Mai Shiranui

Unreleased

Mai Shiranui is a character from SNK's Fatal Fury and The King of Fighters series. She is a Japanese kunoichi who fights with Shiranui-ryuu ninjutsu and pyrokinetic attacks.

Personality
Mai is a very cheerful and temperamental girl. She can tend to also be somewhat of an airhead and admires any kind beauty or attractiveness, which sometimes comes across as being vain. She also at times compares attractive boys who flirt with her or acknowledge her beauty to Andy, acknowledging their attractiveness but ending with a comment saying they're 'not as cute as Andy'.

Like many girls, she dreams to get married with her prince charming. She found that same Prince Charming in Andy and self-proclaimed herself his fiancé, which at times, have creeped out Andy himself. A notable example of this is her intro with Andy in KOF '97, proposing to Andy outright in a wedding dress, or scaring Andy with a mock child doll in KOF '99 and 2001. Despite this, Andy mutually acknowledges her love, but prefers to keep quiet about it.

Although her peppy fighting persona suggests otherwise, Mai is actually a traditional and ideal Japanese beauty. However, her pride as a Shiranui shinobi and infatuation with Andy usually keeps her from fitting the mold 100% of the time.

Etymology
"Mai" (舞), is the Japanese word for "dance", and her surname (不知火) is the title of a Japanese optical phenomenon similar to will-o'-the-wisp.

Gameplay

 * See also: Mai's Command List

Mai uses the Shiranui-ryuu, a form of ninjutsu combined with her fire powers to fight. Her style resembles normal ninjutsu with more graceful and majestic moves, somewhat in reference to traditional Japanese dance.

She also uses paper fans as weapons, integrating them into her combat technique and using them to perform several combinations and moves. Her clothing, specifically, the tassle on her ninja garb, is also used to attack the opponent.

Mai also exceptional in hand to hand combat using different throws and techniques to gain the upper hand. Mai has shown great Strength as well being strong enough to throw enemies heavier than her and using her strong elbow strike capable of breaking through her enemies defense's incapacitating them.

Dead or Alive series

 * Dead or Alive 5 Last Round (playable DLC, only for arcade; PS4; XONE and Steam/Windows, 2016)

Fighter Quotes

 * Dead or Alive 5 Last Round

Trivia

 * Mai was rated #4 in GameSpy.com's "Top Ten Babes in Games" feature and number 5 in Game Informer's "Top Ten Hottest Girls of the 16-Bit era."
 * In the character popularity poll on Neo Geo Freak's website, she was voted as the fifth favorite character with a total of 2,380 votes.
 * Mai is the only third-party character who is not from Sega's Virtua Fighter.
 * Mai's birthday is on New Year's Day she also shares her birthday with Bankotsubo, the final boss in Dead or Alive 2.