Helena and Kokoro (Dead or Alive)
For those who haven't been up to speed in everything DOA, let me give you a brief run down. Dead or Alive is a fighting game series that began on the SEGA Saturn with DOA 1, consisting of Ryu Hayabusa, Kasumi, Tina Armstrong, Leifang, Jann Lee, Zack, Bayman, and the final boss, Raidou. It later got a rerelease on the Playstation featuring two new characters, Kasumi's half-sister-cousin Ayane, and Tina's father Bass Armstrong. This would later result in a PS2 release of DOA2 that featured all of these returning characters, though Bayman was unlockable, with new characters in the form of Gen Fu, Ein, Leon, Bankotsubo as the final boss, and Helena Douglas. Although not a lot of information was released about her at the time, Helena would turn out to be an important character in the chronology of Dead or Alive due to being the rightful heir to DOATEC, which was her father's company that she had to take back from Victor Donovan, Lisa Hamilton, and Christie, who would later form MIST as of DOA5.
New characters are added in every numbered installment of DOA but it wasn't until DOA4 where we got a character who, as of yet is entirely unimportant but may become more relevant later down the line in the form of Kokoro. Kokoro is Helena's half-sister who was borne of a Japanese Geisha who was a mistress for her father.
And though Kokoro doesn't seem to know who Helena is, Helena seems to have a fair idea of who Kokoro is given that Helena states during their match in DOA4 that their martial arts are sisters in the same way they are. Now, this is interesting because it's factually incorrect.
Helena and Kokoro are half-sisters. What this means is that they are related by blood but only through one parent. This means they're related but they're not closely related. So if their martial arts are related in the same way they are, I would think of it the same way. The martial arts in question share some blood in terms of philosophies and katas but are distinct in some way. This would be different from actual sibling martial arts like the Long Fist or Karate variants, which all need to be mastered in order to achieve mastery over the overarching martial art.
So then what are their martial arts? Well, Helena's martial art is Pi Gua Quan, while Kokoro's is Baji Quan. And once you look into these martial arts you find that they're nothing alike. While both are of Chinese Origin, Pi Gua is classified as a snake fist martial art, featuring a focus on open palm strikes, whip like arm movements, and very fast and powerful but very precise and accurate strikes to vital points.
Baji, on the other hand, is more like the inverse of Taekwondo. Both have a very heavy emphasis on kicks and elbow strikes, however, Taekwondo puts more emphasis on kicks since those usually pack the most power and also have the most range, keeping you protected in a close range fight. The elbows would then be used if your opponent can somehow invade your zone. Meanwhile, Baji has a much greater focus on elbow strikes to take down an opponent quickly because of the philosophy that an opponent ended quickly is safer than an opponent kept at bay for eternity. In essence, it's the focuses of Taekwondo but with a philosophy that's more like Karate.
"Okay, so it's clearly poor research on the part of team ninja, who cares?" Well, the reason I care is twofold. Firstly, Team Ninja in every fighting game they've made have a very heavy focus on the accuracy of the choreography of each martial art compared to real life, allowing much of what we see to resemble what a practitioner of each martial art could use in a real fight. So for them to thoroughly research these two martial arts only for such an oversight to make it in doesn't seem likely.
The other reason, however, is because I think I know where this oversight came from. You see, although Pi Gua and Baji are nothing alike, there is a Chinese martial art that is related to Pi Gua in the same way Kokoro is related to Helena that sounds a little bit like Baji that could also have been taught to Kokoro in Japan. And that's Baguazhang, or Ba Gua for short.
Firstly, much like Pi Gua, Ba Gua is also a snake fist art. Although it has a greater focus on the fingers and palm thrusts, it is still tangentially related to Pi Gua. Secondly, Ba Gua Zhang and Ba Ji Quan do not need a huge amount of re-edits to get the lip flaps correct because one syllable is already the same and the other two sound similar.
And finally, both of these arts can be taught in Japan. Usually, you can tell if a martial art from China can be taught in Japan if it has a Japanese name. For example, the Drunken Fist is called Zuiquan in China but in Japan it's called the Suiken. Likewise, Bajiquan in China is called Hakkyokuken in Japan. And Baguazhang is called Hakkesho in Japan. If you remember that term being used in the Japanese version of Naruto, that's not an accident.
What all of this suggests is that Kokoro was supposed to use Baguazhang early in development but then later Team Ninja changed it to Baji Quan. But why? You may be asking. Well, I have a somewhat tenuous theory that comes down to character overlap.
You see, ever since day 1, all the way up to now, Dead or Alive has made a concerted effort to not include clone characters in their games, or at least to not be egregious about it. The closest they've ever come to clone characters is DOA2 where Bayman and Leon both practice Combat Sambo. However, both of them have identical stats as well as movesets, so picking one over the other doesn't present any problems with balance.
Compare this to Tekken, where ever since the first game a total of half the roster has identical movelists to the other half but that half also deals more damage, making it so that in a competitive scenario only half the roster can even begin to be considered viable.
In every other game characters who practice the same fighting style either don't appear in the same game, like Rachel and Nicole-458 who don't appear in the same game, as well as Bankotsubo and Nyotengu, with the latter only appearing after the former had already died, or situations like Kasumi and Kasumi Alpha where Kasumi has her current updated fighting style while Kasumi Alpha possesses Kasumi's movelist from DOA1 and 2.
With this in mind, with Helena, who practices Pi Gua, and Christie, who practices the Snake variant of Wu Xing, it's likely Itagaki felt that a third Snake Fist Practitioner would be overkill and they ended up deciding on Baji as a reference to Akira Yuki from Virtua Fighter.
Before I move on to the next section, I want to point out how ludicrous it is that they said Baji is a reference to Virtua Fighter. Say whatever you want about Virtua Fighter inspiring DOA or Akira being the main character but if they were really going that route, they could've easily chosen some of the arts that appeared in Virtua Fighter that aren't in DOA like Pankration, Shaolin Kung Fu, Aikido, or even Savate. Even if it is a reference to Virtua Fighter, DOA already had Jeet Kune Do, Muay Thai, and Kagemaru's Jujutsu variant in the form of Ryu Hayabusa, so it's not like the inspirations were lacking to begin with.
Fight Style (Youtube)
Okay, so a few months ago I found a Youtube channel called Christian Lee Fight Style that was begun in 2006 but hadn't released a video since 2011. And he had a series called Fight Style, where he said he was going to analyze a character's fighting style to determine what martial art they use.
Now, I only watched two of his videos, the first and last of the series. The first was on Scorpion from Mortal Kombat and the second was on Sub-Zero and Noob Saibot also from Mortal Kombat. And the first was terrible but the second made me angry. Here's why.
For context, in the first video, Christian Lee states that he's going to do a lot of research to determine what Scorpion's fighting styles are throughout all of the Mortal Kombat games. Keep in mind, at that point in time, Mortal Kombat (2011) was out so it's not like he was lacking in choices. And after his "research" he found that Scorpion practices Moi Fah, Hapkido, and Pi Gua as his fist fighting styles, with Mugai Ryu as his weapon.
Now, for those of you who only got into the series with MK2011 and then say you're diehard fans of the series only to then say that the previous games in the series don't count because they're not new or garbage or whatever, these are all of the fighting styles that Scorpion uses in the 3D era fighting games. He uses Hapkido and Mugai Ryu in all of them but he switches between Pi Gua and Moi Fah going from Deadly Alliance to Deception. He practices neither in Armageddon because that was the game where everybody got two fighting styles instead of 3 and with certain exceptions like Mokap, generally everybody got one bare handed style and one weapon style.
But, okay. I'm not the biggest fan of mortal kombat in the world and I'm also not the most well researched on it, so it's entirely possible that Scorpion used those fighting styles throughout all of the games and the 3D era just happened to be the most explicit about it. So I moved on to Sub-Zero. And here's where I noticed something that made me angry.
He states that Sub-Zero practices Shotokan Karate and Dragon Style Kung Fu. It's actually the Dragon Variation of Wu Xing but he doesn't specify that. But anyway, he moves on to Noob Saibot and he states that Noob practices Scorpion's fighting styles. Now, I thought this was weird because I never thought Noob's fighting styles were ever similar to Scorpions. But he spins it as a narrative about how people who lose in a fight may lose confidence in their training and change fighting styles to improve. But then he slips up and points out that Smoke practices Sub-Zero's fighting styles, which makes sense because they're both Lin Kuei.
Now, I say he slips up not because it's inaccurate but because he overplayed his hand. You see, most of the games that feature these four characters, Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Noob, and Smoke, generally don't have them fight at all similar to each other. The closest we ever get is Sub-Zero in MK2011, whose sound effects on his ice will change to sound more similar to Noob's attacks when you're on the Bi Han costume. However, I said most. There is one game where Noob fights like Scorpion and Smoke like Sub-Zero. Mortal Kombat Tournament Edition.
Mortal Kombat Tournament Edition is a little known and rarely played GBA port of MK Deadly Alliance that features a few new clone characters. These, in order, are Sareena, who plays like Nitara, Sektor, who plays like Cyrax, Noob, who plays like Scorpion, and Smoke who plays like Sub-Zero.
Effectively, what this person did was use information not a lot of people had to spin a narrative about Martial Arts when in any other game in the series, it wouldn't have even been true.
I brought all of this up to say this: popularity is usually more representative of mass appeal than of quality. Some things can be nearly flawless at what they do but what they do is so niche that they don't become popular. Some things, meanwhile, are terrible but become popular because a large amount of people like watching them.
However, sometimes things are popular because they're good. And sometimes things aren't popular just because they're not good.
Natsu Tanimoto, Ma Kensei, and Ma Sougetsu (Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple)
The author of Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple seems to have issues with Chinese Martial Arts. Nearly every martial art of every other country of origin is referred to by its proper name. Taekwondo is called such, all of Kenichi's other arts of Karate, Jujutsu, and Muay Thai are called such, Boxing is still called Boxing, and we also have arts like Savate, Penkak Silat, Combat Sambo, Lucha Libre, and so on and so forth all referred by their proper names.
However, when we get to Chinese Martial Arts, all the manga can say is "All Chinese Martial Arts." Initially, I thought this was intended to make Ma Kensei seem like the most skilled of Kenichi's masters. Because while all of them are skilled, they're generally only skilled with their own arts. Akisame is best with Jujutsu, Sakaki is best at Karate, Apachai is best at Muay Thai, and Hayato has his own fictional martial art. But Ma Kensei is just stated to be a master of all Chinese martial arts. Initially I thought "Wow, that's cool, he must really be good" considering that China is home to about 50% of all known Martial Arts in the world. A whole 50% in one country, that's a lot.
However, over time you start to notice some weird things. Firstly, after the introduction of his brother, Sougetsu, it's retconned to Sougetsu mastering the hard fists and Kensei mastering the soft fists. Then we also find out that Kensei teaches a martial arts school but it's never specified what he teaches. We later learn of two martial arts that one person uses that Kensei has never actually talked about but that is apparently common for Chinese martial artists to practice together since one exclusively uses fists while the other is entirely legs.
After a while, you just get the sense that the author calls them masters of all chinese martial arts so that he doesn't have to specify what martial arts he's mastered. So, like the kid in the previous section was allegedly going to do, I'm going to take a moment to break down what martial arts from china that both Natsu Tanimoto learned and what Kensei taught Kenichi.
Firstly, let's get this out of the way, Natsu's primary fighting style is Pi Gua. His heavy emphasis on whip-like hand movements and open palm strikes just makes it obvious. However, what's more interesting are the 8 Fist strikes that Sougetsu taught Natsu to use at close range that Kenichi only ever seemed to have learned 1. That being the Double Palm. The Double Palm I have two guesses on. My first guess is Tai Chi, as the Double Palm is Leifang's Stagger blow that leads to her power blow in DOA5. However, I'm not sure that's a Tai Chi exclusive move. My other guess Baguazhang as it's a similar art to Pi Gua but its slight change in focus makes it better for close range, compared to Pi Gua, which seems to be more effective at long range.
I'm more inclined to believe it's Ba Gua, however, because Tai Chi is a soft fist martial art where Sougetsu only knows the hard fists. And while it doesn't explain why Kenichi knows it, it's the only one of the 8 Fists that Kenichi does know and all the others are more in line with Soft Fists, so it was probably just a supplement that Kensei taught him.
All Chinese Martial Arts are Kung Fu (Baki the Grappler)
There's a lot I could talk about with Baki the Grappler. I could talk about how the series has a weird obsession with Karate and how nearly every great martial artist practices some aspect of it, I could talk about how there are almost no martial arts in the series that are full contact, like Muay Thai, and I could even talk about the absurdity of pitting Boxers against opponents who can fight with more than just their fists.
Instead, however, I want to point out a tiny gripe I have about language translation specifically in relation to certain things. You see, when martial arts were first brought over to America, there was this need to call every Asian Martial Art Kung Fu. You saw it a lot in Xiaolin Showdown and Avatar: The Last Airbender which focused very heavily on martial arts but you also saw it to lesser degrees in fighting games and specific comic characters like Iron Fist. However, over time, using the word Kung Fu has seemed to be seen as a racist term in some way, like saying all Chinese Martial Arts are Kung Fu is racist because they're not all the same, or something to that effect.
However, I want to point out that such a mentality is really missing the point: you see, all Chinese Martial Arts are Kung Fu in the same way that all Japanese Martial Arts are Taijutsu. Kung Fu is just the Chinese word for Martial Arts, and Taijutsu is the Japanese word for Martial Arts. And while I myself would prefer these terms be fully translated into English since Martial Arts is a term that English Speakers do know, saying that Kung Fu is a racist way to say Martial Arts is really missing the point.
That's why Baki the Grappler kind of irritates me when they say that the Kaio's Retsu and Dorian practice Chinese Kenpo. Now, Kenpo means Fist Art in Japanese so it's a literal substitute for Taijutsu. However, Kenpo is a variation of Karate in Japan. What I'm guessing this means is that Retsu and Dorian practice Shaolin Kung Fu, since the Karate Variant of Shorin-Ryu, is just the Japanese way to say Shaolin Fist. And, if that's the case, I guess I did end up just talking about how Baki the Grappler has this obsession with Karate.
And I guess that's everything I wanted to talk about. Have a wonderful day.
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