Leifang

Leifang (レイファン), originally known as Lei Fang, is a player character in the Dead or Alive fighting game series by Team Ninja and Koei Tecmo.

In video games
Leifang is a college student from China and a master of the t'ai chi ch'uan fighting style. Six years prior to the series, she was saved from a group of thugs by a martial artist, Jann Lee. Although she was very grateful for being saved, she felt that she could have handled the situation herself. After that incident, she mastered the art of t'ai chi ch'uan, becoming known as a genius to many, and sought to prove her strength to Jann Lee. As a result, she has entered every tournament to prove to him that she can handle herself and to prove herself to him that she, too, is a strong individual. Leifang had lost to Jann Lee in almost every tournament, only managing to defeat him in the fourth tournament.

As a girl who grew up in a wealthy family, Leifang is a woman of justice and bears a very independent spirit, but is also spunky, intelligent and cheerful. Practicing martial arts has given her a strong dedication to self-improvement, both mentally and physically. Leifang hopes that by honing her own skills, she can eventually help others to do the same. She has become angry at Jann Lee for helping in a time of need, rather than thanking him for his assistance: her young age and general inexperience with the world around her can sometimes cause her to not fully think things through. This is particularly evident in Dead or Alive 4 where she fights with her friend Hitomi over a simple cabbage or when kicking an old man out of the train after he accidentally grabbed her breasts.

Design and gameplay
Leifang's design resembled the heroines of kung fu films. She is known for her signature queu hairstyle but has also sported a variety of other hairstyles through the series.

Saturn Power judged Leifang as one of the original game's better characters due to her "great counters and lightning speed". IGN stated "Lei Fang has some of the best counters in DOA Ultimate, which helps since she isn't exactly a master of combos." According to Official Xbox Magazine, in Dead or Alive Extreme beach volleyball games "Leifang's real strength is in her ball control, but not in her power. She won't be able to blow past blocks, but she's great at digs and sets."

Reception
The character has been well received by gaming media. Upon her introduction, Computer and Video Games compared her to Pai Chan from Virtua Fighter as looking "a lot" like her and Sega Saturn Magazine called her a "clone" of Pai, but also described Kasumi and Tina being "in a class of their own" and as superior "even" to Lara Croft. On the other hand, Saturn Power opined that while most of "the DOA competitors seem either insipid or a mite too similar to Virtua Fighter stalwarts for comfort (...) Lei-Fang and Jann Lee are okay". Maxim included her among the top nine "video game vixens" in 2009 and Steve Jenkins of CheatCodes.com ranked her as the 16th hottest "video game girl" of all time in 2013.

She was voted the DOA series' ninth most popular character in Japan in the publisher Koei Tecmo's own poll in 2014. In "Xbox High Yearbook 2003", Official Xbox Magazine chose Leifang and Hitomi as a couple "most likely to have a 'college experience'."