Katsuhiro Harada Says He Totally Misunderstood What Getting Invited to the Cookout Meant

Katsuhiro Harada, former director of the Tekken series, opened up about a hilarious misunderstanding he had with his international fans after revealing Leroy Smith for Tekken 7.

Leroy Smith is genuinely one of the coolest characters to ever join the Tekken universe. The Wing Chun practitioner was an instant hit when he was first revealed in Tekken 7, even inspiring cosplays from celebrities like T-Pain.

In fact, the ‘Grandmaster of Drip’ was so well-received that Black American fans started ‘inviting Harada to the cookout,’ leaving the Japanese game director extremely confused.

Harada opened up about the humorous exchange in response to a fan on X, who shared a clip from 1985 cult classic The Last Dragon, arguing that Tekken must’ve been inspired by the martial arts movie and Black culture.

In his reply, Harada revealed that after Leroy was announced in 2019, he received a message from the American fan community: “Can we invite you to the cookout for making an awesome character like this?”

“Now, as someone from my generation in Japan, I was actually considered relatively good at reading and writing English. By then I’d already been to North America over 50 times, had maintained the English I learned for university entrance exams, and had been communicating with people on Twitter in English long before translation apps became useful, let alone AI translation,” he prefaced.

“But honestly… When I saw that sentence, I had absolutely no idea what it meant. In fact, my very first reaction was: ‘Oh no… I’m finished.’”

Harada explained that, at the time, he’d been seeing the word ‘cooked’ a lot online, as well as reading articles that were “spreading hate toward video games.” Having learned to associate the word “cooked” with terms like “destroyed,” he was under the impression that fans hated Leroy.

“For one terrifying moment, I read it as: ‘Hey… we… we… can invite you to a party where we’re going to beat you up and roast you?’” he continued. “Even though I thought I knew America pretty well, I genuinely wondered if I’d somehow pressed some invisible cultural button that I wasn’t supposed to touch.”

Luckily, someone eventually explained the concept of getting invited to the cookout. Harada explained that it was like receiving “one of the highest compliments possible — basically saying, ‘You’re someone we’d trust enough to invite to our close-knit family BBQ, where only real friends and loved ones are welcome.’

“That explanation was a huge relief,” he continued. “Then they started showing me BBQ equipment and ingredients, and I was absolutely shocked that everything was several times bigger than what we have in Japan. Sure, I expected the smoker grills to be huge. But even the tongs and spatulas were enormous, and the meat looked like something I’d only ever seen as loot in an MMORPG.

“Looking back now, I honestly regret not immediately flying to the U.S. and accepting an invitation to one of those community cookouts. That really was the perfect opportunity.”

To end his humorous anecdote, Harada confirmed that he was greatly influenced by several prominent Black figures, specifically citing Michael Jackson, Wesley Snipes as Blade, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Game of Death, and Jim Kelly in Enter the Dragon.

“Of course I can’t claim that I fully understand what you call Black culture. But if we’re talking about the parts that have genuinely influenced me, the cookout story is certainly one of them,” he said.

Harada famously left Bandai Namco and the Tekken franchise earlier this year, choosing to open his own development house, VS Studio, where he hopes to create a new fighting game and return to his roots in game development.