The full title is Capcom eSports Club Presents: Street Fighter V AE Rookie's Caravan 2018 X Fighting Game New Super Star Scouting Project. If Capcom is known for one thing, it has got to be their interesting naming of games in the Street Fighter Series, so I think having a long name for an event to go along with it makes sense.

What is this Rookie's Caravan thing about? It is a series of tournaments over six different locations all across Japan, to try to find a new Fighting Game star. The majority of the events are at various Aeon shopping malls, although one of them is at historic Kumamoto Castle (which is still under re-construction after having been severely damaged in an earthquake). I have listed up the dates and locations in English in my June and July list of fighting game events. The tournaments run from July 21st to August 25th. The Rookie Caravan website says that each winner of one of the regional tournaments will get support from Capcom to attend the Capcom Pro Tour Japan Premier which will be at the Tokyo Game Show September 22nd - 23rd in Chiba (well, Tokyo is close enough). The details for the support haven't been announced yet, but it sounds like it will be transport and perhaps support for a hotel. I'm interested in these events though, and will keep this post updated with information as I come across it.

Each Fighting Caravan Tournament will be single elimination first to two, up until the top eight, when it switches to double elimination. There is a 64 person cap, and they will be streamed on OpenRec.tv.

As long as I'm reading this stuff, I'll summarize some of the important points from the Rookie Caravan webpage. You need to register with smash.gg, which is very interesting, because that is not something you see often in Japan. EVO Japan 2018 was the first time I saw anything in Japan using smash.gg. The events will run from 11am to 18:00. They will have a corner to play SFV for free, and say that you can win original SFV goods by playing, with details on that to be released later. You can also get some stuff by entering into their "How many Hadoukens can you throw?" challenge, where you have to throw as many Hadoukens as you can in a limited amount of time. There isn't much too interesting in the rules, although they do have some of the usual suspect stages banned, and Mika's Pom-Pom cheerleader outfit is banned.

Also, at each of the Rookie Caravan events, there will be some top players there, and it says that you can be on a team with them and polish your skills. I suspect they will also do some of the Team Battle mode things with random teams - which is alawys a lot of fun. MOV and America Zanigani's Inagihara (a comedian) will be there for the first one.

Also, a quick note about Aeon malls. Aeon is a large department store / grocery store chain, positioned perhaps similarly to Walmart in America. You similar phenomena to what is happening in rural and suburban America, where Aeon has been displacing a lot of the small businesses in small towns, and I'm not going to go into that dynamic. DNG|Tachikawa had a tweet about how Aeon malls are important in rural areas, and when he was in middle school and high school they were the main place to go for fun, for dates, to hang out, and so on. So when Capcom and other events are going to locations outside of the major cities in Japan, the Aeon malls provide a great location for gathering lots of people, being in an accessible place, and providing the foot traffic so that people who don't know about fighting games can experience them. Typically, these events are set up in a exhibition space that is wide, roomy, and often has sight lines from multiple levels so lots of people can see what is going on as they walk around and do their shopping. In the tweet that Tachikawa quotes, it is called out that one of the expansions that Aeon is planning specifically has a space where one intended use is "eSports tournaments", which I think is fascinating.

In the RAGE All Star League 9th section MOV talked about the Rookie Caravan a bit, which I'll extract here:

Ayako asks MOV about what kind of Rookie he is hoping to find, and he says someone with a special type of strength, that can shine in their own way. Ayako says that MOV's Chun has a particular style of his own. She asks if they are looking for something about strong players, or more about the player. He wants to find someone that can work hard in difficult situations, and make a good teammate (I believe there will be a team battle with a pro+rookie from each of the local qualifiers as the final). Ayako asks MOV how he got started in Street Fighter. He says he grew up in the Fighting Game Generation, so he just naturally started playing. The reason here is standing here now is because as a middle school student in the 3rd year, they were playing SF3 and he went to the National tournament with Tokido and got 2nd place. If that hadn't happened his life would be completely different now, and the Rookie Caravan is an opportunity for others to have a big break, so he feels a lot of responsibility to choose the right person.

Why does this matter? I think this is a great example of Capcom doing things to help spread more of an offline culture to other parts of Japan that do not have a community-led weekly event. Red Bull's Bonchan's Road Trip was the first example of a well-publicised event to bring more awareness of non-Tokyo (Or Cyclops Gaming in Osaka I guess) locations of fighting games. It might sound crazy to you Americans, since Japan is essentially the size of California, but the perception of Japan is that it is a large place, but right now the FGC is only well known in Tokyo, and maybe Osaka. Running events in other locales lets people who live there see some local action, raises awareness for people who might not otherwise see the eSports aspects of things, and can increase fans. It is also really cool that they are doing something at Kumamoto Castle, and I hope that they pair some sort of charity aspect with that to help out the locals there.