What is the Casual Mai meme taking over social media and who is Mai Shiranui?

Casual Mai is a brand new meme that seems to be taking over the internet - but what's it all about and who is Mai Shiranui?

Mai is a video game character that was recently introduced as a new playable protagonist in Capcom's Street Fighter 6.

Her first appearance in gaming was way back in 1992 in Fatal Fury 2 by SNK - she is the last Shiranui ninja heiress and the girlfriend of another character called Andy Bogard.

Mai then appeared in almost every game in The King of Fighters series and has made appearances across a number of other titles, both as a character from the start and as DLC.

Mai Shiranui is a playable character in DLC for Street Fighter 6 / Capcom

Capcom announced midway through January that Mai would be heading to Street Fighter 6 as a new playable character.

The official Street Fighter social media account posted a teaser a short while later of how Mai would look in the game and the Casual Mai meme was born.

Mai can be seen in the character selection screen chilling on a chair in comfy pink shorts and a white vest top.

Both social media and the internet seem to have gone into meltdown over it - there have been loads of memes cropping up on various different platforms and a number of cosplayers have recreated the look too.

Now since the DLC is officially available (it was released on February 5), more and more memes, recreations and fan arts are doing the rounds.

Elsewhere, Joe Rogan was recently left baffled after a square structure was discovered on the surface of Mars and Haliey Welch, better known as the 'hawk-tuah' girl, has disappeared from the internet since the end of 2024.

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