The next generation of 3D fighters is here with the arrival of Tekken 8, and a lot of attention from players and general fans have been on the brand new characters in the game.
Although it seems almost obvious now, longtime Tekken Director Katsuhiro Harada was apparently caught off guard by Reina’s explosion in popularity after her reveal and thought a different character may have more of that spotlight instead.
On a recent episode of Harada’s Bar, the Bandai Namco boss man was joined by Tekken Development Producer / Game Director Kohei ‘Nakatsu’ Ikeda and cosplayer Shion showing up dressed as Azucena.
Later on in the video, Harada asks Shion who she plans on playing (since this was produced before the game released) to which she replies either Lili or Reina and leads into the larger discussion.
“I feel like I might have made a mistake in announcing which character to reveal first,” said Harada. “Despite Azucena being highly anticipated until then, there has been a sudden increase in people switching to Reina the moment she was introduced.”
He goes on to explain that Reina was supposed to be a bit plain in design and that she wouldn’t stand out much even if she was walking around in the real Tokyo, but he apparently misjudged how much attention she would get.
“Despite Azucena being highly anticipated until then, there has been a sudden increase in people switching to Reina the moment she was introduced”
“The concept for that character was that people who bought Tekken 8 would come to like her. To be honest when Reina was first announced, I was okay with her not getting people’s attention. I didn’t expect people who aren’t into Tekken to understand much about Reina, and I was fine with that.”
Harada jokes that he must be getting older because his senses are starting to get less sharp for certain things like this.
“When Reina was announced suddenly on Twitter, people were saying things like ‘I didn’t plan to buy Tekken, but now I have a reason to, so I’ll buy it.’ I was surprised by this turn of events.”
It seems the development team was anticipating more hype and interest to stay around Azucena as the more energetic and spunky newcomer.
“As for Azucena, she is flashy and indeed became viral. Especially overseas, Azucena was drawing attention. Since there is already a flashy character, we decided to give Reina a slightly plain impression.”
Ikeda chimes in to say that he thought Reina would probably get quite a bit of attention, but the amount of popularity and things like fan art people were created still were more than he was expecting too.
Even if her design is more “plain”, you can’t introduce a new Mishima-style character, and especially a cute girl, and not expect her to catch people’s eyes.
Perhaps those outside of the usual Tekken sphere wouldn’t take as much notice, or so they thought — but the community response has obviously been loud and ever present.
Now that the game is out, Reina has managed to top the initial popularity charts for the best 10,000 ranked players in Tekken 8, and she won our poll for most played character as well.
It seems Bandai Namco has a pretty big hit on their hands that they may not have been fully prepared for, but they’ll assuredly be taking advantage of that in the future.
You can check out the full Harada’s Bar episode below with the Reina talk beginning around the 27-minute mark.
