New Tekken 8 Trailer Focuses on Jun Kazama

Ever since the Tekken World Tour 2022 Finals showed a reveal trailer for Nina Williams in Tekken 8, more trailers have been coming out at a steady pace. All of them have focused on already confirmed characters and we’ve now reached the trailer for Jun Kazama, a character that fans have been wanting to see make a proper return for over two decades.

Jun Kazama’s only mainline gameplay appearance has been in 1995’s Tekken 2. She remains a fan-favorite due to being the mother of Jin Kazama and her representation of purity in a series where the main characters are dealing with devils. The story of Tekken 3 would give her a murky “missing” status after a fight with Ogre, the main boss. Her moveset would be brought back in Tekken 5 with Asuka Kazama and she’d also return as an important character in the non-canon Tekken Tag Tournament games. However, that hasn’t changed how much people wanted to see her back in a mainline game.

The new gameplay trailer doesn’t show her encroaching on her original moveset or Asuka’s, but it does have some familiar moves from her Tekken Tag Tournament 2 iteration. Most interestingly she also retains some moves from Unknown, who is presented as a dark version of her and the main boss for both Tekken Tag Tournament games. Instead of creating goopy purple pillars though, she instead can follow up attacks with short beams of light. Producer Michael Murray has said that she plays differently than her last iteration and hints at a unique mechanic she has, which could be healing.

A new stage was also revealed in the trailer. Considering how much Jun has been portrayed as being one with nature, it’s certainly fitting to show her off on such a tranquil forest stage. The last couple of times there was a forest stage like this would have been in Tekken 4 and Tekken 6, although neither of those looks as elegant and lively as this one. Similar to the Colosseum stage that we’ve seen, it seems like this might be a particularly large stage with walls.

With this trailer shown off, we’ve seen one for every character revealed so far. We should be seeing more gameplay this weekend during EVO Japan, as the first “Closed Alpha Tests” that function like location tests will be held there. It’s also possible that we could see a new trailer that hints at or reveals more characters.

My fingers are still crossed that Angel will be making a return. They’ve been shown to have a connection of sorts and although Jun has been known for how pure and good-natured she is, it could explain why she’s able to shoot beams of light out of the ground. Some of these powered-up attacks from Jun also have a shrieking sound effect behind them, not unlike how Angel was portrayed in Tekken Tag Tournament 2. Either way, we should be seeing more characters soon enough.