Akira Yuki

Akira Yuki is the main protagonist from the Virtua Fighter games franchise.

Akira serves as the assistant instructor at Yuki Budokan. After completing his training under his grandfather's tutelage at the age of 23, he went on a quest to test his abilities. When he got word of the first World Fighting Tournament, he decided to enter and test his abilities.

Appearance
Akira is a muscular male with a tanned complexion, spiked black hair and dark brown eyes. He appears to be average height and has quite wide shoulders and a serious face with a strong jawline and a squared-off chin.

His trademark outfit is a form of sleeveless gi - a traditional uniform used for martial arts practice - which has frayed around the ends of the trouser legs and shirt holes. The gi is slightly open to reveal his bare chest underneath. The outfit is complete with a black belt, a white headband, and black wristbands and feet covers. Overall, he bears a striking resemblance to Ryu, the main character of Capcom's Street Fighter series.

Personality
Akira strives for perfection and will drive himself relentlessly to master his techniques. He seeks worthy opponents to fight in order to find flaws in his skills to further attain mastery. While hot-blooded and impulsive, he can also be naive and intemperate. Akira is also quite passionate when fighting, often telling his opponents give him their best and always expressing his enthusiasm for a bout. Despite his hot-headed personality, Akira does appear to have some good friendships with most fighters such as Wolf Hawkfield, Pai, Jacky, Sarah, and Aoi Umenokoji (his childhood friend and sparring partner).

Abilities
Akira is powerful but very difficult to use effectively. Compared to the other Dead or Alive 5 characters, he has a very different feel, with only a few of his strings having more than two hits. He has a few highly damaging attacks, including his famed shoulder-strike, Tetsuzankou, which at close range can do 90 points of damage, making it one of the most powerful strikes in the game. However, most of Akira's other single strikes are quite weak.

Thus, Akira needs to be used very cleverly, with a good understanding of the effects each of his moves have and how to string them together for maximum effect. He has several good guard break techniques and moves that cause "sit-down stuns" or which cause the opponent to bounce off the ground. His guard breaks allow him to easily put pressure on defensive opponents, and he has a special guard break that follows up to the move Toryu Tenshin Hazankai which does 80 points of damage in total, although the input command for the whole move is very complex. His single strikes can be effective as counter blows and his Teishitsu Dantai can be used to juggle opponents for longer, although it is a very difficult move to pull off consistently and isn't essential to use in order to pull off some very damaging combos. Notably, a lot of Akira's combos can be performed next to walls without worrying about needing to make changes to account for the opponent slamming prematurely into the wall.

Compared to the other Virtua Fighter guest characters, Akira has good, powerful throws that can create lots of opportunities. Hougeki Unshin Soukoshou is especially damaging and unlike most throws can be used while an opponent is in critical status as it begins as a strike. Akira also has a lot of sidestep moves, allowing him to play a decent amount of mind games with his opponent. However, due to the Dead or Alive 5 game engine, Akira is a bit more reliant on his sidestep mind games due to most of his attacks being unsafe on block. In addition he still suffers from a linear attack pattern. Another thing is that his commands require a heavy amount of execution, making Akira a fighter only for the dedicated.

It should be noted that as a result of this series' faster gameplay, some of Akira's input commands have been changed slightly in order for him to keep up with the fast pace of other Dead or Alive contestants. In Dead or Alive 5 and its expansion updates, the three of his difficult moves like Teishitsu Dantai, Byakko Soshoda and Choda Chochu are made a bit easier to learn.

Trivia

 * Akira has been lauded as one of the most difficult fighters to learn from the Virtua Fighter.
 * In Dead or Alive 5 and its expasion updates, his gameplay becomes a bit easier to learn.
 * Akira was an inspiration for Kokoro. Dead or Alive creator Tomonobu Itagaki commented that baji quan was first used in Virtua Fighter by Akira, which he called the "origin of 3D fighting games." Itagaki hoped to reproduce the martial art more realistically with Kokoro in Dead or Alive 4. In the E3 2012 trailer for Dead or Alive 5, Akira challenges Kokoro to a duel, which Kokoro accepts.
 * Akira is the fifth character from an outside series to appear in a Dead or Alive title, following on from SPARTAN-458 in Dead or Alive 4, Rio in Dead or Alive Paradise, and Samus Aran and Ridley in Dead or Alive Dimensions.
 * In his reveal trailer, his Virtua Fighter 5 theme can be heard when he enters the battle, his theme however is not available in game.
 * In Dengeki Bunko Fighting Climax where both Akira and Pai are guest bosses, Akira's voice is new since Project X Zone due to him set as playable fighter, as for Pai's only has one for an alternate damaged during hit while remained the same as the previous game she appeared (excluding in Project X Zone is new) due to her set as assist character.
 * All of Akira, Sarah, Pai and Jacky's lines are recycled from Virtua Fighter 5 for Dead or Alive 5. This explains the slightly different quality of the audio for when they speak.