Elena

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

Biography
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 with big feet. 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.

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.

Personality
Elena is a young girl with a strong, pure spirit and a cheerful "tomboy" personality similar to Sakura and Ibuki, as she is normally seen smiling or laughing sweetly. While very energetic and golden-hearted, she is also smart, sociable, and culture-adaptative, 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.

Story
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. Little is known about Elena's past besides her being a African princess and wanting to see the world. 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.

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 3: 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.

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 partner is 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 which 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.

Gameplay/Fighting Style
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, her moveset consists entirely of kicks and leg throws. She is the only Street Fighter character to use only kicks, in contrast to Dudley and Balrog, who only use upper-body based attacks (i.e. punches, etc.).

Elena is one of the few Street Fighter characters who has the ability to regenerate her health; the only other such occurence 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.

Trivia

 * Elena has similar traits to Dee Jay. They are both dark-skinned (Dee Jay is of Caribbean descent and Elena is African), they are happy-go-lucky fighters, they fight using dance moves and talk about rhythm and beat in their win quotes.
 * Pullum from the Street Fighter EX series is similar to Elena; they are both dark-skinned females (Pullum is Arabian while Elena is African) and they both fight using dance moves.