Elena

"Shall we dance?"

- Elena

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 and by Mie Midori in 3rd Strike.

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 with somewhat 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, Ibuki and fellow rival Makoto (though not 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-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. 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.

Ultra Street Fighter IV
Elena's role in the game is currently unknown.

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.

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 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 first Street Fighter character to use only kicks (later followed by Juri, who is the second), 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 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.

Trivia

 * Elena has similar traits to Dee Jay. They are both dark-skinned (Dee Jay is of Caribbean descent and Elena is African), happy-go-lucky fighters who fight using dance moves and talk about rhythms and beats in their win quotes.
 * Street Fighter EX character Pullum Purna has similar traits to Elena; they are both dark-skinned females (Pullum is Arabian while Elena is African) who use dance moves in their respective fighting styles.
 * In Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact, Elena 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".
 * As mentioned above, Elena's prologue in Street Fighter X Tekken mentions a sacred tree. This is likely a reference to the Street Fighter III: Ryu Final manga, where (also explained above) Ryu briefly communicates with Elena via a sacred tree after being temporarily knocked out by Dudley. Dudley just so happens to be Elena's partner in the game.
 * Being 6' (183cm) tall, Elena is currently the tallest female in the Street Fighter series.
 * Elena is the only confirmed Ultra Street Fighter IV newcomer so far that does not originate from Final Fight.
 * Elena's Japanese voice actress, Saki Fujita, was best known as the voice Provider Hatsune Miku from the VOCALOID series made by Crypton Future Media.