It took us 30 years to learn Lara Croft almost began life as an anime girl

Lara Croft has persisted as one of the most famous, iconic, and googled characters in media ever since her inception. Like true archeologists, fans have never stopped digging into Croft’s secrets, and they’ve recently unearthed a very old and powerful piece of intel regarding Lara’s almost-origins.

Fans have just learned that Lara came very close to looking like what could be Tifa’s sister in Final Fantasy VII.

If the image above looks a lot like it could be fan art, that’s because Lara’s final model became so iconic that you can no longer imagine anything else in its place. That’s an actual design and model the designers considered putting in the game ahead of its ’96 release, instead of the classic one we know and love. Paul Douglas, one of the main developers at Core Design and Tomb Raider‘s co-creator, recently explained on Bluesky that the team came up with them in response to pressure over fears that the classic Lara model just wouldn’t sell in Japan. Now, despite them having come up with these designs, Toby Gard, Lara’s creator, just wouldn’t have it and compromised on simply having a more Japanese audience-friendly manual and guides in Japan.

Japanese audiences have acquired a reputation for being very picky about main characters, though it’s never really clear whether that has any basis in reality. Regardless, the internet had quite a lot to say on the topic.

On ResetEra, non-fans quickly admitted they preferred the anime art and the Tetsuya Nomura vibe. And it’s pretty cool to have the unbiased opinion of someone whose life was never impacted by the series, unlike most of us growing up in the ’90s. I was, however, surprised to notice that most Resetera users actually preferred the anime makeover. Still, nobody liked the anime-fied CGI model, with most users calling it nightmarish at best. That’s a problem, because it’s the model players would be stuck with for most of the game. As for the anime artwork, I’m surprised that so many people seem to like such a run-of-the-mill design, especially compared to the immediately iconic, timeless look of classic Lara.

The most interesting piece of intel I got from the anime artwork discourse was a poignant comment on how different the ’90s were, a time when anime-fication somehow caused the character to have smaller boobs.

To end on a mindblowing note, Bluesky user Sharky noted how the tentative anime Lara gameplay model, the creepy alien-looking one, actually looks a lot like a non-skinned-alive version of Lara’s doppleganger that we encounter in the original Tomb Raider. Nice catch.