Leifang

Leifang is a college student[5] born into a wealthy family. She was officially aged nineteen prior to the two-year timeline skip in Dead or Alive 5. Leifang is depicted in the games as a personable woman of justice and bearing an independent spirit, and hopes that by honing her own martial arts skills, she can inspire others to do the same. Her youth and general life inexperience sometimes causes her to act impulsively.[note 1]

In the storyline of the original game, she was saved from a gang of street fighters by martial artist Jann Lee.[6] Rather than being thankful, she instead becomes obsessed over defeating Jann Lee in battle, as she is bitter over his intervention because she believes she was capable at the time of saving herself.[7] However, she loses to him in subsequent DOA tournaments except that of Dead or Alive 4. She has a close friend in karate master Hitomi, and since Dead or Alive 2 she has formed a friendly rivalry with wrestler Tina Armstrong, who believes that the meaning of power comes from physical strength.

Character design sketches for the first DOA game, showing a prototype and a finalized version of the character

In the early sketches for the original Dead or Alive, Leifang's name was Long Lihua (龍麗華) and her fighting style was Chinese kung fu (中国拳法). Leifang is 163 cm high, weights 50 kg, and her measurements are B87/W55/H86.[8] She is known for cheongsam gowns [9] and her signature[10] braided queue hairstyle, but has also sported a variety of many other costumes and hairstyles (and hair colors) through the series.[note 2] Leifang's wardrobe in Dead or Alive 5 Last Round includes downloadable costumes of Telma from Deception IV: The Nightmare Princess,[11] Estelle Bright from The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky,[12] Hotaru Sakamiya from School Girl Strikers,[13] and Junko from Time Bokan,[14] as well as many others including ninja and superhero outfits.[15][16] Leifang's Japanese voice actress has always been Yumi Tōma, who also voiced a similarly genki Chinese girl fighter Ling Xiaoyu in the Tekken series.

Saturn Power judged Leifang as one of the first game's better characters due to her "great counters and lightning speed".[17] According to IGN's Hillary Goldstein, Leifang "has some of the best counters in DOA Ultimate, which helps since she isn't exactly a master of combos."[18] She was vastly improved by the developers for Dead or Alive 5, for which she was given a more advanced ability to parry opponents' attacks.[19] According to Anthony Chau of IGN, "Her elegant moves hide powerful attacks and while she's not the greatest in combination department, she's never been a combo-intensive character like Zack or Kasumi. Lei Fang's strength lies in high-priority moves and proficiency in countering."[20] Developer Koei Tecmo offered Leifang as an additional free playable character in the "Core Fighters" version of DOA5LR to Japanese customers from August to September 2015, in celebration of the game reaching four million downloads.[21]

Stuntwoman Ying Wang played Leifang in a minor role in the live-action film DOA: Dead or Alive. The character makes several appearances at the beginning of the film, until she is knocked out by Gen Fu.

Several figures of Leifang were released by Bandai, Epoch, and other companies[22] like After Dark and Kotobukiya.[23][24] Other merchandise has included dakimakura body pillow cases[25] and 3D mouse pads.[26]