Evo Japan 2024’s Tekken 8 tournament has officially concluded, with Yuta “Chikurin” Take demolishing the competition at the Ariake GYM-EX in Tokyo, Japan. Successfully defending his “home court”, Chikurin blazed a trail through the upper bracket without breaking a sweat, losing only one set on his way to the Grand Finals.
via Evo / E-Sports Evolution, LC
What’s most interesting about his run is that he played Lili — a character considered by many to be mid-tier at best — all the way through. In fact, he even took down Evo Las Vegas 2018 Tekken 7 champion Yoon “LowHigh” Sun-woong, a Dragunov player, in the Grand Finals. Dragunov is considered by most of the community to be the current strongest character in the game, so beating LowHigh so convincingly to win the tournament with a middling character is quite the achievement indeed.
Conquered by Chikurin
True enough, Chikurin was in complete control of the Grand Final match, keying in on LowHigh’s reluctance to crouch against his opponents. He spent most of the first two sets conditioning LowHigh into blocking low by using Lili’s low pokes, then capitalized on it in the third and final set by switching it up and going for more mids.
Incidentally, LowHigh actually tried to experiment in the first set by going with Steve, one of his main characters from Tekken 7. When that didn’t quite work out as he’d hoped, he switched back to Dragunov for the rest of the match. In the end, LowHigh had no answer for Chikurin’s strong 50/50 game regardless of his character choice, and got run over in three sets as a result. He never even got close to resetting the bracket.
For his excellence at the tournament, Chikurin will enjoy a prize of 1,000,000 yen — or around 6,400 US dollars — as well as 800 Tekken World Tour qualification points. In addition, this automatically qualifies him for the 2024 Esports World Cup (ESWC), taking place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in July of this year.
LowHigh meanwhile will take home 450,000 yen, or around 2,900 US dollars, and 560 qualification points. He, along with Chikurin, Kang “Chanel” Seong-ho, and Park “Malgu” Geon-ho, will also qualify for the ESWC as a result.
Whether or not Lili will escape the nerf bat in the upcoming May balance patch is anyone’s guess at this point, but Dragunov’s appearance in the top 3 at Evo Japan practically guarantees that he’ll be getting some big adjustments in the update. The patch notes will be released tomorrow, so we won’t have to wait much longer to see what’s in store for us moving forward.
Lidia Announced as Next DLC Character
Before the Evo Japan Tekken 8 top 6 began, Bandai Namco released the trailer for the next Tekken 8 DLC character: Lidia Sobieska. Debuting in Tekken 7 to pretty positive reception, Lidia is perhaps one of the best-designed female Tekken characters in recent memory. As both the prime minster of Poland in the Tekken universe and an accomplished karate practitioner, she employs traditional karate in battle — much like series poster boy Jin Kazama.
Lidia was one of the best characters in the game upon release, so it probably won’t be a stretch to expect her to be the same here in Tekken 8. Whether or not that does come to pass, Lidia is still a fan favorite and so we expect many to pick her up when she joins the roster in the summer of 2024.
Alongside Lidia will come a new stage called Seaside Resort, which is seemingly based on Lidia’s signature stage from Tekken 7 called Island Paradise. Photo mode is also set to be implemented in Tekken 8 at the same time.
