Chun-Li (春麗 or チュンリー Shunrei or Chunrī?, Simplified Chinese: 春丽) is the tritagonist and main female protagonist of the Street Fighter series, originally debuting in Street Fighter II. The first female fighter in the series, she is an expert martial artist and Interpol officer who relentlessly seeks revenge for the gone of her father at the hands of M. Bison.
Chun-Li is a regular character in the 1996 American animated series Street Fighter, voiced by Donna Yamamoto. The character reprises her film role as a reporter while she again seeks to avenge her father’s defeat at the hands of Bison, which is shown in flashback in the second episode, “The Strongest Woman in the World”.
The year was 1991 and the release of a brand new video game was about to revolutionize the industry. The game in question, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, had been designed with a groundbreaking framework, high-speed special moves, and a wide range of characters each armed with their own unique fighting style. Before long, the release of Capcom’s new game would revive the one-on-one fighting genre, and bring the arcade scene back from the brink of collapse.
In the 1997–1998 anime series Street Fighter II V, Chun-Li is voiced by Chisa Yokoyama in the original Japanese version, while Lia Sargent reprises her role in the English dub. Chun-Li is introduced as the 15-year-old daughter of Inspector Do-Rai, a Hong Kong police chief who has schooled her in the martial arts. While attempting to bring down a drug smuggling operation in the country, she works with Interpol to investigate a mysterious organization known as Shadowlaw.
Chun-Li serves as the tour guide for Ryu and Ken when they pay a visit to work on their training; Ken is smitten with her and later buys her lavish gifts, including an engagement ring.
Despite being underage, they enter a club in a dangerous part of town that hosts an underground fighting ring so Ryu and Ken can prove themselves as street fighters. After Ryu soundly defeats several opponents, the trio are marked for by the ringleader as a result, and while on the run they encounter and battle various street gangs before being rescued by Chun-Li’s father.
Traveling with Ryu and Ken to Spain, Chun-Li is stalked by an obsessive Vega, who presents her with a severed bull’s ear, intercepts her outside her hotel, sneaks into her room to kiss her while sleeping, then invites her to a masquerade ball that is actually a setup to get Ken to fight him in a cage match.
The whole time, Chun-Li is under the influence of Vega’s love potion, but it wears off when Vega is defeated. Bison then accosts Chun-Li and she realizes that he is the leader of Shadowlaw, who, unbeknownst to her, had also hired Cammy to garrote Chun-Li’s father, an attack he barely survives.
Chun-Li plays her largest role in the five-part finale, when she and Ryu are kidnapped and brainwashed by Bison via cyberchip embedded in their foreheads and like in the 1994 American film, she acquires her signature outfit while under Bison’s captivity.
The chip puts her into an overly aggressive state, which she displays by snapping an opponent’s neck in combat, and she later manages to overpower Guile in battle before Ryu and Ken, during their victorious final fight against Bison, succeed in destroying the equipment triggering the chips (in addition to reducing the Shadowlaw base to ruins), returning Chun-Li to normal.
Chun-Li appears in the 1999 anime OVA Street Fighter Alpha: The Animation, voiced by Yumi Tōma in the original Japanese version and again by Lia Sargent in the English dub. There, she is as an Interpol agent who investigates a mad scientist called Sadler who works for Shadaloo. She believes the trail can lead her to her father, who at the time, was missing and presumed alive. She assists Ryu and Ken in finding a kidnapped boy named Shun who claims to be Ryu’s younger brother. While tracking Sadler, she accompanies Ryu to where Akuma lives and witnesses as Ryu is almost overcome by the Dark Hadou.
She accompanies Ryu, Ken, Birdie, Dan, Guy, Dhalsim, Sodom and Rolento to Sadler’s hideout, where she sneaks into the facility with Ryu and Ken. She and Ken rescue the other fighters and end up in a tussle with Sadler’s android enforcer, Rosanov, who beats them severely. Ryu ultimately manages to destroy both Rosanov and Sadler, though Shun dies in the process after making peace with Ryu. In the aftermath, Chun-Li returns to Interpol