Li Mei

Kitty_55 said:
I know a lot of people actually like her Deception ending. Not me though. I hated it. I don't get her character. Granted that ending was non-cannon, still, it made no sense at all. To see this character go from being a slave, to a person who has a chance to defeat two sorcerers, to an almost enslaved Dragon Warrior, to a more defining warrior, to being Onaga's... whatchamacallit... I have no idea what the hell this character is actually supposed to be.

She began as a slave who worked to construct Shang Tsung's palace. Quan Chi seemed interested in her for some reason and offered her and her people freedom if she wins the tournament, even though we know when villains offer stuff like that bad things usually follow afterwards. And during Deception when Shujinko trains her, he tells her that her chances to win against the Deadly Alliance were slim. Okay and that was right because she gets somewhat enslaved in the Dragon Warrior zombie thing until Bo Rai' Cho saves her. He then trains her where she becomes a better fighter and then we just see that get thrown away because she'd rather have some "hey hey" time with a dragon. I mean what was that? I thought for a while this character had some great potential of being a great female character, but when I saw that Deception ending I literally just dropped my controller, turned off the game and just walked away. I was like, "what was that?" And I still question it every day on these sites. I know that people will like things I don't like, but I don't get how people are actually a fan of this ending.

And I cannot see this character being evil. I really don't. Tanya was one of those characters who was written well to where we thought she was originally a good character. She seemed innocent in her avatar, we assumed that she would be good because she's from Edenia, and her biography didn't seem like she was evil at all. But when we beat the game with her, we find out that she's not that good as we all thought she would be. That was really well written and I was stunned to see that she is in fact, an evil character. But with Li Mei, to turn on all of the Earthrealm warriors, I just didn't think that was well written at all. I had no idea what that was because I couldn't see the connection as to why she would just turn on everyone to be with Onaga.

Her biocard literally says that she's a fighter who fights for her enslaved people and persecuted souls everywhere. And granted that at the very end of her Deception biography, it says that she's attached to this strong power that's taken control of Outworld, but I don't get where this love story comes in with Onaga. Why would she fall in love with him? Because of the power he possessed? I'm just like... hating on this character because she makes no freaking sense. The direction that she was always given was that she was a slave who had a chance to fight for people, but when you see this ending, does everything she stand for just went away? Does she not care about these people of hers anymore? Because I doubt Onaga would care that these enslaved people she once belonged to were trying to be saved by her. And I doubt that she would influence him to spare these guys because she was once apart of them.

Li Mei, I don't get you, probably never will either.
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I think it comes from the fact that in DA her soul momentarily took residence in one of the dragon king's soldiers. So when she was saved by Bo Rai Cho there was a residual trait left in her telling her to serve the dragon king. I suppose you could lead this to the fact that Li Mei is female and that loyalty to the dragon king led to an attraction to the dragon king from Li Mei. However, her deception ending isn't canon so it doesn't appear that happened.

Li Mei is actually my favorite character from the new generation of games (MK4 -MKA). I felt she had a decent development over her short tenure of 3 games. I definitely hope we see her again.
 
Li Mei is IMO, one of the better characters to come from the series post MK3 for many reasons. I think she has a unique look-esp her Deadly Alliance Primary and her Deception Alternate (no I don't see nor did I ever see her as a "Mileena clone"), a great moveset, character development which lead to much potential story wise in the old continuity. I even think she has potential to be a big time player in the new storyline continuity if she is added to it.

However before I get into that last point, I must say that while her Deception ending made sense based on her storyline at the time, I still didn't like it because at that point, it was no longer a unique thing. I mean the whole turning against the good guys and becoming an evil vixen had been done before in the two previous games with Tanya (MK4) and Frost (MKDA). There was no reason to repeat the formula again with Li Mei, who IMO was better off as a woman of good or at least neutral with her balance facing more towards the good side (as she would be fighting an inter conflict based on her morals vs being tainted by the DK's army). I mean I'm happy Armageddon made that ending non-canon because in the old continuity, not including Li Mei, there were only 4 women (Sonya, Kitana, Sindel, Jade) that were good. The rest of them are either evil (Mileena, Sheeva, Tanya, Frost, Kira) or Neutral (Khameleon, Nitara, Ashrah, Sareena). If the old storyline would have continued, I love have liked to see her be good (which I think she would have been, as adding her and Kitana's Armageddon endings together suggest this) or even neutral which would have been slightly more interesting because then we could have seen her develop even more as a character.

However for the new storyline, I would like to see her come in with Bo Rai Cho. I think he should be a Raiden like figure for her in the sense that he is the mentor and teacher (similar to Deception), with Li Mei being his best student. Bo Rai Cho and Li Mei (along with others) after being asked for help by Raiden, decides to help Raiden, Sonya, and Cage repair Earthrealm and as a personal goal for her and Bo Rai Cho, attempt to save Outworld and turn the place back to something that's good. This can lead her into a rivalry with Mileena (who I think should be the new Empress of Outworld-I'll write more about that in her thread). Mileena could use a new rival (and a storyline that doesn't revolve around wanting to be Kitana) and I think Li Mei would be an interesting one, as she is would be fighting to not only repair Earthrealm, but to save Outworld from Mileena's (and thus evil) control. I also want to see her interact with Kano (just like Deadly Alliance) for a bit. Maybe she fought him once before and lost and once she sees him, is looking to redeem herself. This would also lead to her and Sonya becoming closer allies due to their mutual dislike for Kano. There is no need to just keep her all under Bo Rai Cho. This is assuming they make her good (please don't make her evil).
 
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Since she was basically deconfirmed I'll post this here.

I think she catches way too much shit from fans she has a great backstory and a great look everyone from the 3-D era had uninspired special moves so like she could get a revamp. And she was my favorite MKDA character besides Kenshi, Frost, and Nitara.
 
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