Namco Bandai have confirmed Leroy Smith and Asuka Kazama as returning characters for Tekken 8.
Leroy Smith is the newer character of the two, which certainly seems ironic since Asuka Kazama is supposedly still not an adult at the time of this game. But I’ll explain.
In his biography, Leroy emigrated from New York to Hong Kong fifty years ago, because of the burgeoning New York crime scene that killed his family and ruined his life.
When he returns, he’s already an older man, and a Wing Chun master. He learns that the messy situation in New York when he grew up was the responsibility of the Mishima Zaibatsu, specifically Heihachi Mishima, so like many a Tekken fighter, he seeks revenge from the Mishima family.
For over a decade ago, Tekken lead Katsuhiro Harada stated that he didn’t want to add Ip Man or Ip Man’s martial art, Wing Chun, into Tekken. Marshall and Forrest Law’s situation was different, because as Harada saw it, they used Bruce Lee’s original martial art, Jeet Kune Do. I’ll let you read the reason Harada didn’t want to add Wing Chun here.
However, in 2019, he surprised fans by adding Leroy Smith as a DLC character for Tekken 7. As he explained, the ‘Grandfather of Drip’ was entirely his idea. This was his way of adding Wing Chun into the Tekken franchise.
Leroy Smith’s design was quite clever for Harada, as it tapped a long underserved fandom for blaxploitation in the video game sphere. Blaxploitation as a genre had its roots in the 1970s with Jim Kelly as Black Belt Jones. But, one could argue, the genre never really went away through the decades (The Last Dragon, Blade, Romeo Must Die, The Man With The Iron Fists).
Asuka Kazama is technically the veteran fighter, in spite of being a considerably younger character. Introduced in Tekken 5, she is a relative of Jun Kazama, and by extension Jin Kazama as well. She is a master of the Kazama school of martial arts (a fictionalized version of jujutsu) in her own right, and known to go around Osaka like a street tough, breaking up neighborhood fights.
She first enters the tournament to find Feng Wei, the man who beat her father and destroyed their dojo. Later, she develops a rivalry with Emilie De Rochefort, but generally joins the Tekken tournament because she loves fighting.
This will be the first game since Tekken Tag Tournament 2 when Asuka and Jun Kazama will both be in the same video game, and the first time where they can canonically meet. On a game design level, Asuka was introduced as a way to bring back a jujutsu fighter in Tekken because Jun couldn’t return in storyline.
Some fans can already point out that Jun’s moveset has changed considerably and deviated from jujutsu-like Kazama style. We’ll see in a few days when players get them squaring off just how different they are now.
Tekken 8 will be releasing on the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows via Steam in 2024. You can watch both their trailers below.
