"Alright!"
Ryu (リュウ(隆) Ryū, "Prosperous", "Plentiful", "Abundant") is the main protagonist of the Street Fighter series. He is an experienced martial artist, highly focused on his training, aiming to become the strongest he can.
Ken Masters (ケン・マスターズ Ken Masutāzu) is the deuteragonist of the Street Fighter series. Similar to his longtime best friend and rival Ryu, Ken's goal is to test his power against many different fighters and strives to become stronger, but holds more restraint due to not wanting to jeopardize his family life.
Both are referred to as "Shotos", considering their fighting character archetype, and they're the only playable characters in the vanilla build of the game.
Ryu is the best character in the game, and is banned in ++.
Ken is upper mid tier in ++ and just definitively worse than Ryu in vanilla.
