Bandai recently revealed Reina, a new character in the upcoming Tekken 8 video game who uses Taido and karate techniques.
This is a pretty big deal, because it's really the first major recognition of Taido in popular culture outside Japan, despite almost sixty years since our art's founding. It's also significant because the game designers worked with Tetsuji Nakano Sensei to both understand Taido's strategies and create motion capture data of key Taido techniques like manjigeri and sentai.
Actually, Nakano Sensei worked with the game development team over five years ago, but couldn't reveal his involvement due to an NDA ? But he's spent much of that time working to grow Taido's public profile through his appearances in popular YouTube videos.
Reina's Use of Taido Techniques
In the game's trailer, Reina is seen using bakuchugeri, untai keritsuki, majigeri, ebigeri, and sentai, among other Taido techniques.
Here's a video showing some of those movements alongside Nakano Sensei's demonstrations of similar combinations:
From the official announcement:
She utilizes a special movement called Sentai to close the distance quickly and launch rushes, while Unsoku allows her to deliver powerful attacks with agile footwork, demonstrating a speedy and aggressive combat approach
Though the trailer does show Reina's legs moving similarly to kosoku, the actual gameplay does not appear to allow for her to truly employ unsoku to change angles, but it's still cool to see Taido's kamae and techniques demonstrated so faithfully.
