So I hear that Mai and Chun Li never actually meet.
I'm legitimately surprised at that. After so many years of that meta rivalry, you finally have these two in the same game, and Mai's story never brings her anywhere near Chun Li at all? Capcom may be screwing with us a bit.
One Strip! One Strip!But they did do it.
Mai does it with Juri instead in an imagine spot.
Hell, Juri has the kicking theme just like Chun Li, but that's all they have in common. It really feels like Capcom just decided to troll the hell out of everyone with this.
One Strip! One Strip!
Because they both use Taekwondo? I can see that. Kim would probably get on her nerves with all his "justice" talk and lecturing though.
As for Mai and Chun Li, they have nothing in common, so I'm not surprised that Capcom didn't include her in Mai's story mode. Had it been Blue Mary? Sure, she and Chun Li are both cops. Mai is just a glorified fanservice extra.
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I mean, they're only the most iconic female characters of their respective games.
They both appeared in the second game of their respective series, and are the first female fighters of Street Fighter and Fatal Fury respectively.
So yeah, nothing in common in universe, but as I said, there's that meta rivalry, which they'd acknowledged in other crossover games (and Chun-Li is going to appear in Mark of the Wolves too, alongside Ken).
So it's not like there's nothing. I just find it odd that Capcom wouldn't acknowledge it at all.
One Strip! One Strip!Its basically an opposites attract scenario, you have two wildly different but big personalities
This is an outrage against Luminara!I can't believe that Juri lost to Mai. In Fatal Fury's canon, Mai can't even measure up to Andy. Yet, she managed to defeat Juri??
That'd be like Koei Tecmo having either Kasumi, or Hayabusa, lose to Mai in DOA5 Last Round. There's just no way it'd ever happen. I'm gonna guess whoever wrote Mai's story mode in SF6 is either unfamiliar with FF's canon, or they chose to disregard it.
Mai and Andy just specialize in two separate styles of the same school
Andy is better at the Koppouken while Mai is the better at Ninjitsu arts that's pretty much always been their dynamic
I mean, Andy tells himself not underestimate Mary cause she might be as tough as Mai.
so I don't get where your coming with the Mai can't beat Juri thing
This is an outrage against Luminara!![]()
Canonically, Mai cannot measure up to either of the Bogard brothers and Andy is established as the weaker of the two because he's never been able to defeat Terry. By Mark of the Wolves, Andy had finally given up and conceded that Terry's skill is superior to his.
Between Andy and Mai, he's canonically superior to her. That's why her grandfather chose Andy as successor to the Shiranui school, rather than her. Mai has never been able to defeat him.
Mai barely even measures up to Yuri and she's a goofball. Fun fact: Prior to the KOF '99 tournament, Mai fought Yuri Sakazaki to earn a spot on King's team. King got fed up with both of them and simply declared it a draw to spare herself the headache.
And when Mai challenged King herself in KOF XIII (their pre-match dialogue), King's response basically amounted to "yeah, right".
All of that is to say, Mai defeating someone of Juri's caliber is a stretch given her track record.
Edited by MiinU on Feb 6th 2025 at 7:27:45 AM
These are fighting games. Isn't it kinda baked into the genre that any of these characters could beat each other under the right circumstances?
But if you want a lore reason, Juri had to switch out her artificial eye that acts as her source of power after she was bodied by Bison the first time. Now she's stuck using the weaker prototype version of the Feng Shui Engine.
Yes. Pretty bluntly yes, at that. It's not just baked in the genre, in most fighting games it's baked into the lore as well. You can pretty much always call shenanigans on "X character is canonically lower scaled" because these characters are always canonically fighting each other and beating each other.
What passes for Street Fighter's scaling can basically be summed up as "Shin Akuma & Oro & Technically Gen > Bison & Sometimes Ryu > Everyone Else and Usually Ryu > Dan." Anything more specific isn't practical.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Feb 6th 2025 at 9:45:40 AM
I think Sean might be even lower than Dan, but besides that, that list seems accurate.
In street fighter, it's any given sunday rules.
One Strip! One Strip!To give a good example of this:
Bison in his strongest power ever seen was canonically finished off by Ryu in V. During this period (and given the story, it would've had to have been soon after this, not before it) Ryu was canonically defeated by Alex (for the first time of several, iirc), who was also around this time canonically defeated by Abigail, who is a bit goon in the Mad Gear gang and who could've been beaten by any or every hero in the first Final Fight, but who also lost to Poison around that time, who was an even lower ranked bit goon in Mad Gear...
And so on and so forth. There's some characters who have a clear power relationship to other specific characters (IE, Sakura is probably still less powerful than Ryu, Mika is probably less powerful than Zangief, Sagat and Ken are probably still in Ryu's ballpark, etc...) but that has never stopped them from being able to fight other strong characters in the series so even that isn't a great indicator of anything.
In short: one should always assume that the cast of any given fighting game are largely in the same ball-park as one another unless given an especially clear and consistent plot reason to do so.
There's a case to be made that there's slightly more rationale to apply that to Fatal Fury, since the early days of the series were much more blatantly classic-shounen-esque, but even that's tenuous because the series hasn't been interested in being that way in decades, arguably even before Mark of the Wolves. The questions "is Mai intended to be perceived as weaker than Terry in Fatal Fury 2" and "is Mai intended to be perceived as weaker in the upcoming game" likely have entirely different answers. And that's before getting into the quagmire that is KOF.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Feb 6th 2025 at 10:13:20 AM
Ultimately like in every other fiction, power levels in fighting games are just mere guidelines, not hard and fast laws of physics and are often bent and broken depending on circumstances or the whims of a given creative.
And speaking of KOF, Rugal is canonically supposed to be weaker than Orochi, Goenitz and even Igniz yet he's a much tougher boss fight than the 1st 2 of them in the games he appears in, and is harder to beat than Igniz in KOF 2002 Unlimited, and is so beloved by the fanbase he keeps appearing in every Dream Match and is seen as Akuma's counterpart in Capcom vs SNK. In Rugal's case there may also be Popularity Power in play. And on the flipside, the hardest SNK Boss is arguably Magaki due to how cheap he is and he's just a mere lackey to the Ash Saga's Big Bad Saiki and ultimately dies via a sucker punch.
Edited by KRider on Feb 6th 2025 at 10:13:44 AM
Set! Avenge! "Henshin." Black General! Bujin Sword! Ready, Fight!

...
<.<
>.>
Juri's the First person Mai beats in her story mode
I love it
Edited by FrozenWolf2 on Feb 6th 2025 at 12:58:52 PM
This is an outrage against Luminara!