Fighting game may not be the most mainstream or contentious award category for The Game Awards, but 2021 was a surprisingly good year for some of the niche corners of the fighting game community. While mainstays like Street Fighter and Tekken are still going strong, despite being well into each game's lifecycle, several excellent new fighting games released in 2021 as well. Particularly for fans of anime or anime-esque fighters, games like Guilty Gear -Strive- and Melty Blood: Type Lumina reinvigorated some of the most popular and long-standing franchises in the genre, even if they were at one time considered obscure to the mainstream audience.