Kakeru had quite the run during the time in which he was competing. He was able to secure the $1,000,000 grand prize by winning Capcom Cup 11 with JP.
Soon afterwards, Kakeru seemingly disappeared from the competitive scene until he finally announced his sudden retirement that came about due to serious health issues. Since then, we haven’t quite had a player push JP to the level that Kakeru was able to.
During the time in which he competed, Kakeru’s achievements resulted in him getting nominated for the Best Esports Athlete award at The Game Awards 2025 presentation. Of course, he ended up not winning the reward in the end (neither did MenaRD who was also nominated).
Regardless, Kakeru would relinquish his qualified slot for the Capcom Cup 12 Finale that’s scheduled to take place in early March of this year. Once again, $1,000,000 is up for grabs for whomever takes first place.
Kakeru recently posted on X to provide everyone with an update on his future plans. It would seem that he’s committed to not competing, but will continue being a fan of Street Fighter 6.
Kakeru’s status update:
Since time has passed without me making any clear statements about my future specific activities, I’d like to talk about my approach to activities going forward.
First, I have no plans to get involved with games as a job or to work as a full-time streamer in the future.
I’ll continue to enjoy Street Fighter 6 as a single player from here on out too, but if I turned it into work, it wouldn’t align with the way of engaging that I truly value.
I’ll resume streaming once things settle down, but I also have no plans to make streaming my livelihood.
As for YouTube videos, the ones from my pro days are currently set to private across the board due to complicated rights issues.
As for me right now, during this hiatus from activities, I’ve been spending time reading books in various genres and doing research, and in the process, my desire to revisit the programming I did back in my working professional days has grown stronger; there are also many other genres where I want to learn and take on new things.
At the same time, I plan to keep posting on SNS and in other formats, but due to changes in my own mindset and lifestyle, it seems like there will be a lot more posts unrelated to games.
If I’ve left things unsaid and ended up giving the impression of expecting a pro comeback or full-time streaming activities, I’m truly sorry.
I hope you’ll keep this in mind as my own way of approaching things.