During yesterday’s EVO livestream in Las Vegas, Roger Jr. and fan-favorite character Bob were revealed as two of Tekken 8’s upcoming season 3 DLC fighters. Fans were quick to point out that Roger Jr.’s announcement trailer references a 10-year-old viral video of an Australian man punching a kangaroo, but few noticed that said reference is actually twofold, as former Tekken director and executive producer Katsuhiro Harada stated in 2017 that the same viral video led to Roger Jr. being cut from Tekken 7 over “animal activist” concerns.
In case it wasn’t already obvious, Roger Jr. is a kangaroo. While the genetically engineered marsupial is a beloved character in the Tekken franchise, both Roger Jr. and his father, Roger, failed to make an appearance in Tekken 7. As you can tell based on the cries of joy from EVO’s crowd in the background of the teaser trailer below, fans have clearly missed the little guy, as he hasn’t been included as a playable character in a Tekken game for almost 20 years.
And, yes, the bizarre trailer is indeed referencing the viral 2016 video of a man punching a kangaroo in a bid to save his pet dog. In Tekken 8’s iteration of the video, the Australian man and his dog are replaced by Leroy and his American Bully, Sugar. While it’s a funny reference in itself, the deeper context behind the trailer seems to have gone over most fans’ heads.
In 2017, Katsuhiro Harada stated in an interview with VG247 that the same viral kangaroo punching video led to Roger Jr. being cut from Tekken 7’s roster: “There was a video of a man’s dog being headlocked by a kangaroo, and he punched it in the face…It turned into a big problem. People were complaining about him punching a kangaroo. It seems that in the last few years there’s a lot more animal activists—even though they probably wouldn’t play our game they would still hear about that, about a kangaroo in our game being punched, and would complain about it.”
So, what’s changed in the last ten years? Have the animal activists Harada alluded to suddenly decided that punching kangaroos is completely fair game? Or is it because most of the senior team members who worked on both Tekken 7 and Tekken 8, including Katsuhiro Harada and Tekken 8’s director Kohei Ikeda, have parted ways with Bandai Namco in the past year?
Umm, I’ve explained this before several times, but I still think it’s being misunderstood.
There was a time—quite a while ago—when videos involving animals, or actions involving certain animal-related organizations, became major news topics.
Around that time, I was interviewed by… https://t.co/yp4E8LxQLL— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) June 13, 2025
Well, according to Harada, it’s because his “comments got twisted a bit during translation into English.” When asked about his previous statement regarding Roger Jr., Harada stated in a post on X that his quote had seemingly been taken out of context, or that the interviewer had completely misunderstood him.
“Then, a few years after that interview was published, this idea started circulating that Roger was removed from the game due to protests from some organization. But I never said we had actually received a protest, and I certainly never said we couldn’t include Roger because of that. It’s possible that the tone of my comments got twisted a bit during translation into English…”
Harada also stated that he only brought up Roger Jr. as he was being “interviewed by the media in the Oceania region.” Indeed, the interviewer in question, James O’Connor, is Australian, so it sounds like Harada just shoehorned an anecdote about a kangaroo into the conversation because he was talking to someone from Down Under.
