Katarina Alves (カタリーナ・アウヴェス Katarīna Auvesu?) is a character in the Tekken series introduced in Tekken 7 as one of the five initial newcomers to the series.
Biography
Katarina lost her parents at a young age and spent several years at an orphanage before a stranger adopted her. She initially rebelled against the man, but his kindness and patience eventually got through to her, and they grew close.
One day, Katarina's adoptive father vanished. She wanted to find him, but lacked the funds to do so. When she learned of the King of Iron Fist Tournament 7, Katarina believed her skill with the Savate techniques her adoptive father taught her gave her a chance of taking the cash prize and using it to fund her search.
During the first match of the tournament, Katarina was pitted against Gigas, an inhuman creature. Though she did not know it at the time, Gigas was her adoptive father, altered through experiments conducted by G Corporation.
Personality
Katarina is an aggressive and sassy-mouthed talker with a cocky and slightly flirtatious personality. She did however greatly respect her adoptive father, who recently disappeared and was transformed into G Corporation's brainwashed, mutated human, Gigas.
Katarina seems very confident in her abilities as a fighter; alongside her cocky attitude, her fighting pose has her guard totally lowered (contrary to a traditional savate stance), and her posture is completely relaxed.
Outfits
Story
Tekken 7
Official Website Profile (English), Official Website Profile (Japanese) & Prologue
Katarina Alves lost both her parents at a young age, and spent several years at an orphanage before being adopted by a man she'd never met. Initially, Katarina rebelled against him, using a whole manner of profane language, but the man's kindness and patience eventually wore her hard exterior down. In time, they grew close, though her penchant for profane language remained. One day, Katarina's adoptive father vanished. As much as she wanted to find him, she lacked the money to do so. But then, she learned of the King of Iron Fist Tournament.
The savate techniques the man had taught her gave Katarina hope that she could win and take the cash prize. The day of the first match arrived, and the arena was none other than the roof of G Corporation's Millennium Tower.
When Katarina first laid eyes on her opponent, all she saw was an enormous hulk of muscle. There was no way he could be human...[2][3][4]
Ending Description
Having finally defeated Gigas in battle, Katarina removes her sunglasses and approaches her fallen opponent. Gigas recognizes who she is as Katarina readies herself to attack. As she does so, a G Corporation soldier appears from behind and opens fire. A bullet grazes her shoulder, but Gigas defends her by blocking further bullets. He charges towards the soldier and both are knocked off the tower as Katarina looks on.
Gameplay
Katarina is known for being one of the most simplistic and easy characters to utilize in the entire series, as she is not as execution-heavy as that of a Mishima character nor as overly complex and tricky as Hwoarang or Steve. She has good range for most of her attacks, does ample amounts of damage, has a solid selection of pokes and is extremely agile and responsive to use. Additionally, her Rage Drive is not only one of the more damaging ones in the game, but it can also break the floor in the Forgotten Realm stage as well, further adding to her deadly potential.
She has a solid selection of pokes to offer, most notably the easily-mashable Crane Kick Combo, Nimble Cutter or Wing Cutter. She also has a solid trinity of counter hit launchers.
Katarina's unique stance is her Harrier, a short ducking dash which allows her to cover a lot of distance, as well as be used during commands to continue pressure. Katarina also has to be in Harrier to execute her rage drive.
Despite all of the above, however, it should be noted that Katarina is severely lacking in defense, as she has very little leeway in maintaining her distance from her opponent (she is incapable of performing a backflip [ub,b] unlike most female fighters in the series), making her extremely prone to being pressured by other offense-heavy fighters. Additionally, a lot of her launchers are extremely unsafe and leave her vulnerable as a result of her having very little in the way of maintaining her distance. She also lacks any kind of attack reversal, parry, or any kind of unique move or maneuver that muffles attacks; if a player is seeking a fighter that has both solid offense and defense, Katarina is not a good option.
Fighting Style
Katarina fights using Savate, the French variant of kickboxing. As Katarina implements the self-defensive variant of the martial art, her fighting style is more specifically known as Savate de Rue, allowing the use of knees, throws and headbutts. Savate as a sport focuses primarily on foot-kicking techniques that require great flexibility, whilst also utilizing punching combinations inspired by western boxing. Unlike other kickboxing styles like Muay Thai, Savate is exclusively foot-orientated and is not known for its knee or shin attacks.
Moves
Relationships
- Gigas: Katarina's adoptive father
Quotes
Trivia
General:
- When Katarina was first officially announced, her name was misunderstood by many as "Catalina" due to transliteration issues.
- Katarina appeared alongside other Tekken 7 newcomer Claudio Serafino in an early gameplay trailer which introduced her with the title of "Sexy Bad Girl" (セクシーバッドガール Sekushī baddo gāru?).[5]
- Katarina also appears alongside Claudio in the Tekken 7 location test "Thanks for Playing" screen.[6]
- She is the third Brazilian fighter in the Tekken series, the other two being Eddy Gordo and Christie Monteiro, and the only one who is not a Capoeiran practitioner from that country.
- Many of her moves take their names from birds or avian motifs, such as Snipe's Knee, Fledgeling Foot, Nest Crasher, Tucano Tail, and so on. Katarina's jacket in her default outfit also resembles a Peacock's feathers at the hem.
- She is one of four female fighters in the series that is incapable of performing a Back Handspring (ub,b). The other three are Eliza, Josie and Kazumi, the latter two of which are also newcomers introduced in Tekken 7.
- Eliza could perform a unique backflip in her Tekken Revolution debut, however.
- In Tekken (Mobile) during the latest update, Katarina's sunglasses are briefly removed during her win animation before they load back in. This is due to a glitch.
- Katarina stands as "LTN" ("Latin") in the game files.
- Katarina shares similarities with Sarah Bryant from Sega's Virtua Fighter. Both characters utilize Savate techniques (Sarah's case mixes with other fighting styles aside from Savate, while Katarina fully uses Savate) and both have similar "run to mama" win quotes.
Gallery
References
- ^ Katsuhiro Harada @Harada_TEKKEN, Twitter, 4:21 PM Jun 13, 2024. Note that information is not stated in-game and only comes from a database of information provided by series developer Katsuhiro Harada.
- ^ Tekken 7 Official English Website Profile.
- ^ Tekken 7 Official Japanese Website Profile.
- ^ Tekken 7 Character Prologue.
- ^ Tekken 7 Trailer
- ^ Tekken 7 Location Test Footage