Elena

"Try smiling more, just like me! Smile, and all your troubles will go floating away!"

- Elena

"I'll show you my dance, you ready? (私のダンス、 見せてあげる！)"

- Elena (Street Fighter IV series)

Elena (エレナ) is a character in the Street Fighter series. She first appeared in Street Fighter III: New Generation and is voiced by Kaoru Fujino in New Generation and 2nd Impact, Mie Midori in 3rd Strike, and Saki Fujita in Ultra Street Fighter IV.

Background
Elena is a princess of an East African nation that has a cultural tradition of fighting. Her father, chief of the region, is a traditional healer who also qualified in France for a doctorate degree in medicine.

Elena desires to travel around the world, meeting new friends along the way. She studied as an exchange student in Japan, where she met her best friend Narumi. She later continued those studies in France.

Appearance
Elena is uncommonly tall for a female, has dark skin, short silvery-white hair and blue eyes. She is barefoot while fighting and has long, powerful legs. Many official artworks, mainly the SFIII ones, depict her finger and toenails painted sky-blue. Her attire consists of a white two-piece bikini-like outfit with pale red, sky-blue, gold and purple bands on her neck, arms, wrists, shins, and ankles. This makes her attire the most revealing for a playable female in the Street Fighter series' history.

Much like Gill and his asymmetrical body, her revealing attire and the numerous colorful bands that adorn her body were likely designed by Capcom to display the graphical power of the CPS-3 board.

In her 2nd Impact ending, she was wearing a Japanese school uniform similar to Sakura's, she has this outfit as her alternate costume in Street Fighter X Tekken. In her 3rd Strike ending, she was wearing a white high-neck sleeveless shirt, red pants and black shoes.

Personality
Elena is a young girl with a strong, pure spirit and a cheerful "tomboy" personality similar to Sakura, Ibuki and fellow rival Makoto (though not as brash and fiery-tempered like the latter), as she is normally seen smiling or laughing sweetly. While very energetic and golden-hearted, she is also smart, sociable, and culture-adaptive, always eager to learn more about the world, which is part of the reason for her travels. She also has an unusual accent, which she refers to as something she got from her travels around the world in one of her win quotes in 3rd Strike. Elena is also able to hear and comprehend various rhythms as well as the voices of the wind and trees.

Elena's views of fighting and martial arts differ from most due to her light-hearted personality allowing her to befriend some people and annoy others. She is a very cheery person who looks to makes friends which motivated her to join the 3rd world tournament to meet new people and hopefully make friends.

Elena is able to tell when she sees a pure evil person, seen in her win quote against M. Bison in Street Fighter X Tekken ("I don't need the wind to tell me that you are a very bad man!").

Ultra Street Fighter IV
While sparring with her brother, Elena feels unsettled by the feelings she senses from the surrounding trees. Her father the chief confirms her suspicions, claiming to have already discussed the matter with the Shaman. It has been determined that "a bringer of death" once walked amongst their people. The "seeds of sadness" this individual has proceeded to sow around the world have caused the trees to respond with "strange noises". These noises, presumably detectable by those with a strong connection to nature such as Elena and the Shaman, are implied to be the source of her disquiet.

Believing that this person is associated with the upcoming S.I.N. tournament, he then reveals that he has decided to enter her into it. Furthermore, as head of the tribe, he then commands her (amid protests from her brother) to observe the fighters and thus determine "the truth". Elena cheerfully accepts his decisions.

After the tournament, Elena informs her father that she has made many friends along the way. As she says so, she reflects on the fighters in the tournament and recalls her experiences: dancing with Blanka, sampling El Fuerte's cooking, having afternoon tea with Dudley, and taking a photo of herself with a somewhat reticent Akuma. She resolves to travel the World and become friends with people from every country. With that, she decides to head to Japan for her next trip.

Street Fighter III series
Elena is the young daughter of a small African tribe. Her father, the patriarch of the tribe, has a doctorate from a French university. Elena was raised in the vast nature of Africa and she aspires to study abroad like her father did before her.

In her ending, Elena ends up being transferred to a high school in Japan as an exchange student, where she has befriended a young Japanese girl named Narumi and writes home to her parents about her experiences. Her story does not change much in 2nd Impact, although she has an additional role as one of Hugo's potential partners in one of his multiple endings as "Elena the Wilderness Warrior", becoming the tag team of "Beauty and the Beast".

In 3rd Strike, a year has passed since Elena has left Japan to study abroad in France during the new year. Before beginning her studies again, Elena decides to street fight once again to seek new friends. In her ending, Elena writes back to her Japanese friend Narumi after returning to France from spending her summer vacation in Japan again, and invites Narumi to visit her in Africa during her winter vacation.

Street Fighter X Tekken
Elena appeared in Street Fighter X Tekken (as a DLC character in the console and PC versions and as default in the PS Vita version), making her first 3D debut. Her swap costume is Julia Chang's outfit.

A few elements of Elena's story are based on her role in the Street Fighter III: Ryu Final manga (mentioned below), including her choice of partner: Dudley.

In her story, Elena finds herself summoned to Dudley's estate — as she explains to the British boxer, she was told by a tree in his garden that the two of them must take a journey to Antarctica. While Dudley agrees to accompany the young woman, he insists that he return in time for his next title bout. Along the way, the two meet Tekken's Christie Monteiro and Lei Wulong, the former of whom Elena asks to spar with. Christie agrees, and the two men are dragged into the fight with them.

While Dudley was less than thrilled about the journey to begin with, it turns out that Elena's cheerful demeanor helped make it a fun trip. As Pandora opens, it creates a geyser of light, reminding Elena of "flowers falling from the sky", prompting Dudley to invite her to his garden. Returning to Britain, Elena told the tree who summoned her all about the trip, and the tree seemed to be listening intently.

Street Fighter III: Ryu Final
Elena has a small but nevertheless important role in the Street Fighter III: Ryu Final manga. She is able to mystically communicate with Ryu via a sacred tree when Ryu was temporarily knocked out during his battle with Dudley. After speaking with Elena, Ryu is able to develop a new technique called "The Fist of the Wind" with which he defeats Dudley. She is last seen travelling in her Japanese high school uniform.

Street Fighter Legends: Ibuki
In the UDON comic focused on Ibuki, Elena makes a transfer submission to study in Japan and is accepted, with the acceptance letter citing her exemplary school transcript and many personal references. She transfers to the same school as Ibuki, Makoto and Sarai, albeit in a lower grade than them. She introduces herself to her new school as seeking to befriend martial artists, and is directed towards Makoto, who takes an immediate dislike to her. However Ibuki are more accepting and eventually they are all fast friends. It is here that she also meets Narumi (who introduces herself as Naru).

Along with Makoto and Sarai, Elena watches Ibuki complete her ninja exam on Mt. Atago, and afterwards is ambushed by the Geki ninja clan. The girls fight their way out of captivity and rush to save the burning Glade of Ninjas.

Cameo Appearance
Elena can be seen in Felicia's Capcom Fighting Evolution ending.

Fighting style and gameplay
Elena's fighting style, Capoeira, is of West African and Brazilian origin. The style utilizes her strong, long legs to execute dance-like moves and fancy legwork. As such, excluding grabs, her moveset consists entirely of kicks and leg throws. She is the first Street Fighter character to use only kicks, in contrast to Dudley and Balrog (excluding his stomp in one special attack), who only use upper-body based attacks (e,g. punches, headbutts).

Elena is one of the few Street Fighter characters who has the ability to regenerate her health; the only other such occurrence within the main series is in Street Fighter Alpha 3, when Juni and Juli fight together as an AI-controlled sub-boss team, and can also heal themselves. Outside of the main series, in the Street Fighter: The Movie game released for home consoles, all characters had the ability to restore health.

Quotes
See: Elena/Quotes

Trivia

 * Elena has similar traits to Dee Jay. They are both dark-skinned, happy-go-lucky fighters who fight barefoot, using dance moves, and talk about rhythms and beats in their win quotes.
 * Street Fighter EX character Pullum Purna also has similar traits to Elena; they are both dark-skinned females who use dance moves in their respective fighting styles.
 * Tekken character Christie Monteiro, Elena's rival in Street Fighter X Tekken, naturally has some similar traits to Elena: they are both dark-skinned female fighters who fight barefoot, and use Capoeira as their martial arts style (as indicated by their stance). Christie can also be customized to resemble Elena in Tekken 6.
 * She also shares character traits and interests with Darkstalkers character Felicia. Like with Dee Jay, they are both happy-go-lucky fighters who enjoy music and dancing, and both cover their modesty with small amounts of white clothing (or fur in Felicia's case).


 * Being 6' (183cm) tall, Elena is currently the tallest female in the Street Fighter series.


 * Elena's Japanese voice actress, Saki Fujita, is best known for voicing Hatsune Miku from the VOCALOID series made by Crypton Future Media.


 * Elena's English voice actress, Karen Dyer, is best known for voicing Sheva Alomar from Resident Evil 5. Interestingly, Sheva is also African like Elena.


 * Because she hails from Kenya, Elena is the only playable character in the series whose home country is in Africa.


 * Though to be the first character not to have her native voice actor before being followed and replaced by Poison, in Street Fighter III, Elena speaks Japanese likely because she's a transfer student and studied there many years.


 * One of her color palettes (Start+Roundhouse) in Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike looks similar to Sera from MegaMan Legends 2.


 * Elena shares some few similarities with Marvel Comics superhero character Storm, as they both are descended from important figures, are from Kenya, and have white hair colour.

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