In Street Fighter 6, most of the major characters are making a return. This is one of the longest franchises out of all of the top fighting games though, so there’s a bit of weirdness that comes up with the character’s ages. How old is Chun Li in Street Fighter 6 seems like a pretty simple question, but there are some odd effects of the series chronology.
These can make it a bit of a trickier question than just looking at her birthdate.
The Street Fighter 6 Age Weirdness
Street Fighter originated in the 1980s, giving us birth dates for quite a few of the characters. Most of the time these match their instal backstory. Characters like Ryu in Street Fighter or Chun Li were initially portrayed as adults, so their internal backstories had to match that.
They were depicted as adults in early Street Fighter games which were released a long time ago. That means that if you’re looking for how old is Chun Li in Street Fighter 6, you do have an exact birth date. She was born in 1968. March 1st 1968, to be specific.
The problem comes as time has passed in the real world but Street Fighter games haven’t quite kept up with it. Ryu is still a fairly average-aged adult in most instalments in the series. He doesn’t seem to get older.
This same logic goes for loads of characters in-game. Sakura in Street Fighter has been a younger girl since her first appearance, even though that would now age her up quite a bit.
Characters have canonical birth dates which imply that their age is moving on as the series does. However, the depictions of the characters don’t change too much. Some characters have a lot of story happen to them, but their physical appearance isn’t getting 20 years older in-between games.
How Old is Chun Li in Street Fighter 6?
Chun-Li was officially born in 1968, with Street Fighter 6 release in 2023, this would make her 55.
Going off of what we’ve seen of her, Chun Li looks pretty good for a 55-year-old! That’s one of the problems with putting a simple answer on the age. The timeline for the games has moved forward. While they might still officially be born in the 60s, they clearly don’t have that reflected in their actual age anymore.
The Street Fighter chronology seems to be more of a floating timeline. Characters still have firm dates for some life events, but they no longer match up with their actual depicted age in the story. Just because Chun Li has a lengthy history, it doesn’t mean the character is really going to be depicted as 55. She’ll still be depicted as the standard average-age adult in the game. However, one with a bit of a confusingly out-of-date birth date. Similar to fitting all of the Cammy Street Fighter lore in given how little the character has aged.
It’s all just a quirk of having run so long as a fighting game.
Street Fighter is one of the best fighting game franchises on PS5, but also on loads of older consoles going all the way back to the arcades. In such a long series, there are bound to be some problems like this. However, Chun Li is essentially still the same character everyone knows.