WTF Is Up with Li Mei? 

Vote Li Mei: ru-vid.com/show-UCSNsk9V7sDuNQif2OKge3Ewcommunity?lb=Ugkxh--2clLtJXXkzrnbWyU0HwgigLxuDsYi

Most people wouldn’t be attracted to Onaga. But Li may

I think it’s just magic. Li Mei is a pink lantern 😂 She uses magic and creativity to recreate what she knows: fireworks and dragons from her culture

She has the power of chinese new year

New Li Mei using her illusion powers to make her attacks hurt more makes sense! She’s a cop - she doesn’t want to actually make her punches destructive, she wants them to deter and stun!

I find Li Mei to be such a fascinating and tragic character, her life is miserable in all timelines, in the original timeline her village sun do is enslaved by the deadly alliance and she is used to serve onaga, in the netherealm timeline Mileena destroys her village with Shinnok's amulet, becoming a refugee in Earthrealm and in Liu Kang's timeline she is unfairly blamed for Jerrod's death and is mistreated by the royal family, it's like her destiny is always to suffer, no matter what.

Kelly Hu did a good job as Le Mei

I love Li Mei. Shes a cop now. Good characterisation, good usege in story. Ground to earth women, hard stoick and can kick your butt.

Gonna be honest, I’m actually quite happy that she uses sparkles/explosions. You don’t really see characters. Use actual explosions as projectile attacks.

I feel illusion makes the most sense for the reasons you said plus, if I remember correctly, li mei said she helped train mileena when she was younger so that makes sense too

Ngl, that is an excellent question

Li Mei and Onaga is my favorite ship

I feel like the power arguments, while good and entertaining, i feel like they can be more easily explained by calling Li mei's powers (and others like Johnny and Sonya) energy powers considering thats how mk1 labels them in the element chart. Kinda like how Sonya has the whole chi force/power idea, i feel like thats also what inspired li meis original powers

Love your videos man. A good mix of funny editing, jokes, and good points on the lore and power sets.

I think Li Mei could be something called “Combustion”. Combustion is a reaction that can transition into being an explosion reaction. Li Mei’s fireworks, welp, explode. Another term for combustion is burning, and *fire* burns things. Simple enough. Combustion is an exothermic redox chemical reaction between a fuel and an oxidant. A common oxident used for combustion is oxygen, which can be found in *air* . And finally, the fuel used for combustion is usually carbon, but another is coal, and coal is commonly found in *earth* So Li Mei uses combustion, earth + fire + air

I guess this is something that will happen with a long running series like MK where some characters just have this weird power that no one else has. But I think you have done a really good job at least giving what the power might be.

Her using a combination of Force and Illusion makes the most sense. Although the "Get Fucked & Die" Element would be a close second.

The algorithm finally gave me someone new AND interesting. Subscribing!

Love your content keep up the great work

I’ll vote on the poll but I guess you could take her power more as an explosive power something like Bakugo from My Hero. But it comes out looking like fireworks to reflect her personality in a way. Kind of like how Liu Kang makes his fire look like dragons. There’s not inherent dragon element, yet rather it’s a reflect of Liu Kang as a character and how he interprets the power. Weeb answer I know but you can fit explosive as fire plus force, if you don’t have an element that already fits those two. I mean whatever gets decided, I want to say I appreciate your dedication to do what NetherRealm and Midway never did. Powers are a great way to show off a character’s personality in a unique way. You are by far the best MK RU-vidr and your videos outside of MK are great as well. Maybe Nether Realm should hire you instead of people who seemingly hate this universe and its characters.

Illusion + real fireworks

Now hear me out; -M1K Tanya has yellow hard light constructs when she does her divine buddha parry, and she has fireballs too ig. -M1K Li Mei, apart from her actual purple firework projectiles, also uses purple hard light constructs (chinese dragon, lantern) -Both experienced Umgadi training. -What can Combustion Man do, again? -So I'd disregard the firework aspect of her attacks are literally being *physical* fireworks since that sort of intelligent shaping is more of a product of her training/personality than the power itself (eg Liu's dragon shaped attacks). I would also say that the Illusion aspect of her attacks are negligible since there's barely any misdirecting going on, nowhere near anything like Sindel's, and she doesn't really need that for her attacks to be shaped that way. The best bet would be Force, or she's a highly specialized Fire/Light user that's learned to delay the explosive bursts of her projectiles, a power we may all safely call Combustion.

I’m very happy with her. One of my best.

I may have discovered something great here holy shit I couldn’t subscribe fast enough

SBI that's what happened 😂

One correction that I'd like to make is that Li Mei's Construct (for lack of a better term) is a Lion. Love the video, I'll be keeping an eye out fro more from you.

The OG Li Mei joining Onaga felt like a compromise to me. The only reason she joined the Deadly Alliance tournament was to free her village which became enslaved by the two sorcerers and Shao Kahn before them. I believe Kano was the one left in charge of the village when you meet him in Konquest, so there was always a lingering presence of evil around Le Mei. If Le Mei's main concern was freeing her people, her throwing them cheeks to Onaga for the sake of keeping the village and future generations safe was how I interpreted their relationship. Especially after she heard about how Onaga packed and smoked the Deadly Alliance and Raiden by himself. More like a "if you can't beat em, join em" type of deal. The problem is that we don't know enough about Le Mei as a character outside of a single motivation. Perhaps she was influenced by ancient magic like you said, or maybe she had a vindictive side that felt like she was owed something like Killmonger in Black Panther. IDK what the true answer is. Which I guess is fine since it allows head canon to run free, but it makes you wonder why they bothered to bring her back other than people asking for legacy characters, because her and a lot of these rebooted characters are incredibly stale. I appreciate the videos Warlock. I love MK lore and its hard to find any true discussion threads on this and not just people reading character bios of Wikis.

Li Mei is my favourite character her development is amazing and I love her design, she looks so badass... 💜

I’m waiting for you to talk about the Cyborgs.🤖

hey can you do a breakdown of characters that are considered "the chosen one" in video games, movies and series?

Asking the real questions

The new version of Li Mei reminds me of Lin from Jade Empire from her archetype down to her fighting style and I’m willing to bet that NRS pulled from the same archetypal context as BioWare did and it might lend an answer for Li Mei’s power set. Li Mei also reminds me Lu Shu Lien from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, again same archetypal character but more so because the tragic hero willing to sacrifice herself for honor.

Wow I didn’t know that Sindel,Kitana and Mileena power is actually made of Illusion,Air and both powers.

Glorious! Also, the video wasn't too bad, either. Looks like wherever Kelly Hu ends up, she seems to have a thing for kings... Dragon King... Scorpion King... yo know, generally big bald men. Wait, did I spell bold correctly? Nevermind, I'll see myself out now.

She probably uses a bit of both, hence why her illusions are small but she relies mostly on firepower.

Fire/Air/Earth as there is a bigger component of fire in Li Mei's moveset, Earth Magic sources the minerals like magnesium while Fire/Air assist in ignition, shape and movement of her illusions.

They should just used 2002 looks of Kelly Hu and make her most hot asian character ever to be created in video games, even better than Ada Wong or Chun Li, Juri.

I like Li Mei since she offers something no other MK character does: The perspective of an Outworld civilian. She's kind of like the anti Johnny Cage. She's just a normal person drafted in the Earthrealm/Outworld tournament but later turns out to be special (dragon powers to Johnny's Atlantean shadow power). I wish the reboot didn't make her a life-long soldier for Edenia since now she's no different than Jade.

0:54 i love this part

A Li Mei invasion story could be onga kills Jarret on her watch and she falls gets enchanted by him to live her she gets empowered and decides to take over the the rest of the realms in onga’s name. She goes through the realms enchanting all Li Meis to do the same 😅

6:00 in, and I kinda wanna guess that it's a mix of both illusion and force IMO, but hey, we'll see by the end. Edit: yeah, IMO, I'm kinda very much in the camp of force and illusion. Illusion gives the visual and audial flair, while force gives it the actual physical oomph. Li Mei most likely relies on force, but works in a little bit of illusion to give her the extra edge that she's kinda in sore need of when compared to heavy hitters like Kitana, Kung Lao, and Liu Kang. Thoughts?

If i had to define her power based on how she appear in MK12, i would say it's seems mostly aura based. The dragon, the paper lantern and the firework represents her personality and heritage. They are representation of her "fighting spirit" similar to the Animalities in older MK games. Also, outside of her constructs, her power seems to manifest itself as pure kinetic energy. Her "fireball" is more of a concussive blast and in her fatalities, while it "ignite" in a way that seems similar to fire there, it also remind me a lot of how Gambit from X-Men overcharges object to make them explode. In fact, Gambit can also enhance his strikes by charging the tip of his staff, for instance, to give it extra knock back power on impact or his legs to run faster and jump higher. It is very similarly to how Li Mei charges her hands and feet to strike harder. Going back to her constructs, if they arent just natural manifestations of her aura/fighting spirit, maybe they have a more mystical origin. While her martial training allowed her to tap into her aura to shoot "fireball" and enhance her punches and kicks, maybe she learned to use her aura to make constructs via Sindel who knows a form of magic, for sure. She is very loyal and close to her in this timeline too, so it would make perfect sense but what do you guys think?

Always had a bit of a soft spot for Li Mei; among my favorite debuts from the 3D era. Also love Kelly Hu, so that's a major bonus.

Is Lee Mei actually Jubilee from X-men? With the fireworks 🎇🎆🎇? :p

Commenting once again to boost that sweet sweet algorithm chances.

“ i grew up loving Kung Fu / Wuxia style films and gravitated towards especially the women of those films specifically Michelle Yeoh in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon of which Li Mei always felt very reminiscent of. She’s definitely one of the post trilogy characters to really feel like one of those characters from films that inspired MK in the first place. Once I discovered her in MKDA/MKD I was immediately hooked and it definitely helped that she has one of the more tragic backstories and roles of a lot of the characters being a poor peasant Outworld villager training to defend her people and even standing up to Shang Tsung and Quan Chi in order to do so. She can kinda be seen as a counterpart to Liu Kang especially due to having the same mentor figure and even adopting her own style of the “bicycle kick” but like I said with a more tragic background. She’s also one of the few Outworld natives with a GOOD alignment, the other being Bo’ and has the title of “Defender of The People of Outworld” in I believe MKD so she’s seen as a protector of the poorest Outworlders which we can even see carried over in her cameo in MKX leading the refugees. She’s just a sweet woman that only wants to protect people.” I said all of that before i finally saw her come back and i’m so happy with how she turned out in MK1. Love her to death and i’m glad she’s still a tragic character with a heart of gold.

It’s the uglification of the arts, and the infantilization of popular culture. It is eerily reminiscent of the short story ‘Harrison Bergeron.’

I’m gonna try say this in the nicest way possible this is a new timeline things were most likely going to be changed about Li Mei that’s the only way I can see what is up with Li Mei

Why did you cook yourself like that man 😭 0:53 also i have a question, if you had to pick mk character elemental power what would it be?

This entertained me well during breakfast 🥞

I thought it was Light (as you said in before its fire)

Li Mei is and has been an Outworlder, not an Edenian or Magic user or maybe she does use some but nothing that she is specifically known for, she is just a good martial artist or fighter and that’s why she was inducted into the umgadi in the current timeline and their leader for one and another thing, she has always been some sort of rebel or leader in most of the timelines and all to bring good, peace and justice to Outworld and the lights in her fatality are mostly there for gameplay purposes to be more 💖 flamboyant 💖

I always liked her

what you label as “force has an actual name, that being plasma

I think her power is considered as energy...

She went from being a babe with some great designs and a cool backstory to just a boring female cop.

Do a video on Sareena pls

I'm pretty sure Li Mei's based off Kim Wu from Killer Instinct like Kobra is based off Ken from Street Fighter, and it's fireworks like Kim Wu and Jubilee.

To me it’s just Fire that borrows from Force. Or Force that leans heavily on the side of Fire. Similar comparison to the Lava Releases of Naruto. Naruto uses pure lava, Kurotsuchi use quicklime and ash, Mei acidic mud and that Cloud guy with Volcanic Rubber. Each lean on either the Fire side or the water side.

Pretty sure she just has light powers😊

what is li mei

LET'SSSSSSSSSSSSS GOOOOOOOOOOOO

Have you done Cyrax yet? His nets I mean, are they tangible Allusion?

She still my Li bae

To me her element is light such as spiritual light. I guess force is the closest element to light.

Li Mei? That looks like Li Mei’s grandmom 😀

I see MK Conquest cameos, I upvote. Oh, umm... yeah, I see Kelly Hu as well and I don't much care what she uses... that's your job to figure out, not mine. 😜

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 netero killed mee 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Li mei was supposed to be female liu kang.

Maybe you could attribute it to plasma

Do you think Li Mei shops at Bad Dragon, cause yunno she’s down bad for a dragon

Force probably

How’d he know about the coke stain is what I wanna know

Electro I guess Fire+Air lol

It's just magic.

Ed Boon went from being a man of culture who got inspired by Dead or Alive's female depictions, to bending the knee to the notorious activist Anita Sarkeesian right after MK9's release.

My one question is, why make Li Mei and Tanya fulfill the same position, and then not develop them at all? We learn Li Mei was supposed to be responsible for keeping Jerrod alive, but then in Tanya's arcade ending, we learn she was thrown under the bus by the Umgadi superiors. Like huh??? Just muddles up the story, and then Tanya's like, "Oh but let me lead the Umgadi and I'll keep them straight." So essentially, Li Mei and Tanya are both jobbers but represent different colors? So you're telling me Li Mei was an Umgadi first, but the yellow colors of the Umgadi outfit were designed around Tanya??? (I guess that's not just one question anymore lol). I don't understand why they would bring both of these characters back, make them kind of parallel to each other, and then not explain much of why. Yeah ok, Li Mei was the guardian of Sindel and Jerrod, and Tanya is more connected to Mileena, that would make sense. So could we have had more interactions between Li Mei and Sindel? Their in story reconnecting was incredibly glanced over. After being so harsh to Li Mei right up to the scene in the court, Sindel doesn't properly say, "I forgive you." or "You're my friend again" or even "I should have never doubted you." We get these little tiny moments where Li Mei kicks Shinnok's Amulet out of Shao's hands, or she pushes Sindel out of the way of Rain's blast. And Sindel doesn't say -anything-. She silently picks up the amulet, and she goes straight into the fight with Rain. These great acts of service, and Sindel still won't acknowledge her. That's the main thing that's always bothered me. These ties between Li Mei and Sindel, and then how Sindel picked Tanya. When did this timeline Tanya fall in love with Mileena? Before or after she became Umgadi? Just so many loose ends that I wish had more definitive lore to... Why bring Li Mei back to not really give her a role? As a small note, it kinda feels like she spiritually took over Sonya's role as the hand-to-hand female kombatant. The idle pose, the "fit to serve" stance she does (not the salute, but the arms behind her back thing). Her lantern traps and her forward rush special just really remind me of Demolition Sonya. It's not a complete spiritual copy, but they just feel so similar, it makes me think maybe that's why Sonya never made it in.

👍🏾

Cant unsee how they femalize the male characters and tone down all the women in the game,and try to gaslight you into thinking the old designs were some how wrong and you are wrong to like it, i usually dont care about subjects like this, but something about this just bugs me

I didn’t minded Kelly Hu’s take on Li Mei. She’s an experienced voice actress and she did already voiced a cop named Peng in Sleeping Dogs. But her character could’ve had a different name and she still had personality and character regardless. If I recreated the MK universe, I would’ve put two versions of each MK character and maybe include new original characters who are underdogs or nobodies who encounter the MK world and lore itself. Maybe the capital city top cop Li Mei would fit in the space kingdoms of Edenia, and the other Li Mei would be some rebel who was captured by out worlds soldiers and had to fight in mortal kombat to avoid a death penalty for defiance. And later some earth realm or edenian soldiers help liberate her land of Sun Do, that would make less issues for both old and new fans of MK. Maybe include Dutch Van Der Linde and the strange man as younger gods. Serving deities of the elder gods.

Sweet baby Inc

i don't think Kelly is that bad.

then wtf is Tanya

Her and nitara I would marry in the mk1 universe. Sindel not that cute. Kitana more like a one time special happy meal. Melinna imma need her with the mask on screw that 😂.

I can’t believe Li use to be that sexy wtf happened?

Cynical overanalyze what to have for breakfast warlock is your new name

I'd be Li Mei's "woke latrine" especially deception Li Mei's.

Okay, that was something else. Hmmm(deep breath) First, wait, (where do I start from), okay FIRST, nice to the cynical warlock struggle over the perfect explanation for a power in mk, and then knavishly pushing the problem over to us to make us feel important when in reality he needs help. I can't offer much help other than to talk, and talk I will/shall. So, about the illusion thing, (in general not specifically li mei) your explanation does make sense i.e it equals water + air , the shadow clones in Naruto are a great example of this, although I don't see them utilizing water, shadow clones are basically air bags (balloons if you will) that take the desired form and burst upon impact. Naruto is actually a great user of this element as he uses it to morph himself into scantly dressed women using his pervy mastery over the element on many occasions. But don't you need light to utilize the reflective properties of water to make the air look more realistic, cause real things have to interact with light, thus selling the illusion. But than again, water helps in mobility of the illusion created objects. And then I don't really know how illusion helps in teleporting, maybe to aid the movement of characters by bending space and time or moving through space and time with enough speed to sell the illusion of disappearing and reappearing. BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH. I would like you to further explain to my " I don't get it brain" how some of Quan chi's socecery attacks fit this category. (No need he has some mastery over soul, which explains that) I get it now. Back to the video, maybe it is light, since this is a lesser version of fire, and her powers in the 3d era games resembles that of ashra in that same era. Maybe, maybe, maybe, she is a KOMPOUND Kompound element user using illusion to make her light powers behave and look like fireworks. This explanation although dumb could also work on force, I would say, out of all the categories her powers resemble force the most, if it is force then she has an incredible mastery over it , and since it has the shape changing ability of water you don't really need illusion to sell the trick(of it been fireworks). But I might as well settle for the fireworks. Which at first sounds stupid but pretty convincing considering the mix. Earth + water + fire ( it really does make sense) And I could just end up saying it's magic for all I care, what're you gonna do about it, huh? Hell yeah, it's MAGIK. It's her arcana, duhh, she inherited it from great grand bisexual grandfather who was to drunk to realize he was in jdusgsnsks. Put magik on the poll then I'll vote.

I prefer the old design of Li Mei (who doesn't), but her new 'firework magic' is much better than the generic stuff she had back then, gotta give em that much.

Can’t really stand how the female characters look in the older games, they all look the same. Good thing she got a makeover in mk1. Shame her moveset is so boring tho

Woke-NRS gave her a cheesy maIe face, made her look like a Iady boi hahah :D I dont even wanna call her Li-Mei anymore, more like Li-Man'i :D

Li Mei - a character I couldn’t care less about! Seriously one of the most useless characters how is that she gets to be in an MK game but Jax and Sonya don’t

Cause Mortal Kombat just denounces their women characters.

Cynical Warlock. What about lightening? It thrives on water. Raiden and Rain could've easily been the same character. Imagine Raiden with water attacks. I miss MK DECEPTION so much. With today's (politics) Bo, Rai, Cho would never be a character, because he's fat. Speaking of which, I HATE what Sony Santa Monica did to Thor.

Omg click bait 😂 I thought this video was going to be about how ugly Li Mei in this game is.

they made her design better and not just coomer bait. good.

now make a video defining what you think "woke" means

any interests on darrius power?

some cool stff for anybody. after trailer they showed mavado's true position its kinda magnetism but with realism so hes not walking like magneto. he charges smth with gadget and things he touched - activates magnet. badass spanish psycho raged assassin i loved him always loll face gone wrong, even with super realism principles they can bring someone who shows kinda rage. Like in cgi render MKDA mavado. how he was rage, love xddd idk face is naturally spanish but not the mavado but its okay he's simillar problem is how long that goes? are they gonna ruin faces of hotaru\others too with that sentence?

Li mei is in love with onaga