Tekken 8 Director Explains Why Kuma And Panda Joined The Series

thegamer.com:

Tekken 8's director, Katsuhiro Harada, has explained that Kuma and Panda were added to the series simply because he thought it would be "fun".

Although Tekken is one of the more realistic-looking fighting game series out there, it's got its fair share of ridiculousness too, like martial artists who can turn into devils and cyborgs who can take their limbs off at will. Perhaps the weirdest thing in Tekken, however, is its range of animal characters, including Kuma the bear, Panda the, well, panda, and Roger the kangaroo.

Animals being playable fighters has been a staple of the Tekken series for a long time now, but it must look a little weird to newcomers to see realistic humans going up against beasts who somehow know martial arts. Take Twitter user Luuny69, for example, who was so bewildered by Kuma and Panda being in Tekken 8 that they took the time to ask the game's director on Twitter why they were added to the series in the first place. Just wait until they see the velociraptor...

In response to the question, series director Katsuhiro Harada had a fairly simple answer - Kuma, Panda, and the rest of Tekken's animal fighters were added to the game simply because he thought it would be "fun". Harada pointed out that the whole point of video games is to be able to do things you wouldn't in real life, which seemingly includes being able to beat up a bear or punch martial artists as a panda.

"I simply thought it would be fun. Isn't it interesting that video games allow you to do things that are hard to do in real life? And a long time ago, there used to be a certain number of people who wanted to face a bear at least once as a martial artist."

Harada also suggested that Tekken allows you to control and fight against a