I like Ryo better. He's a more fleshed out character, but if we're going by their respective plots Akira has been fighting the best fighters for about 10 years now. So... how do we approach this?
Is it a prime for prime scenario, or last game appearance?
Funnily enough, since the characters so closely resemble each other in style and are both Japanese, I always imagined that the Shenmue series would end with Ryo training Akira. Their timelines could intersect in that manner.
Yeah, I'm drawing this out too long, Akira wins.