Recently I reviewed Dead or Alive 5. Whenever I play a fighting game that has characters in it that are kind of cool, I like to write a blog featuring all the characters in that game. So we’ll do it with Dead or Alive 5. But be warned, this blog is silly!

I’ve never actually played a Dead or Alive game before. Well, truthfully I did play one of the DOA Volleyball games once. But it wasn’t to see the female characters in swimsuits. Nope. Two reasons why I wanted to play it. One, it looked like it had a lot of simple mini-games in it, and I like those. And I heard that you could give presents to the other characters. And since I like to give presents to the other folks in Animal Crossing, I thought it might be fun to do that here, too.

Unfortunately I was wrong on both accounts. The mini-games were horrible. Volleyball was awful. If you want a good beach volleyball game, play Beach Spikers on GameCube. At least in that one, you can have one of your characters dress as Ulala, so that’s cool. The other DOA mini-games were bad as well. Jet Skiing was OK at first, but got boring. The waterslide was really hard! Those are some tough women if they can fall off a waterslide and hop back on! The other mini-games aren’t worth mentioning.

Giving presents wasn’t much fun either. None of the other characters would even accept a present from me. Granted, I did wrap up a banana and give that as a present. But still, even the critters in Animal Crossing were more gracious receivers than the DOA ladies. Since Ayane has purple hair, one time in that game I got a purple flower and wrapped it up in purple paper. And she didn’t even open it. So there’s a lesson you can learn from that: No matter how attractive you may look on the outside, if you are mean and ugly on the inside, you won’t be attractive on the outside either!

OK enough of that. The only other thing I know about DOA games is that I saw the live action movie once. Yeah, it was awful. But you know what? It really wasn’t THAT bad. I’ve seen worse video game live action movies (Tekken, KOF, Super Mario Bros., Double Dragon to name a few). Oh yeah, at E3 the folks at the DOA booth were really nice. Even the booth ladies. Yeah I know they’re paid to be nice, but let me have my naïve thoughts that there are people out there who are genuinely nice even if you don’t pay them. All right now let’s look at the characters in DOA 5. Be forewarned that since I’m not as familiar with this series, I may sound clueless when I talk about some (or all) of the characters. And this blog is going to be silly, too. I’m in a silly mood and sometimes I just have to let the sillies out! So let’s go!

Kasumi

She’s just a regular ninja lady. I think she’s supposed to be the main character. I guess since she’s a ninja, that makes her kind of cool at least.

Brad Wong

He’s your typical drunken fighter type. He has big ol’ bottles of sake on his back and everything. Since he’s a drunken fighter, his moves are really unconventional. He can turn his back to the opponent, flop on them, lay down, and more. And still fight in those weird stances! Reminds me of Voldo from the Soul Calibur games.

Mila

I think she’s a new character in this one. She’s some kind of MMA boxer type. She’s cool because she’s one of the only female characters who actually wears regular clothes. In the story mode, there’s one scene where she’s taking a shower after training, but she’s still wearing her pants. I guess that’s good because otherwise DOA5 would’ve gotten an Adults Only rating, but still, who showers with their pants on?

Helena

She’s one of my favorite characters. Mainly because I read that in other games, she was an opera singer. Since most characters are ninjas, wrestlers, or martial arts experts, it’s nice to see other fighters with less stereotypical occupations. She should’ve had a ‘sing attack’ move where a big music note comes out of her mouth and hits the other player. But that would probably be too silly. But not as silly as Helena’s fakey French accent!

Kokoro

One neat thing about DOA 5 is that defeated characters don’t just lie motionless on the ground like they just died. They just kneel or crouch down and breathe hard or whatever. So nobody dies…yay! But when Kokoro loses, she has such a sad expression on her face! I just want to jump in the game and say, “Don’t be sad, Kokoro, you just fought a ninja who ate too much spinach, that’s all. At least your dress is pretty.”

Bayman

Too bad it’s not Rayman in this game, huh? Bayman’s just a regular army dude.

Christie

One time in story mode, Christie was on an oil rig or construction site and she was wearing a hard hat. She looked especially silly, given her debonair nature. I wish there was a dress up mode in this game because I would always make Christie wear a hard hat. Actually I’d have everyone wear hard hats. Oh yeah, I also like Christie’s white hair.

Rig

Speaking of hard hats, one of this guy’s alternate outfits is his construction worker suit, and it has a hard hat hanging off his back. But it looks like one of those hard hat guys from the Mega Man games is riding piggyback on him. I like those hard hat guys. With a name like Rig, you’d think he was a truck. A fighting truck…now that would be awesome.

Jann Lee

One time brother Jeff was watching me play DOA5’s story mode, and I had to fight this guy in one of his alternate outfits. He was wearing a bright yellow shirt and pants with a black stripe going down. So Jeff said in a silly voice, “Hey I just saw this movie called Kill Bill…it was really awesome.” Like it was Jann Lee that was saying that. And that cracked me up so I decided that would be my description for Jann Lee.

Zack

I kind of feel sorry for the guys in this game because they are overshadowed by the girl characters. But this guy is silly. A little TOO silly, and if I’m saying that, you know it’s bad. He’s some DJ tournament announcer guy and he either fights in a suit or in his underwear. I THINK he was in the DOA Volleyball game, too, but I can’t remember.

Ayane

She’s another ninja girl. What makes her slightly cooler than Kasumi is that she has purple hair. If you are a video game character with weird colored hair, you get a little extra cool points from me.

Ryu Hayabusa

Hey it’s the guy from Ninja Gaiden. I haven’t played any of the new ones, but I remember the ones on the NES very well. I wasn’t good at them at all. Let’s just say that I’m very familiar with the tune that plays when you die. “Dun-dun, dun, dun, dun-dun-dun-dun, dun-dun-DUN!” They should play that when you get defeated in this game. Only problem is that he’s a pretty good fighter, so I haven’t seen him lose yet. I do like how one of his alternate outfits resembles the bright blue ninja suit he wears in the NES game.

Eliot

He’s just a regular Kung-Fu kid in training, wanting to be the greatest Pokemon master or whatever. But he can cook and eat really fast!

Tina

I’m not sure if she’s supposed to be a cowboy or a wrestler, but I do like her cowboy hat. In fact, when it gets knocked off her head in a fight, I wish the other opponent would let her go pick it up and put it on her head again. When I first heard Tina talk, I could’ve sworn it was the same voice actor who does the voice of the cowboy pony in the My Little Pony cartoon (it’s not, I checked). When I play DOA5, I don’t want to be reminded of the My Little Pony cartoon. And when I watch the My Little Pony cartoon…er, um, I mean, if I was ever forced to watch the My Little Pony cartoon against my manly will, I don’t want to think about DOA5. People have said I talk like that, too, but I SO totally don’t. Tina also wiggles around too much in her win poses. Despite all that bad stuff, Tina is becoming one of my favorite DOA characters because she’s just so darn bonkers.

La Mariposa (Lisa?)

OK I don’t understand this character. On the character select screen, it says her name is Lisa. But when you highlight her, the name changes to La Mariposa. I was too lazy to play her part in the story mode, but she wears a ridiculous costume that looks like a cross between a Vegas showgirl and a super hero. So I figure that Lisa transforms into La Mariposa the super hero in the game. Yeah I guess it’s probably a good thing I’m not making up the story lines for fighting games, huh?

Akira

Hey this guy’s from Virtua Fighter. I guess some VF characters made a special appearance in DOA5. Not sure why, but maybe it’s because both games are really hard 3-D fighters. Akira’s just a boring martial arts dude like Ryu from Street Fighter. I did like him in Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, though. He and another VF fighter were driving the OutRun car, and they made it go faster by karate kicking it!

Pai

She’s another guest Virtua Fighter character, but I haven’t unlocked her yet. I think she’s one of those stereotypical Chinese girl fighters. There’s another one in the DOA games named Lei Fang. Tekken has one, too, I believe. Pai’s name makes me hungry for pumpkin pie, though.

Sarah Bryant

The last of the VF guest fighters. Along with Vanessa and Jeffry, she’s actually one of my favorite VF characters. I hear that in VF5, she has an alternate outfit that makes her look like Ulala from Space Channel 5. So now Sarah is extra cool.

Alpha

I think this is the last boss, but since I suck at fighting games I’ll probably never see it. I think it’s an evil clone of Hitomi or Kasumi or something. In the beginning it kills a bunch of G.I. Joes. There’s some numbers after the name Alpha, but I forget what they are.

Gen Fu

This last unlockable character is just some stereotypical old fighter dude. I unlocked him, but I don’t know how I did it.

Bass

I’m not sure if you pronounce his name like the fish or the music term. In the game they pronounce it like the fish, but if there’s one thing Mega Man 8 taught me, is that video game characters don’t know the difference between Bass and Bass. At any rate, this guy’s just some bonkers Hulk Hogan clone. There’s one part in the story mode where he’s just laughing maniacally on his motorcycle, but it looks like the motorcycle’s only going 20 miles an hour! Speaking of his motorcycle, before I knew that he was Tina’s father, I saw her name on his motorcycle so I thought, “Hey can Tina turn into a motorcycle? That would be cool.”

Lei Fang

Just go read my previous paragraph a few characters up. I don’t feel like repeating myself.

Hitomi

I’m mad at Hitomi because in story mode she punched a tiger. She should be nice to tigers. Speaking of which, there’s this really cool circus stage in Dead or Alive 5. I wish I could just say, “Hey Kasumi let’s stop fighting and watch this cool circus in the background instead.”

Hayate

He’s another ninja guy and I think he’s friends with Kasumi and/or Ayane. Which is cool because ninjas need friends, too.

Round Over

And those are all the DOA5 characters, unless there are some super-secret ones I don’t know about! Now you know some of my thought processes and what goes through my head when I play these kinds of games. Who are your favorite DOA characters? Let me know in the comments section. Later! –Cary

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