History

Popularity with women

People often understate or are completely clueless on what women like/want. This is often due to sexism and men not wanting catering to women instead of them (a good example is Final Fantasy Mobius). In the context of Tekken, Tekken has always had a large female fanbase, but most people wouldn't know it exists and has always existed! The various Lee fansites I've linked were ran by women. The other popular ones were: Jin, Hwoarang and Kazuya, but not limited to these boys. See the first question sent in to Runnin' from the Hitman.

One of the many expressions shared! I want to expand this further in the future, but for now, I'll leave it there.

Shipping & yaoi

Yeah, true. I acknowledge that, it's just I don't like it myself. They're not blood-related, okay, but I find that it undermines adoptive relationships (and I find it weird). I don't care if someone ships them - they can do them! Just personally...? Nah, not my cup of tea.

Anyway, there's plenty of shipping material from the oldweb and it still thrives today. There's old (T1-T2) doujinshi of them which is quite rare to pop up on eBay etc. They're gold finds if you manage to nab one because of this.

I am preserving links/material (on a gdrive) for yaoi material too, so I will link stuff I find.

Here, a link to a 2014/15 Tekkenjoshi tumblr for your fix. NSFW, obviously!

T1/T2 Lee versus T4 onwards

Lee's personality and character shifted from his origins. It's hard to pinpoint when his popularity peaked, but T4 did seem to drive him an huge influx of fans. That's not to say his original character wasn't liked - people loved his more serious persona that fans today still lament for. It's not just the first two games: recently in T8 I know fans who don't like how they've taken the Stark path with him, which is fair. It's more goofy and meant to be played for laughs, although the whole concept does fit in with Lee well. He's obsessed with robotics, and with Combot no longer taking centre stage, of course he's moved onto other fun projects with it! I have to mention the graffitied Combot head in T8 because lol Lee bossing around it and beckoning it "hey, Hachi" is *chef's kiss*.

Tekken has a "serious" story, but the whole series rides off slapstick humour and themes. I feel like it's a curse of fighting games to have this duality since it divides fans greatly. Well, people have loved the story and characters from the very start to present day which says something about what fans want...I personally would love a more serious tone and scenes that actually are written on screen because there's so many parts of the story that simply get mentioned as a footnote. But why would they? The fans do a good job of that, and the games have never really done it themselve so they won't start unless there's an internal change.

That was a bit off-topic, but hey! What version do you like better? Or do both Lees hold a special space in your mind?