YMMV / Kanako Urai

• Alternate Character Interpretation: It's quite possible to interpret her becoming Darker and Edgier on NXT and eventually turning heel to be a response to the bullying she got from Emma, Dana Brooke, Nia Jax and Eva Marie when she first arrived. It's as if she went Then Let Me Be Evil — either getting sick and tired of the crap way she was treated or realizing after going through it so flawlessly that nobody can touch her.
• Arc Fatigue: Asuka's title reign grew tiring very quickly because it coincided with the WWE Draft calling up several women from the NXT roster. Among those were Alexa Bliss, Carmella and Nia Jax - who were on the verge of becoming title contenders on NXT. This left Asuka without any developed characters to feud with, and resulted in weeks of her squashing women from the indies and talking about how no one was ready to face her. It kicked into gear again around the time Ember Moon, Nikki Cross, and to a smaller extent Ruby Riott debuted and gave her competition again.
• Awesome Ego: She's very good, and very, very aware of it.
• Awesome Music:
  • Her entrance theme as Kana is actually "The Sun Rises" from Ōkami!
  • Her WWE theme "The Future" is pretty damn cool too.
  • Try her promo theme for Takeover: The End — "Karate" by Babymetal!
• Badass Decay:
  • Carmella was booked pretty poorly as champ, acting like a chickenshit but somehow beating Charlotte Flair clean on PPV, but the real issue is that her title reign was designed to kill Asuka. (The way they booked her matches should be illegal.) If you can’t have a good match with Charlotte or Asuka, then you shouldn’t be the champion, period. It took Asuka winning the SmackDown Women's Championship at TLC 2018 and retaining it against Becky Lynch at the Royal Rumble to reverse the damage... only for her to fall back into this mere weeks before WrestleMania 35 when she dropped the title to Charlotte purely to add an additional wrinkle to Charlotte's Triple Threat match vs. Becky and Ronda Rousey. Make it stop.
  • After losing to Bianca Belair at WrestleMania 39, fans were extremely annoyed by the realisation that Asuka had a 0-5 win/loss record on "the Grandest Stage of them All".
• Base-Breaking Character: She slipped into this as her title reign continued; she was either a great example of a dominant champion or a Spotlight-Stealing Squad who caused the entire NXT women's division to stagnate. Some fans Take a Third Option and enjoyed her title reign but wished more of the female competitors would get development so they could feel like legitimate threats to Asuka (which eventually did happen towards the end of her reign with wrestlers such as Ember Moon and Nikki Cross).
• Crazy Is Cool: Asuka is crazy violent and yet awesome. She established herself as such in her debut, where she signed her NXT contract and seemingly left the ring after being taunted by Emma and Dana Brooke — before shooting them a massive Slasher Smile. Then there's the last match before she defended the title against Bayley — where she set up a chair at ringside, so Bayley could watch her brutalize Aliyah. This all resulted in her not only having the longest NXT Women's Championship reign, but becoming the longest reigning champion in modern WWE ever.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Asuka is a top-level women's wrestling star in WWE, albeit almost always playing second fiddle to the Four Horsewomen, but she paradoxically still counts as this. See, to the wrestling connoisseur, Asuka isn't just "good". She isn't just "great". She is the best female wrestler in the world, and every time WWE misuse her or sideline her in favour of someone else is greeted with frustration and rage. On one of his post-WWE podcasts, Miro declared quite uncategorically that she is hands-down THE best wrestler in the world, man or woman.
• Evil Is Cool: As one half of the Kabuki Warriors alongside Kairi Sane, Asuka is a ruthless shit-talker who goes on bombastic on-mic rampages in Japanese, frequently cheats to win, and once more wears the green tear face paint of her old, psychopathic persona Kana. Fan consensus is that she's never been cooler in her entire main roster run.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: She was young and notoriously stiff to begin with, so she didn't do herself too many favors in the joshi community. Then that manifesto came out and her name became mud in Japan, hence her being stuck as a heel there for so long. In America, however, she is immensely popular, to the point fan demand was ultimately what got her booked in SHIMMER, CHIKARA, and finally WWE NXT and Raw, where her cute-but-deadly persona and wrestling skills allowed her to become a massive babyface.
• Growing the Beard: Her and Kairi Sane becoming a Tag Team prompted a highly mixed reception, ranging from those who considered them chasing tag team gold to be a step down from their singles careers to those who were all for it but were annoyed by how they, along with the rest of the women's tag teams, were pushed aside to make room for an en-masse Spotlight-Stealing Squad. Losing a Fatal Fourway match for the Women's Tag Team Championships to Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross was especially seen by many as undermining their credibility. However, once they turned heel and won the belts at Hell in a Cell, support for them really began to pick up, especially as the company began to unify their entrance and ring gear and gave them time on the mic to develop their characters and team dynamic. While still not without critics, none can deny that they're much more over with the fans than they were when they started working together.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Her Cool Mask has led to "Oh Noh" being used a lot.
  • Asuka giving a double thumbs-up◊.
  • Asuka points and Vince McMahon's limo blows up◊. The limo has been replaced with other things blowing up.
  • The overall nature of her Asukaposting consists on her posting out of context images in her Twitter.
  • Many have started to call Asuka (herself a mother) the "Empress of Fertility" after Becky Lynch (in 2020), Lacey Evans (2021), Peyton Royce/Cassie Lee, Carmella and Alexa Bliss (all in 2023), all had announced pregnancies after feuding or tagging with her.
• Moe: Not her in-ring persona, but her OOC appearances on Up, Up, Down, Down and her own Kana-Chan TV YouTube channel have garnered this reaction for her enthusiasm and Adorkable charisma.
• Rooting for the Empire: She and Kairi Sane have still been consistently cheered by the crowds (other than when they misted Paige) despite being arrogant cheaters who insult their opponents whenever possible. Could be out of respect for their wrestling skills, or maybe joy at them finally getting a consistent push after six months of being Out of Focus on the main roster.
• Sacred Cow: Her reputation as an excellent worker has made her both beloved and respected amongst casuals and smarks (hell, to even her peers). And as mentioned above, Asuka being sidelined several times in favor of the Horsewomen (Charlotte Flair in particular) was met with fan backlash. Ironic considering her previous reputation in her home country.
• Shocking Moments: In a match at TakeOver, a roundhouse kick from her came out of nowhere and knocked Emma out cold.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: To some, "The Future" can be reminiscent of King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man".
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • A major criticism of her title reign is that she herself gets barely featured on TV. She's usually in a Squash Match or gets a quick promo claiming she has no competition. It gives the impression that once WWE put the title on her, they had no clue what to actually do with her.
  • It seems 2018 has been the year WWE finally has figured out how to book Asuka. She's still undefeated, but two things have happened: she won the first-ever women's Royal Rumble, proving her dominance, and she's been put into lengthy matches with wrestlers like Sasha Banks, Bayley, and Nia Jax.
  • However, this came back hard after being drafted to the SmackDown brand. Fans were outraged that Carmella (already on the verge of gaining a considerable amount of heat) gave Asuka her first (and eventually second) pin fall loss. While Charlotte Flair had been seen as being the proper woman to defeat her, many disliked that an inexperienced wrestler like Carmella would be the next opponent to defeat her. Though she luckily managed to shake this off by the end of the year, this has arguably left a black mark on her career.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The much hyped title match between her and Ember Moon was attacked by critics for its lacklustre build-up, where it seemed as if WWE were treating the match as a formality rather than a heated contest between rivals. This was all but forgotten come their match at NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn III, however. It was widely praised as one of the best women's matches in NXT and WWE.

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