Laura Matsuda is a character in the Street Fighter series who first appeared in Street Fighter V. Laura was the third of the four new fighters confirmed for Street Fighter V, the first new female fighter in the game as well as the third Brazilian fighter to appear in the main game series following Blanka and her younger brother Sean.
She was voiced by Yōko Hikasa in Japanese and G.K. Bowes in English. In live-action, she was portrayed by Natascha Hopkins.
Story
Background
Laura Matsuda, her younger brother, Sean, and older brother, Fabio were all born in Brazil, though their father (Yuichiro Matsuda) and paternal grandfather (Kinjiro Matsuda) were Japanese (hence the surname). Yuichiro married Brenda and had three children (Fabio, Laura, and Sean). Laura has two maternal cousins (Enzo and Manuela Da Silva) who practice capoeira.
Laura was trained by Kinjiro in the art of the family's Matsuda Jiu-Jitsu. When Sean leaves at some point to become Ken Masters' apprentice and pupil, Laura becomes the heir of the art.
Street Fighter V
Heir to the Matsuda Jiu-Jitsu style, Laura looks for opponents to fight and to promote her fighting style. Before leaving her house to seek strong fighters, she hugs and teases Sean a bit. She encounters Birdie and offers him a free meal if they fight, afterwards Laura asks Birdie if he knows any strong fighters to which he points her in the direction of Karin. After their fight, Laura asks her if she knows any strong fighters, Karin replies by telling her about Ryu, after finding and fighting the wandering warrior, he talks about the Satsui no Hado. Later on, Laura meets and fights against Zangief who gives her tickets to a wrestling scouting event.
At some point during R. Mika's character story, Laura is fighting against R. Mika in a wrestling match while Zangief is watching both of them. Before her match with R. Mika is interrupted, Laura happily states that she was tougher than she thought.
A Shadow Falls
In the main story, Laura was later seen teaming up with Alex in a tag team match against both Zangief and R. Mika. She gets the ring announcer's megaphone to inform the audience that their tag team match will become an epic showdown. Laura, Zangief, and R. Mika are cheering the audience while Alex shrugs at the trio until it was postponed due to the blackout made by one of the Seven Moons created by Shadaloo.
Laura is revealed to be carrying one of the chess pieces as mentioned by Sean who is almost intercepted by F.A.N.G. and his Shadaloo soldiers before Ken saves him. Laura arrives to see Ken, Cammy, Chun-Li and Sean who manages to put her brother in a headlock. She angrily mistakes Ken as the enemy who attempts to get the chess pieces until Sean corrects her, telling her that he was attacked by the Shadaloo soldiers who were beaten by them. Laura apologizes and makes a deal with Ken, in that should Ken allow her to join their group because of the chess piece that she carries, he will put Matsuda Jiu-Jitsu as part of his online karate. Ken agrees to her deal as Laura was excited to join with them to stop Shadaloo.
In the final assault against Shadaloo, Laura is last seen with the other fighters fighting off Shadaloo soldiers and the Dolls.
Appearance
Laura has light tan skin, long black hair, the right side being worn loose and the left side starting as cornrow braids before blending with the rest at the back. She has light brown eyes, a robust physique, and a voluptuous figure.
She wears her sleeveless martial arts gi that is tiny enough to openly expose her ample cleavage, her uwagi is a bright-green with yellow linings and a tie at the center, matching bright green martial arts pants with yellow linings with a black belt to her waist, it has black and yellow linings and at the center resembles a bright green thong and black shin guards underneath her pants over bare feet.
She also wears several bracelets in different colors similar to Elena's. The color scheme of her outfit matches the Brazilian flag. Laura has one of the more revealing costumes among the playable females.
Abilities
Laura is a grappler-type character that utilizes various throws to attack the opponent. Similar to Blanka, Laura use electricity in some of her attacks, including an electric projectile. Meanwhile, her grappling attacks include moves that grab the opponent and slam their face into the ground.
Personality
Described as "bohemian" (being socially unorthodox), Laura has a free-spirited and energetic personality and enjoys thrills. Similar to Makoto, she has a desire to promote her family's fighting style.
Laura also likes to give advice to others and her character-specific versus quotes imply that she is "very" easy to befriend too. Laura is very protective of her brother Sean and also can be quick to jump to conclusions, as seen when she mistook Ken for an enemy wanting to hurt Sean before the latter informed her about the misunderstanding.
Gallery
Outfits
.png "Laura Matsuda (default).png (252 KB)")
.png "Laura Matsuda (battle).png (283 KB)")
.png "Laura Matsuda (sporty).png (215 KB)")
.png "Laura Matsuda (CPT 2020).png (233 KB)")
