Tekken's Katsuhiro Harada Says the Developers Actually Love Anna, Despite What Fans Think

ign.com:

Tekken 8 director Katsuhiro Harada's official X/Twitter account has quickly become the fighting game community town square thanks in part to his extra long behind-the-scenes trivia posts and occasional Waffle House asides. Harada's latest bit of Tekken lore dump put to bed a long-running fandom perception that Tekken devs have always hated Anna Williams.

In an impromptu Q&A X/Twitter post, Harada responded to a fan's question about the relationship dynamic between Nina and Anna. In his 1,317-word response — which was written during his lunch break — Harada also addressed the community rumor about Tekken devs hating Anna by stating the exact opposite.

"By the way, there is a small group of people who believe that Anna is not loved by the development team and they even say that Anna is hated [by the] dev team," Harada wrote. "Well, it doesn't matter, Because it's NOT true at all, but the Anna portrayed in the story of TEKKEN is filled with a lot of thoughts and feelings from me and the animation staff."

For those unversed in the melodramatic soap opera that is fighting game story modes, Tekken's long-running narrative can be boiled down as a family drama playing out in a series of high-stakes martial arts tournaments. While the epicenter of the series' familial beef involves the Mishima family's ever-increasing family tree, Anna and Nina Williams serve as Tekken's tertiary rivalry. Some FGC players have felt Tekken developers heavily favor Nina as the series' golden child in that rivalry and view Anna as its black sheep.

Much of the Tekken fandom's perception of Anna being disliked by its developers was instilled by the number of times Nina would trounce Anna in a myriad of cutscenes and win quotes throughout the series. This perception also wasn't helped by the fact that Nina Williams is more often than not guaranteed as a launch character in Tekken game rosters, including Tekken 8. In contrast, Anna was allocated as a DLC character in Tekken 7 and has yet to be