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

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 announced in Tekken 8.

In the post, Harada revealed that he mainly worked on the development of Anna in Tekken 3 and that he personally created the names of her moves.

“Originally, Nina was very popular with players since the beginning of Tekken. There is a yin and yang to things, and Anna’s popularity was often contrasted with Nina’s,” Harada said. “Back in Tekken 1 and 2, many mid-boss characters were ‘convertible character’ to other characters, but we wanted to make Anna from Tekken 3 as unique as possible to gain popularity.”

Harada also acknowledged the gap in the sister’s popularity throughout the years and took the position that even when Nina outshines Anna like a one-sided episode of Tom and Jerry, the team made sure Anna’s charms shone through for players.

“For this reason, Anna’s settings in the game reflect the feelings of the people in charge of Anna on our development team. For example, Anna’s settings include the following: “Anna is tired of losing not only the battle with Nina, but also the popularity ranking in the Iron Fist Tournament. I believe that was the very sentiment of those of us in charge of Anna (myself, the animation team, and the modeling team),” Harada added.

Harada concluded his huge Anna and Nina Williams lore dump with a list of triva about their relationship that basically doubled down agaisnt the miconception that Anna is completely washed in comparison to her sister. Here are some of the notable bits of pro-Anna trivia:

• Anna is a better cook than Nina
• Anna is better at darts
• Anna is better with heavy weaponry like an anti-tank rocket launcher
• Nina only assassinated Anna’s fiance in Tekken 7 (and stole her wedding dress) because her would-be hubby had a “very dark side” that Anna wasn’t aware of. Nina is also awaiting a thank you from Nina for the trouble.

In our review of Tekken 8, we gave the game a 9/10, saying, “Tekken 8 is an incredible evolution for the series, with tons of single player content, an excellent suite of training tools, a great online experience, and exciting new mechanics that make Tekken more dynamic than ever.”

Isaiah Colbert is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow them on Twitter @ShinEyeZehUhh.