Street Fighter fans: it's Chun Li's birthday, and she's 48

Happy birthday to fighting's first lady.

Street Fighter's Chun Li turns 48 on March 1 2016.

The famously deadly Interpol officer joined the cast when Street Fighter 2 launched in 1991, and has been fighting for justice and vengeance for the 25 years since. As her original bio screen shows, she was 23 at the time: she's spent more of her life in pursuit of M. Bison than not.

Given that everyone in Street Fighter 5 is built on cartoonish proportions and people shoot fireballs from their hands, it's probably not the time to start arguing about whether it's “realistic” for a 48 year old to be duffing up wrestlers and what not (it absolutely is, though). Many other cast members are older, and a few of them must be positively geriatric by now.

In any case, fighting canon is notoriously flexible and I wouldn't put it past Capcom to mire its characters in never-advancing time, like high school sitcoms where nobody ever graduates. This seems no less ludicrous than replacing everyone with clones, robots and their own weirdly identical children – or rebooting every decade.

Whatever! Happy birthday Chun Li.

Happy Birthday, Chun-Li! #streetfighter pic.twitter.com/uEyf3Yjzo0

— Street Fighter (@StreetFighter) March 1, 2016