You came to the wrong place. Everyone will tell you all your choices are shit without offering anything constructive or helpful.

> not picking Aikido

2012

If you practice aikido, nothing can harm you. I've taken on groups of 8 men and defeated them all without any injury to myself.

Ignoring the previous posts for their unhelpful and/or sarcastic nature, I would tell the Original Poster to avoid Shotokan Karate, but not to the extent of limiting himself. I have a fair amount of experience with the style, and would say it is not suitable as a basis for a personal fighting system. It is too rigid. In addition to this, most schools which teach Shotokan Karate are of the "McDojo" type, and will not prepare a person properly for unarmed combat. The second fault is not a fault of the style, but it is still an issue when selecting a martial art to train in.

Wing Chun Gong Fu is a good place to start, but I would advise you to train in additional martial arts after you have attained basic proficiency. In all probability, this will not take less than two years. The "cross-training" is necessary because of limitations in teachers, and the social dynamic of teaching, as well as some of the limitations of the "style".

>>17855
The best alternatives are San Da kung fu or Kyokushin Karate. Both, unlike your choices, use methods that have been shown to work much more reliably than what you've chosen.

Wing Chun would be a better option than Karate in general.

Just be sure to move on to other things as well. Read books nigga.

Maybe I should reconstruct some version of the /q/ sticky.
http://aliveness101.blogspot.com/2005/07/why-aliveness.html

>>17890
This would be nice since most of the living population of the planet have no fucking idea what proper Martial Arts are about; case and point being UFC posting about Bruce Lee on their facebook page to shill some movie and fans eating that shit up.

I will however say what I always say about this subject. "Aliveness" is a terrible word and does the opposite of rolling off the tongue, it sorta just forces its way out like a fat, hard stool and feels uncomfortable linguistically.

>>17891

And the rest of the planet's population has watched too many martial arts movies and think martial arts are magical tools of enlightenment rather than functional combat systems.