After giving it some thought, I’m thinking it’s Nakoruru.
Take a step back and look at all the pieces:
-It’s SNK for sure.
-Milk Bosatsu correctly called the Hero release, Labo VR, and a few other things, and has been saying one of the fighters is female for a while.
-So FEMALE for sure.
-MB also gave the following three criteria - fighting game, female, has a “flying weapon” compared it to a boomerang.
Now, stop focusing on the Hawk for a bit, and look at this:
View attachment 236471
Look at the object on her back that she’s holding in her hand... What does it LOOK like? If you’re looking at a colorless 3D model on screen, it wouldn’t be hard to say that looks like a boomerang. Especially if you don’t know the character. Mamahaha would also be a seperate model animated and rigged seoerately, so it’s unlikely you’d see them together during the modeling process. Whereas Nako’s sword is an object within her model and would be placed alongside her.
Continuing on...
-There was the Starling leak on Sabi’s discord, people assumed it was a cryptic hint for Geno (STARling), no, it was way more obvious.
-This one’s a good one: Ryu Hayabusa was a serious point of discussion recently due to other leaks. What’s Hayabusa even mean in Japanese? 隼 (はやぶさ), is the Japanese word for Falcon, more specifically, the Peregrine Falcon. Look familiar to a certain hawk?
Often false leaks crop up due to connections to a legit character, Steve in relation to Banjo being a decent example.
-Last one, Nako is the only major SNK character not in any major 3rd party crossover. SNK Heroines and SamSho are her most recent appearances.
So, it’s not just one thing. But you’ve got multiple things pointing straight at Nakoruru. Like, there comes a point, where you do have to take a step back and look at where all the clues are pointing, like we had with Banjo right before E3. It’s too much, for at least me to ignore. Out of three-four SNK characters that could be in Smash, she has the most clues in her favor. I’m like, 90% sure she’s in.
