Mai Shiranui

Mai Shiranui is a Japanese kunoichi who first debuted in the 1992 arcade title, Fatal Fury 2.

Originally from SNK's Fatal Fury and The King of Fighters series, Mai made her Dead or Alive debut as a DLC guest character in a 2016 update of Dead or Alive 5 Last Round.

Appearance
She has fair skin with brown hair tied into a ponytail and amber eyes. In her default outfit, she also wears black two-toed shoes with red linings. Similar to Kasumi, she wears a Kunoichi dress as her default, although her dress was primarily red in color and was sleeveless, as well as two red and white tassels at the back containing orbs of the opposite colors, and circular ropes around her shoulders. She also wears another dress that was similar in overall appearance, but was blue instead of red. The only thing in common with her various outfits are her twin tassels at her back (which are always colored in a similar manner to her current attire) and her paper fan (of which the edges have a similar color to the attire she's currently wearing).

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 style 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.

Being originate from 2D fighting game, Mai retained most of the mechanics, such as special cancels and jump attacks. She is also recommended for beginner.

Dead or Alive series

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

Fighting quotes

 * Dead or Alive 5 Last Round

Music themes

 * "Sacred Flower" - Dead or Alive 5 Last Round (default theme), Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate Arcade

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, and even speaks her native language like the Virtua Fighter characters, but a little different for some reasons.
 * Mai's birthday (January 1) is on New Year's Day. She also shares her birthday with Bankotsubo, the final boss in Dead or Alive 2.
 * This isn't the first game where Mai also a command attack combo movesets, the first game where she had a command attack combo movesets was SNK's 3D fighting game series, KOF Maximum Impact.
 * In the video game media, Mai is the second guest character who is originate from respective 2D fighting game series to have 2D fighting game mechanics (such as special cancels and jump attacks) into a respective 3D fighting game she's in. Other being Akuma from Capcom's Street Fighter, who made a guest appearance in Bandai Namco's Tekken 7 and has some of his own 2D fighting game mechanics in that game.
 * In the teaser for Mai Shiranui at Dead or Alive Festival 2016, she was shown to have a face and build similar to Momiji. However, she was given a slight redesign in the August 2016 Famitsu coverage for the character's gameplay that made her closer to her appearance in the King of Fighters series, marking her the second character to have a different design from the first "final design", the only other being Hitomi when Dead or Alive 5 was first announced.
 * Mai is the second guest character in the overall series to only speak in her native language regardless of version while not having recycled voice clips, the only other being SPARTAN-458 from Dead or Alive 4. This was probably due to reasons relating to the The King of Fighters XII for not having a decent English voice acting and SNK's critical situations on having a small budgets, then was recently unused in The King of Fighters XIII arcade version and later in console version of The King of Fighters XIII and the future SNK games onwards had them removed for now.