Tekken 8 Reveals the Final Season 3 Character – Yujiro Hanma

As promised, before the Combo Breaker's Tekken 8 tournament went into Top 8, Bandai Namco had some exciting news to show off regarding the last character of Season 3.

To much surprise, it turned out to be Yujiro Hanma, the main villain of Baki the Grappler manga and anime. Surprising not because it doesn't make sense, but because it makes so much sense that you'd expect to happen over a decade ago if it was even possible.

As some of you might know, Tekken has a not so tenuous link to Baki. In a very abstract sense, both initially center around a tournament that seeks to find the absolute strongest in the world, though even by the time original Tekken came out, it was already a popular trope.

The main story likely also ended up with an accidental overlap. While much of Tekken revolves around the Mishima family and the Devil Gene, Baki also dips into the parallels between genetic and paranormal, with Baki opposing his unnaturally powerful father who nobody else could possibly defeat. Though instead of cool electric Hanma family inherits creepy back muscle that form a demonic face when flexed.

The link really got direct when Tekken 5 came out and Feng was very distinctly inspired by Baki's art style (those extremely stringy and taut face muscles are hard to mistake for anything else), and more specifically, the character of Retsu Kaiou, a martial artist who much like Feng, represents the rich history of Chinese kenpo.

It's also speculated that Fahkumram is inspired by Baki, and it does sort of come through in the body proportions and those distinctly pronounced muscles. However, he usually gets compared to Jack Hanma, and the two really don't have anything in common aside from being tall with shaved head.

As you noticed, no gameplay yet, and the character isn't coming out until 2027, but the choice of manga panels here is likely very intentional. We see the classic splits, the demon back, and a variety of attacks that might make it into the game. Like the extremely powerful finger flick, ground punch, the German Suplex, axe kick, supersonic punch, karate chop, roundhouse kick, and some others.

There is a lot of material to go through in the manga, but if you want a general idea, Yujiro doesn't stick to just one fighting style. His whole thing is learning and assimilating whatever he thinks works best, though majority of his attacks emphasize his impossible strength and speed.

Alongside the character release, there will be a new stage. Sadly not from the manga. Instead, it's an original Subsea Prison stage and it looks like this.

Perhaps it will have some transitions that give us a glimpse of the ocean and offer an actually cool background, but if the image of generic Unreal Engine 5 prison is how they chose to promote it, that's not very likely.