There is something hard to understand in Nina-Lei-Steve Tekken 4 endings.
Nina is on her way to kill Steve, and Lei is there to protect him. Yet, every time Lei tries to arrest Nina, threatening to shoot her in case she doesn't comply, or, in her ending, he does shoot, Steve prevents it from happening.
And surprisingly, Tekken 5 reveals that Steve and Lei have a really good relationship with each other.
(In order, Lei's ending, Steve's ending and Nina's ending):
Playing, after watching it many times, I started theorizing through both Steve and Lei's endings, that Steve actually tackled Lei to protect him. As Steve saw that Nina was no longer going to kill him, he presumed she wouldn't hesitate to kill Lei however, so he prevented it from happening.
If we look closely, though Steve drops him - and Lei groans and faints in his own ending for an unknown reason - Steve doesn't hit him, at most holds his arm.
However, in Nina's ending, it's she that Steve drops - for the same reason why I'm presuming he did it with Lei - and she runs, which can make things less clear. But Lei does try to shoot her, not just arrest her.
So Steve doesn't want either of them to die. Nina is his biological mother, and giving up on harming him - even killing, in her ending, people either from the Syndicate or the Mishima Zaibatsu trying to do the same - and Lei is not only someone who is there to help, but the one who helped him figure out the secrets of his past and sympathized with his pain (both according to Tekken 5) and later became his friend.
Lei doesn't even blame him for that.
It seems that Steve's ending is the version that actually happened. Maybe Nina's, they don't contradict each other (it's actually hard to tell, shots won't do jack in long term to Tekken characters, they can survive way more than that). All imply he knows she is his biological mother, but in Tekken 7, he acts like he has no idea and that Nina is just constantly appearing in his life as an opposing force.
The Kazama & Mishima’s naming traditions and the Next Gens of Kazama’s children!
Alright so I've been cooking this for a while since they dropped Jun's parents name on T8. Bear in mind, I'm in no way fluent in Japanese nor I'm a native, but I have google on my side to educate me better about Japanese naming systems and the kanji they used for naming the child (jinmeiyo and joyo).
I just want to named XiaoJin’s future babies so bad, kay?! Lol. Even though I know Jin is opposed to any plan of continuing the lineage (which is heartbreaking 😭💔) but the XiaoJin's shipper in me cannot be extinguished!! 🔥🔥🔥 I still want to named them! Lol.
Anyway! Feel free to correct me with your information! I'm open to any kind of knowledge 💖
Psst! If you don't want to read these longass founds and explanation, you can jump right away to the bottom of this post, there’s a pic that summarise these texts, lol.
Alrightt! Without further ado, let's deep dive into Kazama/Mishima lore!!
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So...
Tekken 8 has finally dropped some lore about Kazama family, and it's about Jun to be exact. There, we can get a glimpse of Jun's parent name:
Soon after, a Japanese KazuJun's fan dropped this tweet :
Assuming a native Japanese able to decipher those characters correctly, now we finally have Jun's parents name kanji:
純一 the father, and 恵 the mother.
As we all know, kanji has several way of reading. Cited from pon-navi, there are two typical ways of reading kanji, kun-yomi and on-yomi. In addition, there is a reading system called "jinmei kun" which is used only for names.
"Soo?? What's their name?! How do we know the correct reading?!"
Here's the thing!!
Tekken has giving us hints that Mishima family has a tradition to give their children with their kanji name, following a common practice in Japan. Let's take a look at their kanji.
仁八, Jinpachi
平八, Heihachi & 一美, Kazumi
一八, Kazuya
Notice the similarities? You’re right! The Mishima child inherited their parents' kanji! The sons inherit '八' kanji, with Heihachi inherited '八' from Jinpachi and Kazuya inherited both kanji from Heihachi (八) and Kazumi (一).
As it is a common practice, the same can be said with the Kazama family! Although in their case, they might not be inheriting the kanji but instead with the reading of the said character. Or maybe phonetically similar would be correct here.
For example, this is Jun's kanji: 準
This character '準' can be read several ways, some of them are : Jun, shun, setsu, taira, toshi, narau, nori, hitoshi.
And one of her father kanji is: 純
'純' can be read as : kito, Jun, atsu, atsushi, aya, itaru, ito, kiyoshi, sunao, sumi, tsuna, to, makoto, yoshi.
Have you noticed it? That's right! '純' and '準' can be both read as Jun! It means that Jun's kanji has the same reading as her father's kanji, although they have different kanji characters.
From here, we can assume that Jun's father can be called Jun____ as well.
As for the other kanji, '一' can be read as: hito, hitotsu, hajime, ichi, itsu, i, osamu, kuni, susumu, tada, chi, nobu, hajimu, hajime, hi, hiji, hide, hitoshi, makoto, masashi, moto, ka, kazu, kata, atsu.
Looking from the lists, together his name could be read most plausibly as : Junichi, Junitsu, or Juni. Imo, Junichi sounds the best, so yeah, I completely agree with the KazuJun's fan.
Now we all know that Kazama has similar sounding name with different kanji.
On the other hand, the mother has '恵' that can be read as: megumu, megumi, kei, e, aya, sato, satoshi, shige, toshi, yasu, yoshi.
While it could be anything, I think it's either Megumi or Megumu. Why? Because I found out that '恵' has the same reading as one of Jin's kanji reading! lol. Let's take a look at Jin's kanji!
This is Jin's kanji: 仁
It can be read as: Jin, ni, nin, kimi, kimu, sato, sane, shinobu, tadashi, to, toyo, nobu, nori, hisashi, hito, hitoshi, hiroshi, masa, masashi, mi, megumi, megumu, yasushi, yoshi.
Do you find it? Both '恵' and '仁' can be read as Megumi/Megumu! lol.
One of the speculation is that Jun named her son Jin as a sign of respect to her father in law, Jinpachi (仁八). Even though Jin is a Mishima by blood, he doesn't inherit the '八' character as he was raised in Kazama family. So he inherited just the '仁' character. Besides, it also sounds almost the same. Jun.. Jin.. It's phonetically similar, right? And if Jin were born a girl, I bet he would be called Megumi/Megumu instead just like his grandmother, lol.
Thus, we can safely conclude that the Mishima has the habit to inherit their kanji characters while the Kazama inherit the reading of their kanji's name.
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AND NOW! HERE COMES THE MAIN DISH!!!! 💖💖💖
What about the future Kazama kids?! Let’s move on to that and do the real cooking here for the XiaoJin's babies name! :D
We have seen Jin's kanji, but what about Xiayou?? Xiaoyu is Chinese by birth, and her hanzi (Chinese characters) are 凌曉雨 and リン・シャオユウ is how it's written in Japanese katakana.
凌, Líng: surpass / リン (Rin)
曉, Xiao: dawn / シャオ (Shao)
雨, Yu: rain / ユウ (Yu)
Now, I'd like to think that they would combine or use either their character or its reading for their baby! Also! They might use some of Jin's family name's characters :D
Here are some of my ideas for the babies name :
For boy:
晨一, Shinichi, a portmanteau of Jin and Xiaoyu's nickname and kanji inherited from Junichi/Kazuya.
Explanation: the first kanji '晨' means Dawn, which has the same meaning as Xiaoyu hanzi '曉'. The kanji reading is also the combination of Xiaoyu's nickname and Jin. Shao+Jin=Shin. It also sounds similar. Jin, Shin, it's rhyming, right? Just like Jun and Jin!
For the second kanji '一' I'd like to think the story behind it was that Xiaoyu wanted to preserve Kazama/Mishima naming practice but Jin was reluctant to do it. In the end, they decided to take the kanji '一' which was present in both Kazama and Mishima, that's in Junichi (純一) and Kazuya (一八).
For girl :
凌, Shino, a portmanteau of Xiaoyu's nickname and Jin, same character as Xiao’s hanzi that could also be the feminine ver. of Shin.
Explanation: it’s rather simple, I use the same character in Xiaoyu’s hanzi that has different reading while also the combination of Jin and Xiaoyu’s name. In Chinese ‘凌’ read as Ling but in Japanese, ‘凌’ has several reading. One of them is Shino. Shino could be the sister or the twin sister of Shinichi, in case XiaoJin have two child or twins in the future :)
琳, Rin, a kanji that has the same reading as Xiaoyu’s name and phonetically similar with Jin.
Explanation: I think this one is easy to understand! Rin and Jin, phonetically similar like what Kazama would've named their children. It’s also Xiaoyu’s surname in Japanese. The kanji ‘琳’ itself means ‘beautiful jewel’ and in Chinese the hanzi means 'beautiful jade’, and it reminds them of the greens in Yakushima forest, Jin's home.
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Alright, now that I’ve spilled out all of the stuff inside my chest and calmed down, I’ll give you a simple name chart for those who don’t want to read wall of texts, lol. Hope this helps!
I guess that’s all for now, lol. I’ll add my thoughts if I had any later on. Thank you for coming to my TED talk! 😂🙏
Extended-story-mode spoilers for Tekken 8, for the story that just got released. Discussion of completely inhuman story implications.
So Reina is from the Hachijo family, it seems like we've confirmed? This is a clean explanation for why she has the Devil Gene.
She has to be a genetic Heihachi kid, right? Nobody else but the Jinpachi lineage (Jinpachi, Hei, Kaz, Lars, Jin...) has the Mishima lightning. If it was learnable, then Kazumi would have had it since she spent a lot of her life training with Jinpachi.
Does this mean that Heihachi intentionally sought out another woman from the Hachijo family (Kazumi must have been dead for 20-odd years at this point), got her pregnant, and then waited until the kid was born to waste the rest of the Hachijo family? ... he let them live until they (presumably unknowingly) gave him one more kid to raise as his own?
That's monstrous. That's outta control.
Or is there some other interpretation here? Reina could possibly be a clone, but we know that he spared a single Hachijo baby girl. That has to be Reina, right? How else could she have the Mishima lightning?
Tekken Thoughts: Lee Chaolan - Good Guy or Bad Guy?
This post comes from a debate I've been having on the Tekken subreddit. Is Lee a good or bad guy?
Lee has been very much of the sides of the protagonists since Tekken 6 and in Lars, he finally found a Mishima that he got on with. But just because he's working with the good guys, for now, doesn't make him a good guy to me. I've followed Tekken since the beginning and Lee was shown to be a villain. Ever since the first Tekken movie?
Lee's aim has always been to acquire the Mishima Zaibatasu. He was groomed by Heihachi to be his successor and he believes that the Zaibatsu is rightfully his. I think people have forgotten this because it hasn't come up this Tekken 5. (A game released over 15 years ago).
Lee has shown to be unloyal in the past. Lee betrayed Heihachi first when he decided to work for Kazuya in Tekken 2. (Imagine those two working together. Kazuya was still a dick to him during this time anyway). Tekken 5 even makes fun of Lee's 'loyalty' in Kuma and Panda Tekken 5's endings.
My point was that I believe that Lee will betray Lars at some point. And Lee working with Lars doesn't automatically make him a good guy. That would just be him being anti-Kazuya.
However, people can change, and the same can be said for Lee. Maybe he intentional are now genuinely for the greater good. Namco has reconned a lot of things in the early games. While, I think we can agree that Lee definitely is not as sinister as Kazuya but that doesn't make him 'a good guy'.
