but since 1999 they haven't made any spin off games. Gaouro was the last Fatal Fury game and Art of Fighting 3 was last game from that franchise. Rebooting those series can make same impact as marvel cinematic universe.

@@musabjunaidi I know. I'm talking about 3D games and rpgs and etc. They need to do more than fighting games. That's how Capcom became a bigger company.

Shoryugame said K’ team defeated Mukai as well.

@@xaviervalencia9296 ikr, he is wrong as Ash never won any kof tournament

Thanks a lot!

Or you played XIV, played as Verse, beat Shun Ei's team and in the victory quote find out that Shun Ei is a fragment of Verse.

@@Violent_Wolfen Yeah ! You are Right that was the Surprise !

As previously mentioned, we specifically asked SNK about this. The current canon at snk is the ash team that defeated Mukai. Whether this is a retcon or the old info was a mistranslation i do not know. All what i know is this is waht is canon right now according to SNK.

@@NeoGeoNow I can see this as a retcon. Most of the current SNK staff were not the same people who wrote the previous games.

I really think what we used to think was canon was mistranslated. I looked with Frionel through various official snk books and not one says ikari won 2003. They did defeat adel though.

2022 and we're still not free of mistranslations 😞🤝

Thanks a ton for the kind words!

@@NeoGeoNow I’m a huge fan of the ash saga! Thx

Same. XIII is the best

I played only up until 2003, so I didn't know the rest of the story. This 3 video series really helped fill in the blanks.

We all thought the same. But we had to adk SNK and it turned out that was not the case.

@@NeoGeoNow That’s weird especially with his team ending how he reflected on what Mukai said. I guess they had to have the Ash Team make the finals somehow. In my mind K’ Team still faced Mukai😂 Great recap on the Saga👍🏾👍🏻

As mentioned we checked dorectly with SNK and this is the current canon. The team story of xi mentions that ikari fought adel which they did but it was not part of the tournament. K' fighting mukai must have been a mistranlation or retcon. Famitsu also wrote a new recap of the saga and also were given the same details mentioned here, as in ash team fought mukai.

@@NeoGeoNow Understood. I heard Ash never won any tournament (already knew about the Ikari warriors in 2003 and the new rivals team in XI) or even made it to the end (K’ team for 2003 and Kusanagi/Yagami team for XI). Your video was like SNK and its Krohnen trailer: it shattered all expectations. Keep up the good work.

I was actually about to say that K’ Team fighting Mukai I heard too fighting Mukai to me Ash Team make more sense though because they are the hero.

@@NeoGeoNow I did some research into this(mostly on the JP side, since this is where I saw that come up first-the historian side of me likes to know how these mistranslations and/or discrepancies can happen), and I think I know where I can pinpoint where the K' team thing came from. K's team has an extra scene with Mukai(K' himself does, it's extra dialogue), in 2003, that no other team, including the Hero team, has. So at the time, in 2003, I'd imagine(since the winners of 03 aren't actually mentioned in XI), the folks overseas(West ended up seeing 2003 slightly later in those days), saw this scene(Apparently Mukai's power was messing with K's glove in the ending, in the pictures), and since no other team got that sort of bonus, assumed it was K's team that indeed got to Mukai. (Again, in those days, there wasn't much else to go on, and I'd imagine the US side trusted the JP side because they have access to books/novels etc that the West doesn't.) Now on the Ikari team side, I imagine it was just a case of way back when, folks assuming the Bernsteins were the hosts, recording that and it went all over. Now whether or not all of this was retconned or whatnot, if it was just a weird coincidence that K's team got extra scenes in 2003 where others didn't even though they didn't win, or what. I'm not sure it's even a mistranslation, but more that there was little else to go on in the early-mid '00s, and so when folks saw K's team with the extra Mukai dialogue, made the leap, and this settled into all of the lore sites over the next 15 or so years. It was an interesting little dive in any case.

@@ElFenrir13 Good work man. This probably is the reason we thought so for all those years! I am glad we have something official about this now. Also super proud to be able to help in this :p

Thank you for the kind words. I did some character and team specific ones as well. Hope you will enjoy them as well.

Thank you so much for the support Slade!

It would be great if SNK make a reboot of KOF since Orochi saga with a story mode with all the events and characters they had planned but they could not release by budget or time. I have the feeling that the events of KOFXIV, XV and XVI will result in a event that will restart KOF universe.

@@Raliuga999 That makes sense. But at least the Orochi Saga wasn't missing a game. Those from the past didn't get enough development. Especially for how many people they had. I would have loved to see someone of them playable. Especially for how cool they looked.

@@Raliuga999 yup that's what it's leading up too. That the kof series will be rebooted for new comers to get into it.

The Ash saga was ok. Its a 5/10 at best.

It wasn't rushed if it had nice pace though, ASH saga had nice pace

Lol

As far as i know and theough the official text i came across, the Ikaris defeated adelheid but it was not part of the tournament. The host was always chizuru. Adelheid and rose were the hosts in the bad ending. But as i said we checked with snk on who won what. I still think there was a mistranslation back in the day that caused this misunderstanding.

@@NeoGeoNow You know, that's very, very possible. Since there have absolutely been mistranslations over time(in the original Orochi saga, Goenitz never sicced Iori on Mature and Vice, that was a bad US translation, he was warning Mature and Vice about Iori and the Ureshino novels basically corroborate all of this), and of course the massacre that was '99s Ikari ending from JP to US(HOW Many years did people in the US think Whip was callous toward Krizalid?), but for years-even decades-there was the Ikaris as recorded as the winners(they DEFINITELY fought Adelheid, that much is found) even on Japanese sites, which is why I was wondering about a retcon or not. Unless it was a mistranslation, that ended up going BACK overseas mistranslated, and it stuck for 15+ years.(the mistranslation seemed to happen mostly with who the host was. Now I wonder how that came about, if it was similar to the incident that had '96's mistranslation.) There was another mistranslation(I'm pretty sure you could do a whole series on KOF mistranslations), that apparently had K's team getting to Mukai(again, for ages). But it ended up being Ash all along. (Damn, that gives Duo Lon 3 tournaments in 3 appearances. What a chad. No wonder why Elisabeth wants that team back.)

Retcons bro. The actual SNK is not the same one as before. Here is something interesting about Oda. He hadn't work in a KOF game during the days of the original SNK For example, in the japanese version of KOF 97, it is revealed that the Orochi Team didn't die instead their souls ended sealed with Orochi's. That was canon. Until many years later Oda changed the story saying that the Orochi Team were dead.

@@meganinten0078 I don't think it was even a retcon. Even in the game itself Chizuru was the tournament host. Unless you have actual proof you can't state they are retcons. You are stating it as a fact.

@@blaze6477 Well, for years, even Japanese sites-who have access to more original source material than the west(and better original translations, there has been a lot of translation mess ups over the years, I even talk to people who are fluent and have translated sites overseas)-even back in the mid '00s, had listed the Ikaris as the winners. So if this was mistranslated...it was mistranslated, and then somehow the mistranslated stuff got BACK to Japan, and recorded on a lot of sites. Which then ended up back overseas again. The other option is a retcon. Either way, it's probably one of these two things, but if it was a mistranslation, it's one that ran deep and went between not only the US and Japan, but a lot of other places, too, and for over a decade. This would make it an even bigger mistranslation than, say, Ikari '99(which was just a bad localisation on the US side, the JP one was correct), and the '96 stuff with Goenitz/Mature/Vice(it was only on the US side.) A retcon almost seems simpler, since it's weird a mistranslated thing would be recorded even on sites in the original country.

The Rival team won XI because Ash team dodnt fight in the final. This was not a retcon as the benimaru story in KOFXIII says so. Chizuru congratulated Benimaru on winning XI and he said its not much of a win when you opponent disappears before the fight.

The master is Saiki. He is another will of Gaia, just like Orochi. He wanted to get the orochi power so he can destroy the Blanctorche in the past.

Hi Anton. As previously mentioned, we had to check with SNK these details before prese ting them on this video. What you see here is what currently is regarded as canon, as in team ash fought mukai and magaki. Team ikari defeated adel outside the tournament, and elisabeth team were decalrdd winners for kofxi and xiii. Not sure if this is a retcon or there was previous mistra slations that made us believe k' defeated mukai and the other details.

@@NeoGeoNow Oh okay now that makes sense Thanks Nabil

@@NeoGeoNow I'd like to know the source of those retcon details because most of the claims about K' was also made by SNK which can be found on the anniversary website.

@@suiken3149 hi there. As previously mentioned we had to go back to snk directly to get some of the not so clear info before even writing the script. Once the episode was ready it was submitted to snk for review and approval.

I think this was retconned. The video content was approved by SNK. The winners of each tournament was communicated to us by snk for this video series.

@@NeoGeoNow True, but the story was canon.

Through Verse's death, Ash's soul was released. For Vice and Mature, don't know.

KOF Maximum Impact it’s it’s own universe basically same the EX KOF

Correct! Maximum impact is, currently, considered non canon. Although i can see it happening as a side story. I dont think it contradicts anything with the main timeline, but i have not looked into it thoroughly.

Maximum impact takes place in another timeline based on fatal fury as the death of Geese Howard is important to the plot, because geese never died in the Kof timeline

At least with Igniz and Rugal, you had a few seconds to stretch the fingers from the controller. The tag team style will make the end faster in Magaki’s favor.

It's for the Best that we might as well just Ignore all of the Time Travel stuff in the Ash Saga. Like the Heisei Godzilla Movies in the 90's for Example, they Introduced Time Traveling in "Godzilla vs King Ghidora" but that Plot Point was never Explored ever again in "Godzilla vs Space Godzilla" so Thank God.

I know Ash is a weird case since he was erased from existence, but since Verse is somehow related to that, it's bound to make sense somehow that Ash is able to be back.

There will be one more part after kofxv s2. I need to know if the next batch of dlc will add to the story before doing an episode abt the shunei saga.

It's already explained and apparently everything about Ash (from kof xv) is from a different timeline

Ash's soul was inside Verse. Once, Verse was defeated, Ash was revived.

Hi there. We had to check directly with Snk and what is presented here is what is considered canon. Not sure if the k' fighting mukai was a mistranslation or retcon.

Hi and welcome! Correct! Kof98, 2002, 12, 2002um, maximum impact 1 and 2, neowave and the gba ones are not canon.