| Kitana | |
|---|---|
Kitana in Mortal Kombat (2011) |
|
| Series | Mortal Kombat |
| First game | Mortal Kombat II (1993) |
| Created by | Ed Boon and John Tobias |
| Designed by | John Tobias (MKII, UMK3/MKT) Mark Lappin (MK:SM) Allisa Swanson (Legacy) |
| Voiced by | Cree Summer (MK: DotR) Lita Lopez (MK:SM) S.G. Willie (MKvDC) Karen Strassman (MK2011) |
| Motion capture | Katalin Zamiar (MKII) Becky Gable (UMK3, MKT) Lorrisa Julianus (MKvDC) Brenda Barrie (MK2011) |
| Portrayed by | Katalin Zamiar (MKII commercial) Talisa Soto (films) Lexi Alexander (as "Lexi Mirai"),[1][2] Jennifer DeCosta (Live Tour) Audie England, Dara Tomanovich (Konquest) Brittney Palmer (Playboy commercial) Samantha Jo (as "Sam Tjhia") (Legacy) |
| Fictional profile | |
| Origin | Edenia |
| Fighting styles | Eagle Claw (MK:DA, MK:U) Ba Gua (MK:DA, MK:U, MK:A) SEA (Konquest)[3] |
| Weapon | Steel Fans (all media except MKG and the first film) Flying Blade (MKG) |
Kitana (or Princess Kitana / Lady Kitana by title) is a recurring player and a one-time boss character from the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. One of the lead characters of the Mortal Kombat saga, Kitana is the princess of the other-dimensional realm of Edenia and the daughter of Queen Sindel. She also has role a of romantic interest for the series' primary hero Liu Kang and has an evil twin named Mileena.
Kitana has appeared in almost every Mortal Kombat media (mostly as a supporting character for Liu Kang), becoming one of the most popular characters in the franchise and gaining critical acclaim as one of the most attractive women of video games in general.
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Kitana is over 10,000 years old, although she appears to be a young woman. Through the years, she has risen to great importance, first as the loyal stepdaughter of the evil Outworld emperor Shao Kahn; then his enemy, tearing herself away from his grasp and freeing her home realm of Edenia; and then leading an army into Outworld to combat any chance of Shao Kahn rising to power again. Kitana shared a subtle love interest with Earthrealm champion Liu Kang until he was killed by the Deadly Alliance, though they were briefly reunited prior to his resurrection. She has aligned herself on the good side, despite her loyalty to Shao Kahn for most of her life until learning the truth about her past and real family. A disfigured clone of Kitana, given the name Mileena, was introduced as Kitana's twin sister, but is later considered her arch-rival (at least in the original game series' timeline[note 1]).
Kitana first appears in Mortal Kombat II (1993) as Shao Kahn's daughter and personal assassin, working alongside her supposed twin sister Mileena. After centuries of loyally serving Kahn, Kitana uncovers the truth about her past, discovering that she is actually the daughter of Edenia's former rulers King Jerrod and Queen Sindel, and was taken as Shao Kahn's own when he conquered their realm. She also learns that Mileena was never her real sister, but a grotesque clone of her created at her adopted father's behest by his sorcerer Shang Tsung. Originally intended to replace Kitana should she ever learn of her true birthright, Mileena emerged flawed and Kahn instead decided to make her monitor Kitana's loyalty to him. According to the semi canonical spin-off game Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, after Kitana (voiced by Lita Lopez) was found no longer loyal to Kahn, she is put into a spell-induced trance and forced to fight the Earthrealm heroes anyway (along with Mileena and Jade), before being freed from this state by the Shaolin warrior monks Liu Kang and Kung Lao. Eventually, the sisters clash and Kitana emerges victorious, killing Mileena.
During the events of Mortal Kombat 3 (1995), Kitana is put on trial for treason and the murder of Mileena. Before a verdict and sentence could be reached, however, she escapes from Shao Kahn's dungeons and joins the warriors of Earthrealm to free her mother Sindel, who has been resurrected and used by Kahn to invade Earth. After convincing her close friend Jade to join her, Kitana locates and frees Sindel from Shao Kahn's mental control, leading to his defeat at the hands of Liu Kang. Kitana, Sindel, and Jade then liberate Edenia from Outworld. Their jubilance is short-lived, as during Mortal Kombat Gold (1999), Shinnok and his grand vizier Quan Chi escapes imprisonment in the Netherrealm and invades Edenia. Betrayed by the traitorous Edenian Tanya, Kitana, Sindel, and Jade are taken prisoner, but Kitana manages to escape and rejoin her Earthrealm allies. Shinnok's forces are eventually defeated by the joint efforts of Kitana and her allies. With Edenia freed once again, Kitana finally proposes to Liu Kang, offering him the chance to rule Edenia at her side as King and Queen, but he reluctantly rejects her offer, seeing his true duty as champion of Earth. After Shinnok's defeat, Kitana captures Mileena but learns that Shao Kahn has survived his defeat in Earthrealm and is regaining power. Knowing that Kahn would attempt to reclaim Edenia once he was strong enough, she forges an alliance with Goro, prince of the Outworld race Shokan. The combined armies of the Edenians and Shokans defeat much of Kahn's forces, but are eventually locked in stalemate.
In Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (2002), Kitana learns that Shao Kahn has been slain by unknown assassins. Thinking her fight is at an end, she begins the journey back to Edenia, hoping to finally live in peace. However, on the way she encounters Kung Lao, who tells her of the plans of the Deadly Alliance, Quan Chi and Shang Tsung, who are responsible for Liu Kang and Shao Kahn's demise and are attempting to revive the undead army of the legendary Onaga the Dragon King. Despite Kitana's grief, she once again rejoins the Earthrealm warriors against the new threat. Eventually, Kitana and her allies assault Shang Tsung's palace, where she faces Quan Chi one-on-one. Despite her improved fighting skills, gained from training with Bo' Rai Cho, Kitana is outmatched by the powerful sorcerer and killed alongside her allies. Shortly after, they are resurrected and magically enslaved by Onaga, who then sends Mileena to impersonate Kitana as the princess of Edenia.
In Mortal Kombat: Deception (2004), Onaga uses Kitana to defeat and imprison her mother, Sindel, knowing that the queen would not fight her daughter. Sindel is freed from her own dungeon by Jade, and together they flee to Outworld where they attempt to find a way to defeat Onaga and free Kitana from his influence. Unknown to anyone at the time, Liu Kang's spirit was able to remain amongst the living due to the bond he shared with Kitana.[4] He found himself a new ally and friend in Ermac, as the two embark on a mission to save their allies as well. Ermac and Liu Kang are successful in freeing Kitana and the other Earthrealm heroes. Afterward, as Kitana travels back to Edenia, she encounters Blaze, who warns her of a coming new danger that will threaten all the realms and advices her to assemble the forces of light into battle. Weary of constant battle, Kitana is disheartened, but Blaze assures her that the wars will soon be over. Following this warning, Kitana returns in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (2006), accompanied by Liu Kang's spirit in order to keep him whole until there was a way to reunite him with his body. They later meet with Nightwolf, who offers to relieve Kitana of her burden to take Liu Kang's soul into himself, allowing her to fight against the coming evil. Kitana ultimately perishes with the rest of her allies during the battle.
Kitana re-appears in Mortal Kombat, the 2011 re-imagining of the earliest three Mortal Kombat games,[5] voiced by Karen Strassman and motion-captured by Brenda Barrie.[6] In the game's story mode, she and Jade are sent by Shao Kahn to compete in Mortal Kombat. Kitana battles Liu Kang in an attempt to insure that he will not reach the final stages of the first tournament, but is defeated; expecting to die, she is surprised by his decision to spare her. Later, during the second tournament, Kitana is approached by Raiden, who informs her that her supposed past as Shao Kahn's daughter is a lie. In Shang Tsung's Flesh Pits, she comes upon a newly-created Mileena. Before Kahn, she accuses Shang Tsung of attempting to replace her, and is shocked to learn that the Emperor himself ordered Mileena's creation, as he imprisons Kitana in the palace and commands his "true daughter" to be brought to him. However, Kitana is soon freed by Jade and the two escape to Earthrealm to join their new allies against the forces of Outworld. They assist in the battle for Earthrealm, but are killed alongside several others by Kitana's corrupted mother, Sindel. In the end, she is shown to be one of the warriors that are resurrected by Quan Chi in the Netherrealm to battle Raiden.
In the uncanonical crossover game Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, Kitana is transported to Metropolis, where she encounters her counterpart from the DC Universe, Wonder Woman. Due to the "kombat rage", Kitana hallucinates, believing Wonder Woman to be an assassin sent from Outworld and challenged her. After being defeated, Kitana flees to elsewhere in Metropolis, where she is found and defeated by Scorpion and brought to Raiden's temple, where she tells about seeing the fusion of Shao Kahn and Darkseid: Dark Kahn. Kitana then joins the rest of the Kombatants in traveling to the fused realms of Outworld and Apokolips. She fights alongside them against the DC heroes and villains, and is one of the many knocked unconscious while Raiden and Superman battle and destroy Dark Kahn.
Kitana's prototype design in Mortal Kombat II was the work of John Tobias, the main Mortal Kombat designer of the 1990s. Her origins as character were revealed in 2011 by Tobias, who disclosed that she started out as an unplayable herald-type character called Kitsune who was created during the early development of the original Mortal Kombat game back in 1991. Tobias' original inspiration while creating Kitsune was the character of Princess Mariko from Jordan Mechner’s 1984 video game Karateka. Kitsune "was going to fit into the story as Shang Lao’s (Tsung) princess daughter - the spoil of victory for winning the tournament", who would betray her father after she fell for Liu Kang, but "Shang became a minion of Shao Kahn when the story was expanded for MKII and Kitsune was renamed Kitana and made Kahn's step-child". In Tobias' design sketch, she wielded a single fan and wore a Chinese dress.[7] The name Kitsune was rejected for it being a Japanese word and thus not fitting with "Shang and Shao who were both Chinese in origin" (before the games "ultimately became a hodgepodge of nonsensical Asian mythological hooha anyway"), and the name of Kitana was created as "a combo of Kitsune & Katana" that would sound "generically Asian enough".[8]
According to Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon, Kitana's signature "Kiss of Doom" Fatality (one of her finishing moves in almost all the games featuring her, except of MK2011) was inspired by the demise of the villain Dr. Kananga in the James Bond film Live and Let Die. Boon described Kitana and Mileena as the female equivalents of Scorpion and Sub-Zero (the series' two most iconic male characters, with a fierce rivalry of their own).[9] Kitana's signature weapons became a pair of razor-edged "Steel Fans", inspired by Japanese war fans and originally being fully metal. In Mortal Kombat Gold, Kitana uses the throwing weapon "Flying Blade", which is similar to Tanya's sharp boomerang due to their shared development history in MK4.[note 3] In UMK3 her Animality transformation-animal is a small black cat. Following her debut, Kitana was repeatedly removed from the further sequels due to various circumstances, only to always return in a port or an update, such as it was in the case of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, MKG and Mortal Kombat: Unchained.[note 4]
For Mortal Kombat II, Kitana was originally portrayed by Katalin Zamiar, whose base outfit used for creating the game's female ninja characters was Kitana's blue,[10] as Kitana, Mileena and Jade all were given the identical, bodysuit based costumes in MKII, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and Mortal Kombat Trilogy, differing from each other through the use of palette swap technique while creating their digitized sprite images.[note 2] In this game, Kitana was clad in a simple blue leotard with black sash, knee-high boots, long gloves and a headband. Becky Gable took over the role from Zamiar in UMK3, for which the motion capture footage for all of female ninja characters had her wearing a more neutrally-colored dark red outfit. In this game Kitana's costume attire with added details, including the laced chest opening, arm bands, ear rings and a more liberal use of black, while the headband was dropped.
For her first 3D (and the first unmasked) appearance in Gold, her face was modelled after Talisa Soto, who was Kitana's actress in the films, and clad in a slightly modified costume from UMK3. In Deadly Alliance, Unchained and Armageddon, Kitana wore a more regal costume featuring lavender one-piece outfit with even more exposed cleavage, high heels for the first time. In MK vs. DCU, Kitana wears a blue-and-black leotard and her long hair is held by a ribbon. In MK 2011, she wears a cerulean-colored bustier with silver trimmings, laced together in the way reminiscent of UMK3, a long with a flowing loincloth at the front, and a royal tiara in place of MKII headband. Since Deadly Alliance, Kitana's hair is much longer and is often shown to be dark-brown instead of just black (as in the original appearance). It is usually tied into braid, which became her most often used hairstyle next to a bun. Her loose hair did not reappear since MKII until the 2011 game, in which also her once-straight hair became wavy. Kitana's UMK3 outfit returns in the 2011 game, first as an exclusive costume in the pre-order bonuses and then later through downloadable content,[11] while the MKII-style retro outfits for her and Jade were also later included as part of another, free downloadable package.[12] These two post-release additions brought the numbers of Kitana's and Jade's costumes in MK2011 to four for each of them, equaling them with Mileena in having the highest number of alternate looks in any game in the series up to this point so far.
In MK: Shaolin Monks, Kitana is fought as a boss character twice during the game's main story mode and one of unlockable player characters for the versus mode. Besides the hallmark "Kiss of Death", her other most common Fatality is an execution through decapitation with a fan, which has been featured in almost all the games she was included in, with exception of Deadly Alliance and MK vs. DCU. The Fatality returns in MK 2011, but she also cuts off the opponent's arms first. She is one of the only five characters to perform a kata in the game's attract mode of Deadly Alliance.
Most of Kitana's traditional special moves utilize her twin fan weapons, used as both a melee weapon and as a thrown projectile, and to lift the enemies in the air.[note 5] According to the GamePro strategy guide, Kitana is only the seventh best of the 12 fighters in MKII (citing her devastating combos, powerful "Fan Throw" move, and good sweep and reach hindered by slow release of the fan-based special moves and limited attack patterns),[13] but she was picked as the best MKII fighter by the editors of Sega Power and Super Play.[14] In UMK3 (and, by extension, MKT), however, she got no new special moves as opposed to most of the other characters. According to Sega Saturn Magazine, "Kitana's lack of enhancements doesn't make her as exciting to play as some of the other characters, though her excellent juggle combos still work - and they can do loads of damage".[15] According to Nintendo Power, "with such a small repertoire, Princess Kitana will be sorely challenged by experienced warriors", even as her Fan Toss is faster than many other projectiles.[16] Over the time, however, Kitana has received the received some of special moves that used to be typically associated with Mileena, including a ground-roll attack (introduced in MKvsDCU and based on Mileena's classic "Rolling Thunder") and teleportation-based moves (since Shaolin Monks).
According to Prima Games' official guide for Shaolin Monks, Kitana is "quick enough for moderate damage, and has some of the most potent special moves in the game", but needs to be fighting at close range.[17] In Armageddon, however, Kitana is "a tough character to win with" and "like many of the other low tier character types, she's lacking in almost every aspect" (even as she "is a little better on defense than she is on offense"); she was rated overall only 4/10 for this game.[18] Prima's official guide for MKvsDC, on the other hand, called her "one of the more dangerous characters in the game due to her speed and extremely effective move-set."[19] According to Prima's official guide for MK 2011, in this game Kitana is a capable fighter who "is at her deadliest in the corner" and who is best played against Baraka and Cyber Sub-Zero.[20]
Kitana appears as a secondary character in Malibu's 1994-1995 Mortal Kombat comic books. She was the subject of the special issue Kitana and Mileena: Sister Act, in which her backstory was revealed as slightly altered in comparison to the MKII canon story. In the comic books, Kitana is the princess of Edenia and daughter of Jerrod and Sindel, but she was already an adult when Shao Kahn killed Jerrod and seized the realm, putting her under a spell that made her forget her past life and believe she is Kahn's daughter. Kitana first appeared during the Goro: Prince of Pain story arc, joining Mileena, Baraka and Reptile in search for Goro in Outworld. During the Battlewave miniseries, she attempted to rebel against Kahn with the assistance of Kung Lao, Baraka and Sub-Zero. Unlike in the game series' continuity, in the comic series Kitana has no interactions with neither Liu Kang nor Jade. Instead, she has a closer relation with Kung Lao (and Shang Tsung even attempts to exploit this while taking Kitana's form).[21] She also appears in Midway's stand-alone MK4 prologue comic book published in 1997, in which she is arranges peace between the races of Shokan and Centaurians while being secretly watched over by Goro, and in the game tie-in title Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe: Beginnings, drawn by Tobias and published by DC Comics in 2008.[22]
Despite being a major character in the video games' storyline, Princess Kitana was only a supporting character in both Mortal Kombat live-action films. In the movies, Kitana was portrayed by the 28-year-old Talisa Soto, appearing unmasked and wearing less revealing, all-black costumes (including a long formal dress). In the first film, released in 1995, Kitana was introduced as a companion of Shang Tsung, but eventually joined Liu Kang and the Earthrealm warriors to help them defeat the sorcerer. She then spent most of the 1997 sequel Mortal Kombat: Annihilation in Kahn's capivity, captured by Scorpion, before facing Sindel during the final battle. Kitana's steel folding fans (for the first time redesigned into several blades on each one, instead of solid all-metal fans) briefly appeared as her weapon in the second film, and she is shown to engage in a romantic relationship with Liu Kang, but her Edenian background, prior loyalty to Kahn, and relations with Mileena and Jade were ignored in both pictures, in which she was instead described simply as being the rightful heir to the Outworld's throne. In the 1995 novel Mortal Kombat by Martin Delrio, an expanded novelization of the first film, Kitana is introduced in a new new scene, in which she is described as dressed in "scarlet-red silk ... stitched all around with a golden thread". Shang Tsung also tells Goro that Kitana "alone keeps alive the memory" of Edenia before Kahn's conquest and "uses her age and her position as a shield to cover her rebellion".
Kitana is one of the lead characters in the 1996 television animated series Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, set roughly in the movies' version of the MK universe, in which she did again appear unmasked even if clad in a black-blue leotard-type outfit more reminiscent of the one she wore in MKII,[23] and was voiced by Cree Summer. Similar to the films, she is never shown to have ever been loyal to Kahn in the cartoon. In the episode "Skin Deep", a male ninja character Rain is introduced as her former love interest turned enemy. The series' finale involved Kitana leading a rebellion from Outworld against Kahn.
Kitana made several appearances in the non-canonical prequel live-action television series Mortal Kombat: Konquest (1998–1999), her role shared by the 27-year-old Audie England (the episodes "Vengeance" and "Shadow of a Doubt") and by Dara Tomanovich (in "The Essence"), with Christine Rodriguez being their stunt double.[24] In this series, she is fully aware of her Edenian past and the deaths of her parents at Kahn's hands, clandestinely working with the Great Kung Lao to prevent the Emperor from conquering realms while at the same time feigning her allegiance to him. Her outfit and weapon are similar to these she has in the films, but she uses her native fighting style called the Special Edenian Arts, which she had mastered already before Shao Kahn's invasion and which was suplemented with various moves that she learnt from prisoners of her stepfather. The Konquest version of Mileena is neither her clone nor a sister, and Rain appears as her former best friend.[3] In the series' abrupt finale (due to the show's cancellation, as it was supposed to continue further for a next season after a cliffhanger ending), Kitana appears to die, after she was reluctantly ordered by Shao Kahn to be killled for her plots of treason against him.
Kitana appears in the 2011 prequel live-action webisode series Mortal Kombat: Legacy,[25] played in her first acting role by a 20-year-old martial artist and stuntwoman Samantha Jo, credited as Sam Tjhia,[26][27] a self-professed Kitana fan who said she did research "to get on the same page" with other fans to see how they perceive the character while preparing for the role.[28] Kitana's origin story is told in part-live and part-animated episode "Kitana & Mileena", which is a fable-like, altered adaptation of their backstory from the original game series' canon (one big difference is that her mother, Sindel, used a ritual so her soul fused with Kitana's in hopes to avoid Shao Khan's corruption before committing suicide). In it, Kitana appears both masked (only in the animated scenes) and unmasked, and bests Mileena in a fierce sparring match. When the young sisters are sent by Shao Kahn to assassinate the man who is really King Jerrod, Kitana's biological father who is then killed by Mileena, Kitana eventually learns the truth after her past and decided to turn against Shao Kahn in the upcoming Mortal Kombat tournament.
Kitana was one of the characters featured in Mortal Kombat: Live Tour stage show in 1995, played by Lexi Alexander (credited as "Lexi Mirai") and Jennifer DeCosta. In April 2011, a model cosplaying as Kitana, along with those dressed as Sonya and Mileena, was featured in her a live-action trailer "Kitana Kasting"[29] and an official photo session;[30] all three of them later also attended The Gadget Show for a MK game tournament.[31] That same month, UFC's Octagon Girl[32] Brittney Palmer dressed up in a blue costume and played Kitana in the game in a promotional video on the Playboy vlog of Jo Garcia.[33][34]
A figurine of Kitana came in the MKII set with the Argentinian magazine Top Kids in 1995.[35] In 1996, an action figure of Kitana was released in the UK by Toy Island as part of the Mortal Kombat Trilogy Twelve Inch Series 2.[36] An action figure based on her MKII design (and the earlier Mileena model) was presented by Infinite Concepts in a prototype form at the American International Toy Fair 2000[37] but was never actually released. A 1/6 scale limited-edition statue was announced to be released by Syco Collectibles in the Enchanted Warriors series in 2012.[38]
Critical reception of Kitana was mostly very positive, often with emphasis placed on her good looks and sometimes also on her complicated character, and is commonly regarded to be one of the most recognizable characters of Mortal Kombat. According to Amiga Format in 1994, while it might be "incredibly sad for adult males to fancy in game female characters", one should be "prepared to fall in love" with Kitana.[39] In 2005, Game Revolution ranked her as fourth on the list of top ten "old school" Mortal Kombat characters, adding "you’ve got to be a pretty tough chick to hang with the other kombatants, but what was really deadly about Kitana was her beauty".[40]
In 2007, Tom's Games included her among the 50 greatest female characters in video game history, calling her "arguably the best known and most popular woman" in the series and "a powerful princess that's lived more than 10,000 years and still hasn't lost her hotness".[41] In 2008, GamesRadar featured her on the list of top 20 "overlooked game babes"[42] and UGO ranked her 28th on the list of top "videogame hotties", stating "Kitana has her curves in all the right places, and her signature fans will keep you cool when things start to heat up".[43] In 2009, Kitana was listed as one of the ten "hottest video game girls" by Complex[44] and among the 21 "sexy ladies of computer games" by the Polish tabloid Fakt.[45] Also in 2009, GameDaily included Kitana in the gallery "Babe of the Week: Brunettes"[46] and Unreality listed her as one of ten "most badass video game women of all time".[47] In 2010, Videogamer.com listed Princess Kitana among the top ten "video game crushes" as rivaling Princess Peach for number one video game monarch, commenting "Peach may own Kitana in the cuteness stakes, but Kitana wins out in sheer sex appeal", and that she "may be 10,000 years old, but just think of the things she could teach you",[48] and GamePlayBook ranked Kitana as the fifth best Mortal Kombat character overall, also noting her to also be the best female character in the series.[49] In 2011, Kitana was listed among the 25 "hot ninja girls" in all media by UGO, commenting "we can't talk Mortal Kombat and forget Kitana".[50] and as one of the nine "sexiest babes of action games" by The Times of India,[51] while Complex ranked the Defenders of the Realm version of Kitana as 18th "hottest cartoon woman of all time"[52] and GameFront ranked her breasts in MK 2011 as the 30th finest in gaming history.[53] Her famous "Kiss of Death" finishing move was also ranked as the eight best of all Mortal Kombat Fatalities by both UGO in 2007[54] and IGN in 2010.[55]
Kitana also shared some of the spotlight with her clone. At the time of the release of MKII, The Miami Herald called Kitana and Mileena ("leggy ladies who wear masks") to be "an interesting step toward political correctness" as "a far cry from Little Miss Muffet",[56] while Austin American-Statesman described them as "far nastier than that martial-artless aerobics instructor from the first game".[57] In the book Interacting With Video, the "two Asian twin sisters, Kitana and Mileena" were held as an example of a "highly eroticized dragon lady" of video games.[58] In Making Sense of Video Games, professor Patrick Sunnen judged their portrayal as "formiddable female opponents" to be potentially progressive, yet to be arguably made just to increase "the sexist potential of the individual fights", and described Kitana's decapitation Fatality using a "deceptively feminine razor-sharp fan" to be castration-like.[59] In 2009, GamePro featured the both sisters as 11th best example of palette-swapped video game characters, adding "both prefer wearing clothing that shows off their inflated mammary glands, and both have used the usually endearing gesture of kissing as a fatality".[60] The two were also featured in GamesRadar's 2006 list of top seven "girls kissing girls"[61] and shared the eight place with Sonya in the 2010 Complex list of the "hottest women in video games".[62]
There was also some mixed or negative reception (some of it being wrote tongue-in-cheek style). In 2008, Mania.com listed her as one of the 10 "psychotic video game chicks with too much baggage"[63] and GameDaily featured her among the ten "babes who shouldn't meet your mom".[64] In 2010, GamesRadar featured her on the list of "gaming's most twisted royalty", for having "a thing for bloody decapitations via razor fan… and for boys 9,000 years her junior".[65] and GamePro's AJ Glasser called her his favorite female Mortal Kombat character but criticized her repertoire of special moves.[66] In 2011, Game Rant included Kitana in the "honorable mentions" section of their list of ten "most awesome" Mortal Kombat characters but added that "apart from possessing one of the cooler weapons" Kitana "lacks the entertaining/alluring oddity" of Mileena,[67] also ranking her death kiss as the eighth worst Fatality in the series for repeating in various games with very little changes made to it over the years[68] (her "Splitting Headache" from MK 2011, however, was ranked as the eighth best Fatality from that game[69]).
In the humor magazine Cracked, Kitana was parodied in the comic shorts "Lifestyles of the Rich and Violent" (in 1994) and "Moron Kombat" (1995), in the latter of which she was renamed as Princess Kittykat.[70] A self-proclaimed "geek" Tanya Jordan won the Ms Fitness Southern California competition with her pole dance while dressed as the UMK3 version of Kitana in 2010,[71] while the FHM Premiere Vixen champion Karen Bordador made a photo session while dressed as the same version of Kitana in 2011.[72] In the Halloween 2011 special edition of Monday Night Raw, professional wrestler AJ Lee dressed as Kitana for the Divas Battle Royal contest and jokingly attempted to perform a "Fan Lift" on her rival.[73]
Kitana has quickly become one of the very sex symbols of the Mortal Kombat series, in a display of what one author described as manifestation of "pseudo-Japanese Orientalist fetishes".[74] One of the many urban legend-style rumors surrounding MKII in the early 1990s concerned the supposed "Nudality" finishing move (also known under other names, such as "Sexuality") that would be performed by Kitana stripping naked.[75] The nickname of an American adult model Cherie Roberts is "Kitana Jade" since 1999 (Jade being the name of another female ninja character in the series), while Kitana Baker is an adopted name of an American model born as Christi Josenhans. In 2004, Vibe's contributor Stud Houston admitted he had once a crush on Kitana, describing her as "sexy as hell".[76] During the development of the Mortal Kombat reboot game, the God of War series' director David Jaffe explicitly wrote how the GoW character Kratos would have "a ****ALITY" with "Sonya AND Katana [sic]" if he would join the series.[77][note 6] Following Internet backlash, Jaffe explained he does not advocate rape and this comment was just an "intentionally juvenile" joke to suggest that "as a reward, Kratos gets a threesome with two of the hottest chix [sic] in gaming".[78]
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