Darkstalkers!! Similar Creatures

Hsien-Ko

Today, we'll be talking about the beautiful, badasss, and the happy go-lucky ghost from China. Ladies and Gentlemen, Hsien-Ko!

Background

Hsien-Ko and Mei-Ling were twins born in a family of Senjutsushis in China in the 1730's. Both of them were raised to be Senjutsushis and were taught Senjutsu. On the ceremonial night when they were to become a Senjutsushi, their village was attacked by Darkstalkers. The mother of the twin girls gave her life to protect the sisters, but because of this, her soul was trapped in darkness. To release their mother's soul from the darkness, Hsien-Ko uses the Igyo Tenshin technique to turn into a jiangshi, a type of Chinese ghost. Mei-Ling, her older sister, turns into a fú, a parchment-Like talisman that is attached to the front of her hat. She's also a ward to make sure Hsien-Ko doesn't lose control of herself. The two set off to hunt down Darkstalkers as a Darkhunter of the night.

After the two had freed their mother's soul from the darkness, the two were reincarnated with the powers of their mother. The two were reborn in a normal family and were raised in happiness. On their 16th birthday, the powers of the two sisters awoke. These powers had been passed down from the very first member of the Shao family. This was their mother's way of repaying her daughters for saving her soul. But because of this, Jedah sensed their power and deemed them as worthy souls.

The two dreamed again on the night their powers awoke. It was a nightmare which was caused by Jedah's summoning. In the nightmare, their souls were instantly transferred to Majigen. This place was where the Senjutsushi's and the Darkstalkers battled. It was a legendary land and Hsien-Ko and Mei-Ling's homeland. Their leftover bodies had no soul in them anymore. They lied there side by side with no sign of life.

When they awoke, the two of them had no memory of their previous battle. They didn't know why they were in Majigen. But they both felt strongly that they must win the battle to return to the real world. To them, it was a weird feeling, like watching a bad nightmare.

Their form in Majigen was the form which is best suited for battle. It

is the same form they took when came to Earth. This was due to their mother lending them some powers. Though the two of them had experience as Darkhunters, they were now just ordinary girls. To survive in the world where demons live, they needed their powers of Senjutsu. With help from their mother, they could use various arts without any thought. However, the moment the two sisters lose trust in each other, their powers would be lost instantly.

After the events of , their souls are once again consumed by the darkness, but their mother's soul saved them once again. The two sisters returned to the human world and went back to their normal lives again.

Weapons and Abilities Kunai Akuma(Gouki) statue Chun Li's bracelets Giant gauntlets Knives Giant saw blade Weights Spiked balls Giant daggers Axe Shuriken Star blocks Mei-Ling Swords Boomerangs Rocks Sledgehammer Small barrels The ability to run on air The ability to teleport or disappear for a limited amount of time Chains Vega's claws Chinese bombs Bonsai Tree Plants Felyne plush doll (only in Marvel vs Capcom 3)

Appearance

Hsien-Ko (Lei-Lei) was chiefly created by Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge planners Haruo Murata and Noritaka Funamizu and graphically designed by Hitoshi Nishio, an artist responsible for the look of the new characters in the game. It was the first time Nishio has worked on a female character. In the beginning, Funamizu envisioned two human sisters who would have fought together, in a way similar to Morrigan Aensland's "Astral Vision" special move that makes Morrigan's double appear on other side of the screen and mirror her every move. That idea was abandoned due to the problems related to programming character control problems. Murata decided a lone Hsien-Ko would be too weak as a human being, and so he came up with the jiangshi idea "but Lei-Lei can't control her powers alone, so she fights with her sister transformed into an ofuda ." Nishio said: "after drawing Lei-Lei's graphics I watched a real Chinese jiangshi movie, and I got a little worried about how Lei-Lei would be able to move around with that ofuda covering her eyes. (laughs) That was why I made Lin-Lin the ofuda."

Hsien-Ko's arsenal for her comedic "Anki Hou" special attack (throwing various projectiles including swords, daggers, axes, sledgehammers, kunai , shuriken , boomerangs, fuse bombs, chains, weights, bonsai trees, bronze statues, and Chun Li 's bracelets) was created as team members would propose to add more items. According to another planner/designer, Junichi Ohno, Hsien-Ko was too strong at first and had to be balanced. Composer Takayuki Iwaim experimented with Hsien-Ko stage's background music in a way that he though would match her character image while trying to "remove some of the 'dark' image the first game had."

About real Jiang Shi

Geong Si, Jiang Shi (Putonghua) or Kuang Shi (Cantonese) are the zombies of Chinese myth. They are caused by the demonic possession of a recently deceased corpse and said to have a terrifying appearance. They have physical bodies, but they are not alive, nor have will or thought. They are closer to Haitian zombies than to anything else in widely-known Western folklore. As it matures, it gains new skills with the older among them rumored to have the ability to fly.

Before the Civil War and before World War II, it was said that the dead still walked the roads of rural China in parades marching toward their ancestral villages. Buried away from the family, a dead Chinese had no feasts, no paper clothes, slaves, boats, food, or incense burnt to him, since all these things are in the hands of his descendants. Such is the spiritual importance of the Chinese ancestral village.

When a Chinese person dies away from home, there are several ways to return his body to native earth, but the less-than-rich rural Chinese once used this form of underground railway. A medium or priest, especially a Taoist priest who had toiled in a specialized apprenticeship, would be hired by the village to bring their dead home, walking them along the roads, perhaps as one still sees geese herded down multi-lane highways in modern China.

Spells had a part in this ritual and in controlling the dead when they were made to walk, but there is nothing special or extraordinary about spells in the Chinese world. A wide variety of spells were usually written out on red paper called Dzi Dzat, the generic name given for the paper grave goods and ancestral sacrifices burnt to make a comfortable life for the dead.

Paper and bamboo mansions were burnt at funerals and at regular festivals. These dwellings for the spirits of the dead were filled with paper representations of everything the ancestors knew or had wanted in life: favorite food, books, signs of rank, a pleasure boat or a young mistress, all in painted and folded paper.

In some accounts of the Kuang Shi, a spell glued to the face of the body is the medicine that makes it move. This method is favored in popular film, since it is visible to the camera, and the viewer can always tell a Kuang Shi by his label. Traditional accounts do not agree on this point. In modern Hong Kong film, the Kuang Shi is the slave of the character of an evil Taoist priest, who launches platoons of these animated corpses at heroes of kung fu and even gangster movies. This picture of Kuang Shi in current film does not represent their old form. Nevertheless, the Kuang Shi remains one of the current, tangible, commonly believed myths of old China.