Panda

Oddball

Panda (and Kuma, often just referred to as bears) is an oddball character specializing in ranged poking and whiff punishment. Cursed with often terrible frame data on her moves and the worst overall mobility in the game between her huge size, lack of specialized movement tools and a generally bad backdash/sidestep, Panda has to navigate the mid range carefully and deliberately, lest she gets run over by enemy pressure. To offset this, the bears come equipped with some of the absolute best whiff punishment tools in the entire game. Kuma Musou (df+2,1) is an i15 whiff-confirmable launcher that hits all the way from range 3 for close to 45% damage without Heat on open ground. Demon Bear Breath (1+2) is an i13 mid stolen from Heihachi, which boasts similarly impressive range and heat engages. Panda also has an array of ranged mids and low pokes to gradually chip away at the opponent from outside their effective range, and a decent selection of tracking keepout moves such as b,f+2, uf+1 or b+1+2, all of which deal considerable chip damage when blocked. Holding down or pressing 3+4 after select moves transitions Panda into the Hunting Bear Stance (HBS for short), a naturally high-crushing, mixup-focussed stance. HBS allows some additional light pressure with the threat of an enormously plus on hit, fast low in HBS.2. This can be mixed up with HBSs good selection of safe, or even plus on block Mids. Panda can also be considered the more "party" focused of the bears, as Heat grants her access to a number of unconventional mixup tools. The real star of the show here is the aptly named Panda Shooting Star, a massively plus on block hopkick-type move which leaves Panda in Bear Sit Stance right in front of the opponent, allowing her to push a series of mixups. Panda's Heat Smash, while not as powerful as Kumas, is still very fast at i15 and can transition into ROL or HBS by holding a direction after the animation finishes.