Capcom released their very own Street Fighter 6 Mai Shiranui Character guide ahead of her February 5th DLC release. With her homage to ninja changing already in place, and her wild instant kill taunt shown. Capcom decided to keep going the distance with her.
Her fan throw attack, Kachousen, already had me worried since characters can easily hit the normal versions away with either normals or projectiles. The fan based move actually gets the EX arc hit by holding onto the attack button. The arc itself is controlled by all three punches differently. Overdrive Kachousen will automatically do this. Her Ryuuenbu attack gets a nasty 2 hit launcher with Fierce, but doesn't hit crouched characters. Her Hissatsu Shinobi Bachi attack's on Overdrive is a callback to Real Bout with an arc that allows follow-up moves. The move is no longer a half circle like it's previous games, reducing the execution time. Her uppercut move, Hishou Ryuuenjin, is also invincible to attacks on Overdrive. Her Massasbi attack's Overdrive mode allows a follow-up attack after the hit.
The real juice is her supers. Especially Kagero No Mai. In previous games, the 2 clone attack was not as effective, and rendered a tell, but Capcom seemed to make it more useful here. Even the Capcom vs SNK 2 Mai's Kagero No Mai was substancially nerfed with not much of an arc. In later King of Fighters games, it appeared post the NEST saga with a vengence in 2003, 11, and 14. In Street Fighter 6, the move adds more power to all of Mai's supers and specials with 5 stocks of additional strength. Each special and super move seem to drain the stocks, but the Kagero Super can replenish it. The target combo move might be the Hein Ren Kyaku. Chou Hissatsu Shinobi Bachi can go through projectiles.
The illusive Level 3 move, Shiranui Ryuu: Enu Ada Zakura, is hard to see how it hits the opponent to initialize. When it does, it's pretty scary. The Critical version of the move is definitely the Akira Kurosawa callback we needed in a Street Fighter game. Definitely a good close-range attack and invincible enough to sneak it into combos. All and all, Mai seems to be a good threat in Metro City so far. All this just to see Andy again.
Mai is storming in next week as part of the Year 2 DLC along with M. Bison, and Fatal Fury mate Terry. Elena will be next in the spring. For more hands-ons with the character in actual fights, as well as the awesome Versus walk-ins, Maximilian Dood, Destin, and IGN threw up their matches against CPU Level 7 and actually controlling Mai.