Lara Croft's Anime Redesign: The Tomb Raider History You Didn't Know

One of the original Tomb Raider creators has shared some details on a previous request from a Japanese publisher, which asked the team to give Lara Croft an anime-style redesign to make her more widely appealing. According to Paul Douglas - who in his own words "co-created Tomb Raider half a lifetime ago" - publisher Victor Interactive wanted the team to change up Lara's in-game look to "appeal more to a Japanese audience". The Tomb Raider creator said this redesign request included ideas for Lara to have "huge eyes/head etc". Douglas added the publisher went so far as to send over a fax with some design suggestions late in Tomb Raider's development. However, fellow Tomb Raider developer Toby Gard "didn't really want to alter Lara", Douglas said on his Bluesky account (thanks, @CoreDesign_com). In order to keep both parties happy, a compromise was reached. This saw Tomb Raider's manual and guide feature more "manga-style" characters, though Douglas is "not sure who did that render or illustrations". Back in 2021, Douglas shared some images of these characters, with a few extra background notes. At this time, the Tomb Raider co-creator said he believed Victor "just assumed altering all the models would only take a few days of work". However, this was "early days of 3D... 🙄", so would of course take considerable time. "It started out as a request to change all the in-game and cutscene models.Then just in-game. Then just Lara. Then just Lara's head…" You can check out more of these manga-style Tomb Raider images below. The original Tomb Raider is currently getting a from the ground up remake, known as Legacy of Atlantis. This will be released later this year, across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and Steam.