The Furious Five are, with the exception of Oogway, Shifu, Po and Tai Lung, the most skilled warriors in China. Given that Shifu referred to Po by his species name while and before training him, it is hinted that each member of the Furious Five have or had their own individual names before training to become kung fu warriors. The Five were all trained by Shifu, each of them attaining the rank of master. The Furious Five are homages to the Crane, Snake, Monkey, Praying Mantis, and Tiger styles of Chinese martial arts.
Master Tigress
Master Tigress is a South China Tiger with a combat style of a Tiger Kung Fu and voiced by Angelina Jolie and Tara Strong.
Master Tigress is the strongest and boldest of the Furious Five. She is friendly but the least sociable of the five. In many scenes in which the other four of the Furious Five and/or Po were joking or having fun, Tigress would often remain quiet and withdrawn. It was strongly believed, by Shifu and herself, that Oogway was about to choose her as the Dragon Warrior before Po's entrance, despite Oogway's statements. Tigress bitterly resents Po for thwarting her dream, and is the most vocal of the Five in her contempt for the panda and his perceived lack of respect for kung fu, even while her comrades grow to respect him, perhaps still believing she was the true Dragon Warrior.
Upon hearing Po protesting to Master Shifu that he will never be able to defeat Tai Lung even if Shifu changed him, Master Tigress, feeling that she could defeat Tai Lung instead of Po, took it upon herself to intercept the incoming villain along with the rest of the Five, who came with her. However, they were all defeated by Tai Lung's superior martial skill and nerve attack. When Po defeats Tai Lung, Tigress is deeply impressed, and she is the first to acknowledge Po as the true Dragon Warrior, and as a master of kung fu, giving him a sweet smile as she does so.
In Secrets of the Furious Five, Tigress was revealed to be an orphan living in the Bao Gu Orphanage where she was greatly feared by the other children and the matron due to her destructively lacking control of her great temper, strength, fangs, and claws. Left alone and isolated in her room for the safety of the other children, she soon began to see herself as a monster, as everyone else did. Then Shifu, at the request of the orphanage, came to render some assistance. Shifu taught her to control herself by playing dominoes, which requires not only discipline, grace, and precision but a delicacy of the hand and a steady heart that Tigress struggled to gain at first. Eventually, after months of training, she learned to control both her anger and her movements and became friends with the other orphans. Although she was still feared by all potential parents who visited the orphanage to adopt the other children, Shifu soon adopted her and he took her in as his foster daughter, giving a small but genuinely sweet smile to her as they walked towards Tigress' new home. However, Shifu still carried the emotional scars of previous events, and thus was somewhat more strict and distant in her upbringing. The older Tigress in the main film explains to Po that Shifu loved Tai Lung like no other person before or since, including her.
According to the filmmakers' commentary on the DVD, Tigress is Po's favorite of the Furious Five despite the fact that Tigress shows considerable disrespect and disgust at him throughout most of the main film.
Master Monkey
Master Monkey is a Golden Langur with a combat style of a Monkey Kung Fu and voiced by Jackie Chan and Jaycee Chan.
Master Monkey is the friendliest and most approachable of The Five. Monkey was the first of the five to recognize Po's determination and is the only member of the Furious Five who refers to Po by name. He also seems to harbor the strongest sense of humor within the Five as well, responding most strongly to Po's sense of comedy. Unlike the others, Master Monkey uses a weapon to help him fight. He uses a staff, a traditional weapon used in Kung Fu and other martial arts.
Before he became a kung fu warrior, it is known in the Secrets of the Furious Five that Monkey was the village trickster when he was a teenager, often making people slip on banana peels (from bananas that he would eat) and/or pantsing them in revenge for an incident in his youth that resulted in becoming the laughingstock of a few other children in the town. The townspeople sent many powerful warriors, including rhinoceros guards from Chorh-Gom Prison, to force him out of town dead or alive, but Monkey humiliated each and every one of them. Monkey was finally subdued by Master Oogway, who, aside from wearing no pants, also used his shell to hide from Monkey's attacks. Oogway taught Monkey compassion by saving him from a falling beam, which led Monkey to develop into the warrior he is today. Monkey is also the only character to be voiced by both Jackie Chan and his son Jaycee Chan.
Master Mantis
Master Mantis is a Chinese Mantis with a combat style of a Northern Praying Mantis and voiced by Seth Rogen and Max Koch.
Master Mantis is the smallest of the Five, but he is obviously the strongest proportional to his size. He can perform such feats as throwing Po and single-handedly holding up a severed rope bridge burdened by most of his comrades and Tai Lung and still have the strength to snap the bridge when needed. He is also a skilled acupuncturist, although his success does depend on the type of body he is working with; a body like that of Po or Viper can sometimes give him problems until he familiarizes himself with the particular anatomy. Pragmatic and open minded with a dry sense of humor, Mantis was the first of the five to develop acceptance and liking of Po as a person, alongside the factor of Po's girth, declaring size did little to define a warrior and could actually be used as an advantage no matter what style one practices.
When he was a few years younger (in Secrets of the Furious Five), Mantis was extremely impatient, feeling that the world was too slow for him and he was too fast for the world. On a mission to retrieve wool coats back from a gang of crocodile bandits, he was captured due to his overconfidence and lack of listening skills when one of the villagers tried to warn him of the bandits' traps. Mantis was locked in a cage for days and forced to sit and wait for something to happen, and he entered a trance that allowed him to survey the world moving faster than he did. This allowed him to overcome his impatience and devise a plan to escape by playing dead to trick the crocodiles into opening his cage and defeat them.
Master Viper
Master Viper is a Green Tree Viper with a combat style of a Snake Kung Fu and voiced by Lucy Liu and Jessica DiCicco.
Master Viper is a green snake with two small lotus flowers on top of her head. Although she has a serious birth defect for her species, being born with barely visible venomous fangs, she compensates with her strength, her sinuous nature, her beauty, and her precision. In defiance of the villainous stereotype of snakes, Viper is the most charming, kind, compassionate and sweetest of the Five as demonstrated with her quickly developing empathy for Po as his indomitable tenacity became obvious.
In Secrets of the Furious Five, Viper was born the loved daughter of Great Master Viper, protector of the village where she lived who relied on his venomous fangs to fell his enemies (referred to by him as the awe-inspiring awesomeness of his "Poison Fang Technique"), and his beautiful wife. The Great Master hoped she would carry on his legacy once she was born, but she was without fangs and never developed them as she grew up, much to the dismay of her father. To make her father feel better, Viper took up ribbon dancing at age six, blossoming into the best dancer in the village. During one Autumn Moon Festival, Viper was too timid to attend the festival and stayed home with her mother. But when her father fought against a gorilla bandit who attacked the village and used venom-proof armor to shatter the Great Master's poison fangs, Viper, seeing him in trouble, mustered the courage she needed to defeat the gorilla by confusing him with her dancing skills and tying him up with her ribbon. Thus her father's legacy was secure with his daughter becoming a mighty warrior on her own terms.
Master Crane
Master Crane is a Red-crowned Crane with a combat style of Fujian White Crane and voiced by David Cross.
Master Crane is the most patient of the Five and one of the most sarcastic, and considered to be the "mother hen" of the group despite being male. He may well be the oldest of the Five; using Secrets of the Furious Five places him, at least, somewhere in his mid-late thirties by the time of the main film. He will always try to avoid and defuse conflicts between his comrades, whose differing personalities often conflict. He was the first of The Five to hold a conversation with Po, albeit it being quite awkward. Nonetheless, touched by Po's dedication and admiration of The Five led Crane to have some respect for Po.
Two decades prior to the events of the main film (on Secrets of the Furious Five), Crane was the slave-like janitor at the Lee Da Kung Fu Academy, where everybody looked down upon him, even the strict teacher of the academy, due to his particularly skinny build. However the top student, named Mei Ling, saw the skills which Crane used to tidy up the place every night, and convinced Crane to try out for the school. Though his nerve faltered at first, Crane accidentally wandered into the obstacle course and quickly found a way to surpass it, and passed with flying colors.
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