Tekken 8 devs say they “enjoy creating brand new characters” so why do their designs suck?

Tekken 8 director Kohei “Nakatsu” Ikeda and project leader Katsuhiro Harada recently spoke with IGN about the character creation process and how much they love it, including what it took to design their newest fighter, Miary Zo.

However, Miary Zo’s reveal was met with a lot of disappointment about her appearance, so what gives?

“We’re Quite Good at Creating the Animations”

Miary Zo was revealed at Evo 2025, a woman from Madagascar who doesn’t look African in any way. The FGC immediately called out developers, noting how similar her design looked to existing female fighters. In response, Harada claimed there was a bug in the game that made all the women look the same (sure) and then changed her to have slightly different eyebrows and a mole on her cheek.

Nobody is saying Miary Zo doesn’t look good. But she looks almost exactly like the other female characters on the roster and doesn’t really appear to be a black woman at all.

You could argue that Tekken developers just make everyone look the same, but that’s not an issue with the male fighters at all. When talking to IGN, Nakatsu even went into tons of detail about what went into making Armor King appear like a pro wrestler to differentiate him from other fighters. Nakatsu talked more about his movements, but it’s not lost on me that Armor King looks like a big, hulking guy on steroids wearing a cat mask while Leroy looks like an older, buff black man and Marshall looks like a younger martial arts fighter with a more toned build. Their races, build, muscle definition, and faces are all different – musclar, but different.

Meanwhile, Tekken devs are clearly scared to make any of the female characters have varying shapes or faces.

“Then with Miary Zo, making a brand new character from scratch, just to be able to use our full resources – we’re quite good at creating the animations – for example, in particular, and just working as a full team and having several people contribute ideas and to be able to coherently bring that together into an original character itself is very fulfilling,” Nakatsu said.

I don’t know about “from scratch.” Others from the FGC have also questioned this, noting that she basically just has a different outfit on.

Tekken developers have emphasized that they are especially good at creating distinct and unique animations, making all fighters have their own movements and fighting style. I’m sure this is where Miary Zo will stand out. That will definitely be interesting to see and experience.

However, I am still not really impressed with Miary Zo’s design.