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Mai Shiranui: shameless skank, skilled ninja, or both?

Mai's butt is...

  • It's athletic and hot

  • It's firm and sexy

  • It's not firm, but that's a good thing

  • It's flabby, but that's cute

  • It's too athletic, not nice

  • It's too flabby, not nice


Results are only viewable after voting.

Sybb

Banned
There's no doubt that Mai Shiranui and Chun Li has a famous rivalry. Mainly because Mai was, back in the day, seen as SNK's version of Chun Li, who in turn was the first playable woman in a fighting game. Mai however, quickly got a reputation for being a skank. This is most due to this:

DG1bvbX.gif


It's all about the tits. Because if you look at both Chun Li's and Mai's lower bodies, they dress pretty much the same. Chun Li also wears a thong and shows it off frequently during jumps and kicks in the original Street Fighter II. Yet pretty much no one back then accused Chun Li of being a skank. Because people didn't care about butts.

Then came King of Fighters 96 and introduced this:

dB1fZBB.gif


Look at the sheer size of her butt! One ass cheek as bigger than her head - impressive. Also, not only does her butt jiggle, but her thighs jiggle as well. Look closely and you'll see the pixels on her thighs moving back and forth. Yes, I do pay attention to detail.

The whole butt jiggle thing didn't get famous at the time, because 1) Several home console versions had the animation removed due to RAM constraints of PsOne. 2) People were still obsessed with tits.

However, in hindsight this butt jiggle animation has become legendary as the first ever time a game actually animated butt jiggle. Then Jennifer Lopez butted in after the millennia and in her wake, we got tons of butt focus in games such as Soulcalibur II, P.N.03 and Rumble Roses, just to name a few.

I believe Mai never got rid of her skank stamp. I still find that weird, because you have tons of female characters in fighting games who have just as little clothing as she does, yet only Mai is the skank? It's all about her jiggling tits, isn't it? I mean, Cammy isn't seen as a skank, and she wears less in the back than Mai, but more in the front. We shouldn't forget that despite the obvious sex appeal, Mai is also a skilled kunoichi, a female ninja. Interesting titbit: the way you draw the kanji for "female" in Japanese, is three strokes: "ku", "no" and "ichi". It's debatable if Mai is as skilled as Chun Li. Chun Li is physically stronger, as we can clearly tell from Mai's jiggling rear end, but that doesn't necessary mean Chun Li has more skill.

So, what is your take on Mai? Is she a skilled, female ninja, or is she only out there to try to charm Andy into marriying her? And why is she the only character in the King of Fighters series who has a jiggling booty? Why not Angel? Yuri? Athena? Also, how does she stack up to Chun Li, and which character do you like the best -and most importantly - why?
 
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Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
She didn't get rid of the stigma because they made her worse in later games with boobs that gave her a back problem so she was constantly bent to reveal even more of them, lol. I never heard of anyone judge her back in in those days :D

And her butt does jiggle on the Saturn version of KoF96, don't be putting down my beloved 2D beast with such misinformation. Sure, Neo Geo was even better, yet Saturn didn't only have SNK games but also tons of Capcom stuff so it wins.
 
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KiteGr

Member
Well... She does practices Kunoichi after all.
Wikipedia said:
A kunoichi (Japanese: くノ一) is a female ninja or practitioner of ninjutsu (ninpo). During the feudal period of Japan, ninjas were used as killers, spies and messengers. The training of kunoichi differed from the training given to male ninjas, although they had a common core of skills, being trained in martial arts, such as taijutsu, kenjutsu, and ninjutsu. Kunoichi training tended to prioritize traditional female skills.
In their case, everything is fair game, including using their charms to distract their opponents.

At least that's the justification behind her thing... The real reason as everyone knows is that she makes for a fantastic eye candy.
Female ninjas draw a lot of attention and are fan favorites in most Japanese media for the above reason, unlike their male counterpart who barely sell any figures as the are not supposed to draw attention to begin with (With the exception of Naruto where the definition of Ninja is loose and the artist literally didn't know how to draw girls). That's why DOA has so fucking many of them.

PS: I give Street Fighter a lot of flak, but I'll be honest when I say that at least, especially in the 4rth iteration, it's the only Japanese fighter where the female fighters have the necessary muscle to justify their strength.
In other fighters, Including KoF, they are photo-models who don't appear to have trained a day in their life, that pretty much win by doing magic pirouettes that for some reason hit like a truck!
 
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petran79

Banned
Capcom was influenced by Mai and came up with Morrigan few years later. They went even further than SNK too, portraying her in love scenes with lilith and various suggestive poses. But they did not receive as much criticism as SNK
 

KiteGr

Member
Capcom was influenced by Mai and came up with Morrigan few years later. They went even further than SNK too, portraying her in love scenes with lilith and various suggestive poses. But they did not receive as much criticism as SNK
Well... again, they have "justifications".
As Mai is a Kunoichi that uses her Femininity as a weapon, Morigan is a Succubus, and that's literally a Sex Monster! Going by the definition of a Succubus, she is pretty tame.

Once again, this is an excuse to add eye-candy to a game that would had otherwise be comprised by scary/disgusting monsters. She was originally supposed to be a female Vampire and the head bat wings are most likely a remnant of that, yet she became so popular that her design became Cannon for Succubi in Japanese media.

The eye-candy is obviously the reason they are so popular!
When was the last time you've seen an Incubus in ANY piece of game, movie or literature? These poor male hell-spawns have been forgotten out of existence!
 

TacosNSalsa

Member
I wouldn't call her a skank , I mean she only has eyes for Andy as shown before they fight and pummel each other to a pulp .

FeJ5I22.jpg
 

Sybb

Banned
She didn't get rid of the stigma because they made her worse in later games with boobs that gave her a back problem so she was constantly bent to reveal even more of them, lol. I never heard of anyone judge her back in in those days :D

And her butt does jiggle on the Saturn version of KoF96, don't be putting down my beloved 2D beast with such misinformation. Sure, Neo Geo was even better, yet Saturn didn't only have SNK games but also tons of Capcom stuff so it wins.

Sorry about that misinformation. Was it because of the RAM cart?

Yeah, but still... tits, tits and more tits. Women can show all the ass they want, yet no one bats an eye or call them anything. Mai's butt is bigger than her boobs, and it jiggles just as much. Yet people only see the boobs.
 
Well... She does practices Kunoichi after all.

In their case, everything is fair game, including using their charms to distract their opponents
Came here to say this. She is trained in the arts of distraction and misdirection.

She also fights in a tournament that has been used as a proxy for military conflicts and for resurrecting ancient deities, so realism isn't a high priority for the franchise.
 

Labolas

Member
Not my favorite female character in SNK's lineup but I will always appreciate her as a character and her place in fighting games. She always will be a mainstay of KOF's roster.
 

Enjay

Banned
Are you perverted if you find the female body sexually attractive?
Idk what do you yourself typically do when attracted to something? I have to assume some sort of twitch or something out of sorts happens with you since you had to ask that.
 

Sybb

Banned
Idk what do you yourself typically do when attracted to something? I have to assume some sort of twitch or something out of sorts happens with you since you had to ask that.
I look at it and I enjoy it. Looking at Mai's great ass fills me with joy. In the same way, looking at a beautiful painting feels much nicer than looking at a brick wall. SImply put, Mai's jiggle butt puts a smile to my face whenever I see it.
 
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K1Expwy

Member
Hahaha, OK! But that's more of a side scrolling fighter like Final Fight. I mean fighting games like Street Fighter, Tekken etc.
There's Galactic Warriors from 1985, a single-plane 1v1 fighting game, but the playable "female" fighter is a mech.
Narrowing the definition of a fighting game before SF2 is a problem, because SF2 was the game that standardized the genre.
 
Mai is probably the most iconic female fighting game character, after Chun.
Visually, she is super sexy, but I never considered her to be a "skank". Thats such an ugly word. I wouldnt associate it with any female fighting game characters TBH.
I always got the impression Mai was only interested in Andy too, so I dont think it'd be easy for guys to get into her pantsu.
 

DarkestHour

Banned
Just a little old fashioned fan service. It doesn't hurt anybody and from what I recall she isn't a whore, she just dresses in a manner that shows her body.
 

Saber

Member
I think its a concept for female ninjas to show their skin and use sexuality as a weapon to prey their victims. Unless I'm wrong and this is just the usual fanservice.

She's freak bait for pervs and prudes. Nothing more, nothing less.

You better never come to Brazil then. You gonna end up calling every girl or woman you find freak bait for pervs and gonna end up in jail.
 
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Saber

Member
41ZMEPGDRZL._SR600,315_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg


This game actually had you seduce guards then stab them in the neck. Kind of surprised no other games ever used this for stealth or assassinations.

I very much like to play this game back in time. But tbh I never used the seduce mechanics...mainly because I didn't know how to. This game rewards assassinations over combat. Because if you rely in combat you gonna be pretty much doomed(it takes a lot to take down enemies).
 
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