King of Fighters 15 Trailer Brings Back Fan-Favorite Shermie

After last week's "surprise trailer," revealing Mai Shiranui as the latest fighter for the King of Fighters 15, SNK returned to its promised motto to "Shatter All Expectations" for the next character reveal. While many fans were able to immediately guess last week's character, Mai, who was already a guarantee as she appeared in the announcement trailer, SNK made sure to keep fans on their toes this week.

Without a release date or discussion on what platform will the King of Fighters 15 release for, SNK has successfully relied on individual character trailers to generate hype, starting with a silhouette of the character expected to be revealed the following day. With this week's character reveal, many fans were left stumped, as it wasn't clear which character the silhouette belonged to. Many on Twitter assumed it was Botan, a character who has yet to make a playable appearance, yet has been important to the story since '03.

It was revealed that the returning character is Shermie, a character many had expected to return since Yashiro Nanakase's trailer three weeks ago. Sporting an entire design makeover from her previous inclusions, fans were surprised to see the buxom fashion designer so suddenly, as many had assumed she would be revealed much later. Like her teammates, Yashiro and Chris, her last official KOF appearance was The King of Fighters '02 Ultimate Match, 19 years ago.

Shermie's fighting style matches her flirtatious yet deadly personality and appearance quite well, being known as one of the few female grapplers in The King of Fighters series. Several of her moves involve taking her opponent to "Suplex City" with a sequence of German Suplexes, several variants of a Frankenstiener, and other wrestling-based moves. The end of the trailer sees her talking to someone on her cellphone, a homage to her appearances in older King of Fighters titles.

Games based on popular anime series has been the norm almost as long as video games have been around. While their qualities may vary, one thing that most fans of either medium have come to expect is that an anime game is most likely going to be a fighting game. This is something that needs to change.

It's become a bit of a running joke that if an anime becomes popular, it's eventually going to be turned into a fighting game. The Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm series practically started the tradition of the 3D anime arena fighter, but only a small few have managed to capture the essence of the source material in the same way and even fewer have done anything to alter the formula in any way. With combat being the center of so many of the most popular anime, a traditional fighting game might sound like it makes the most sense for an adaptation, but it often ends up removing a lot of what makes most anime unique in the first place. As anime ideas continue to grow outside of the box, it wouldn't hurt if their game adaptations did the same.

When it comes to anime games, there are far fewer RPGs than there should be. The genre is the perfect fit for the style of progression and power scaling that many anime follow. Titles like Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot show that even when a series isn't necessarily made to fit the mold of a proper RPG, a few changes can make for a really fun experience that adapts its source material incredibly well.