Having dedicated a fair number of posts to general 3S mechanics and techniques, I thought it would be good to change the pace of things and devote a couple of posts to more character-specific discussion. Akuma happens to be a favorite character of mine - very well designed, fairly balanced, and generally very fun to play with his vast arsenal of offensive options.
One of the things that Akuma not only excels at, but probably handles better than any other character in the game is anti-air mixups. He has the most versatile anti-air kit in the game, and has a safe, guaranteed counter to virtually any aerial maneuver, offensive or defensive, that any character in the game can throw at you. Let's examine these options in-depth:
1. DP + P (Shoryuken) xx SAI (Messatsu Gouhadou)
Akuma's "bread and butter" anti-air, this has virtually all of the benefits of a regular anti-air shoryuken - fast startup, invincibility frames, high priority - while eliminating the primary drawback to anti-air shoryuken, which is that it can be parried and then punished very easily. Should your opponent attempt to jump-in parry, there are a couple of things which make it virtually impossible for them to get out unscathed:
One of the things that Akuma not only excels at, but probably handles better than any other character in the game is anti-air mixups. He has the most versatile anti-air kit in the game, and has a safe, guaranteed counter to virtually any aerial maneuver, offensive or defensive, that any character in the game can throw at you. Let's examine these options in-depth:
1. DP + P (Shoryuken) xx SAI (Messatsu Gouhadou)
Akuma's "bread and butter" anti-air, this has virtually all of the benefits of a regular anti-air shoryuken - fast startup, invincibility frames, high priority - while eliminating the primary drawback to anti-air shoryuken, which is that it can be parried and then punished very easily. Should your opponent attempt to jump-in parry, there are a couple of things which make it virtually impossible for them to get out unscathed:
- They have to anticipate the SAI followup to shoryuken and parry twice before the super flash, which requires a different timing from parrying a HP shoryuken. Many times opponents will forget about the super cancel and parry anticipating a fierce shoryuken, and will end up eating the super for free.
- Even if they do anticipate the super and time the initial parry correctly, they don't have the option of blocking like they would if they were on the ground, so they have 2 equally painful options at this point: (a) commit to parrying all 6 hits, in which case Akuma will recover well before they finish parrying, and can follow up with a virtually unparriable air combo, or (b) parry 1-2 times, then eat the rest of the super so that Akuma can't recover and follow up while they are in the middle of the parries.
Although this is a popular and generally fairly safe option, there are a couple of ways to mitigate the effectiveness of it, mostly revolving around doing a jump in normal early enough to mess up the timing on this, since he needs to uppercut late enough to cancel into super while he's still on the ground.. Air projectiles like Akuma's air fireball and Ibuki's kunais also prevent him from using this option.
2. SAI (Messatsu Gouhadou)
Unlike the first option, which requires close proximity and a sufficiently late timing, cutting out the shoryuken has the advantage of being able to punish the opponent at any airborne state - about to land, at the peak of the jump, doesn't matter. It also has much more range than shoryuken xx super, and can catch opponents who are jumping away in addition to jumping straight up or towards you, Here is an example of this option punishing in a situation where shoryuken xx super wouldn't connect (occurs at 4:30):
Early air normals aren't as effective against this, since there's no cancel involved - at best you'll trade a normal for a super (which should virtually always be in Akuma's favor), and often you'll just end up eating the super anyways. The only downside is that his super doesn't have any invincibility frames, so you may end up taking damage more frequently than with shoryuken xx super. If your reaction time is slow and you super very late, you could end up getting hit out of the super before it even comes out, burning a meter to no avail.
3. LP, LP, f., LK, HP (Raging Demon)
A fairly flashy but effective anti-air, raging demon works very well in the same situations that shoryuken xx super would - empty/parry jump-ins, and against late air-normals. Raging Demon has invincibility at the startup, which allows it to work as anti-air against jump in normals. It can't be avoided by jumping away after the super flash, since jumping has a minimum of 3 frames startup for every character, and Akuma will land the Demon on the first frame after you land.
In order to avoid hitting them with the initial jab - stand jab can easily be stuffed with properly spaced normals - the idea is to do both jabs crouching, avoiding any jump in normals they might throw out, then finish the rest of the input normally. So the overall input looks something like this:
cr. LP, cr. LP, QCF, LK, HP
The "forward" part of the QCF counts towards the Demon, and with a little practice the motion and timing become second nature. Below is an example of anti-air demon being used in competitive play (occurs at 5:38):
4. d., d., d. + PPP (KKZ)
Although this isn't used all that much outside of LK tatsu, st. LP reset xx KKZ, it's actually surprisingly viable as an anti-air. Invincibility on startup, great damage, first hit can't be parried, and unlike all of the previous entries, it can hit someone who is directly above you or attempting to cross you up. The only downside is that the startup is fairly slow, so you need to catch them at the peak of their jump. Otherwise, they'll probably have time to land and block it, which would be disastrous.
Below is an example of this being used in play (occurs at 1:13):
5. st. HP
This may come as something of a surprise. After all, all shoto fierces are identical, so what's special about Akuma's?
What makes Akuma's fierce particularly potent as an anti-air are the numerous mixups he has to follow it up, especially if it gets parried.
What makes this so devastating is that you have very little choice but to continue parrying after you commit to parrying the st. HP, but there are so many different timing mixups - 2 quick ones, 2 normal parries followed by a quick one, a delayed parry - that it's very unlikely you'll guess right. Even if you do, the chains that end in super are virtually impossible to get out of without taking significant damage.
Hopefully this has provided some helpful insight into why Akuma possesses one of the strongest - if not the strongest - anti-air kits in the game.
This may come as something of a surprise. After all, all shoto fierces are identical, so what's special about Akuma's?
What makes Akuma's fierce particularly potent as an anti-air are the numerous mixups he has to follow it up, especially if it gets parried.
- QCF, QCF + P (SAI, Messatsu Gouhadou) - much like uppercut super, the only thing you can do in this situation is parry, and the first two parries must be in quick succession (before the super flash). This only works if st. HP is parried, though - if they get hit, then super will whiff since they are air reset, and you will be punished - so verify that they parried before going through with this.
- QCB + MK/HK (tatsu) (xx SAI), DP + P (shoryuken) (xx SAI) - these options follow the regular parry timing for the first two hits (instead of one), but since both MK/HK tatsu and shoryuken can also be super canceled, there's also a parry timing mixup based on whether or not you super cancel. These are both also easily punished if fierce air resets them, but after parrying the fierce it doesn't matter what they do, they're screwed.
- QCB + LK (tatsu) - this plays out like his normal BnB combo, with yet another parry timing mixup - LK tatsu comes out a little slower than MK/HK tatsu/shoryuken, so the parry has to be a little delayed. Should LK tatsu connect, he has all of his standard followups at his disposal - shoryuken, st. LP xx HK tatsu, cr. LP reset, etc.
- Nothing - last of all, you can just do nothing while they're in the air, waiting for them to land so you can follow up with something like cr. MK xx SAI.
What makes this so devastating is that you have very little choice but to continue parrying after you commit to parrying the st. HP, but there are so many different timing mixups - 2 quick ones, 2 normal parries followed by a quick one, a delayed parry - that it's very unlikely you'll guess right. Even if you do, the chains that end in super are virtually impossible to get out of without taking significant damage.
Hopefully this has provided some helpful insight into why Akuma possesses one of the strongest - if not the strongest - anti-air kits in the game.