Laura Matsuda is a character in the Street Fighter series who first appeared in Street Fighter V. Laura was the third of the four new fighters confirmed for Street Fighter V, the first new female fighter in the game and the third Brazilian fighter to appear in the main game series following Blanka and her younger brother Sean.
Story
Background
Laura Matsuda, her younger brother Sean, and older brother Fabio were born in Brazil, though their father (Yuichiro Matsuda) and paternal grandfather (Kinjiro Matsuda) were Japanese (hence the surname). Yuichiro married Brenda and had three children (Fabio, Laura, Sean). Laura has two maternal cousins (Enzo and Manuela Da Silva) who practice capoeira.
Laura was trained by Kinjiro in the art of the family's Matsuda Jiu-Jitsu. When Sean leaves at some point to become Ken Masters' apprentice and pupil, Laura becomes the heir of the art.
Street Fighter V
Character story
Heir to the Matsuda Jiu-Jitsu style, Laura looks for opponents to fight and to promote her fighting style. Before leaving her house to seek strong fighters, she hugs and teases Sean a bit. She encounters Birdie and offers him a free meal if they fight, afterwards Laura asks Birdie if he knows any strong fighters to which he points her in the direction of Karin. After their fight, Laura asks her if she knows any strong fighters, Karin replies by telling her about Ryu, after finding and fighting the wandering warrior, he talks about the Satsui no Hado. Later on, Laura meets and fights against Zangief who gives her tickets to a wrestling scouting event.
At some point during R. Mika's character story, Laura is fighting against R. Mika in a wrestling match while Zangief is watching both of them. Before her match with R. Mika is interrupted, Laura happily states that she was tougher than she thought.
A Shadow Falls
In the main story, Laura was later seen teaming up with Alex in a tag team match against both Zangief and R. Mika. She gets the ring announcer's megaphone to inform the audience that their tag team match will become an epic showdown. Laura, Zangief and R. Mika are cheering the audience while Alex shrugs at the trio until it was postponed due to the black out made by the one of the Seven Moons created by Shadaloo.
Laura is revealed to be carrying one of the chess pieces as mentioned by Sean who is almost intercepted by F.A.N.G. and his Shadaloo soldiers before Ken saves him. Laura arrives to see Ken, Cammy, Chun-Li and Sean who teasingly puts him in a headlock. She angrily mistakes Ken as the enemy who attempts to get the chess pieces until Sean corrects her telling her that he was saved by the Shadaloo soldiers who were beaten by them. Laura apologizes and makes a deal with Ken if she will join to their group because of the chess piece that she carries, she will put Matsuda Jiu-Jitsu as part of his online karate as Ken agrees to her deal as Laura was excited to join with them to stop Shadaloo.
In the final assault against Shadaloo, Laura is last seen with the other fighters fight off Shadaloo soldiers and the Dolls.
Other character story appearances
Blanka's Character Story
Sometime after Shadaloo's fall, Laura encounters Blanka sitting in the middle of the street admiring his Blanka-chan dolls. At the time, Laura didn't know what Blanka was doing and accidentally steps on one of the Blanka-chan dolls while scolding Blanka that he is getting in everybody's way. This cues a battle, in which Blanka wins. Laura chuckles and apologizes for stepping on the Blanka-chan doll. When Blanka explains that he was told that he could become popular, but he has too much overstock, Laura comes to the conclusion that the manufacturer cheated Blanka, and she and Sean give Blanka the idea for him to sell the Blanka-chan dolls in Japan.
Personality
Described as "bohemian", Laura has a free spirited and energetic personality and enjoys thrills. Similar to Makoto, she has a desire to promote her family's fighting style. Laura also likes to give advice to others and her character-specific versus quotes imply that she is "very" easy to befriend too. Laura is very protective of her brother Sean and also can be quick to jump to conclusions, as seen when she mistook Ken for an enemy wanting to hurt Sean before the latter informed her about the misunderstanding.
