AEMAKOTO Guide and Q&A: Ask all your questions here!

Yeah these are tough man. Sorry I couldn’t get with you yesterday. I was actually working with OAR when you msg’d me and I wanted to figure it out before i got back. But yeah these are going to take some practice. Some of this stuff is really difficult to time. But they do work though.

I’ve been having trouble with the n. jump LK Tsurugi-> xu MK Tsurugi. I keep sailing over the training dummy. Definitely not ready for a real match. BUT knowing that I can replace HC with a LP has been great. To those not in the know, it looks like I’m doing something completely different. lol

EDIT: Is the n. jump LK Tsurugi-> xu MK Tsurugi set-up supposed to be frame tight?

throws up in his mouth looking at the sheets
Now i need to practice. OAR deserves a special title on the forum. I nominate him for “Makoto Limit Breaker”.

Hey! I thought the LK Tsurugi whiff would be controversial. I wasn’t gonna include it until it worked on everyone, and a little practice made it easy. But! Because people are having problems with it, I’ll post a video on what the setup looks like on whiff so you can see the raw tsurugis. With that in mind, any other setups that are giving anyone trouble, I’ll post similar videos for it so you can see the setup at its core. Now, I tried to find backthrow Tsurugi setups that were much easier than the old setups, however, with oroshi, these are new. To give you guys an idea of what’s going on:

After a backthrow, your opponent is face down, and Makoto is behind them. After an ex oroshi (and just about every other knockdown), the opponent is face up and Makoto is in front of them. When behind them, the opponent has to turn around upon waking up, which gives you a little bit of extra time (they don’t HAVE to turn around if you do a naked crossup as they’re waking up). Also, after a backthrow, not only are the opponents face down with Makoto behind them, Makoto is also closer to her opponent than any other raw knockdown. This makes Makotos normals push her away on top of some normals bringing her in. After an oroshi, the only normals that adjust your spacing are s.hk and f+hp outside of four moving command normals. So, not only does Makoto lack the turn around perk from a backthrow, she also has to use a dash, a f+lk, a f+mp or in some rare instances, a f+hk to move in, THEN set up spacing/timing. Oroshi seemingly gives you more time than backthrow does, but the compensation for her positioning pretty much eats that up.

In a nutshell, this was one of the first times dealing with finding actual setups for fierce and tsurugi off of oroshi. Some of the setups may be raw, but when I go through and revise it again (much like backthrow), I’ll be thinning the herd for ease over technicality. Although, I did try to keep most of them easy, and fixated on finding dash setups so that they’d be easy to time and would work off of all spacing.

However, before I make a video and post it, I would like to try and say that the neutral jump LK tsurugi into MK tsurugi is weird at first. You have a LOT of time to do the neutral LK tsurugi, so long as you don’t wait until you’re at the peak of your jump. Anything before peak, and maybe a few pixels before peak should be fine. Then, just jump forward and do a tsurugi. It’s not instant. Time the tsurugi so that Makoto does it at their head. It’s not the slowest setup because neutral LK Tsurugi eats up just enough time while moving Makoto forward unlike any other normal, so you don’t have to super delay it, as long as it’s not borderline TK.

Also, I tried not to find frame perfect setups because my focus was finding safe setups that CAN be unblockable, with a slight risk of having them escaped. I figure that in my game plan, if an opponent figures out an escape to a loose setup, that’ll give me an opportunity to hit them with meaty normals, karakusa, and oroshis in the same match. I know it sounds a little selfish with how I based the setups around, but they still work really well. Out of 10 people, usually eight of them are clueless as to how to get around it at all, and that’s when I use a setup with a hole in it. So, once you get them down, I feel they’re well worth it. Again, I apologize for the confusion that has followed the new tech, as I figured there would be, I did record almost everything this time around. I’ll record a few more videos that show some mentioned setups, and I’ll be taking requests. Also, request whatever you want. If you want to see a vortex string example on X character, go ahead. I’ll be getting around to this, but I can do it much earlier than planned upon request.

Wow brain overloading with info great job ALL u hard workers . I was in training room with mk tsurugi a while ago. I dunno if this
is found already but backthrow corpse hop hk sturugi XU mk tsurugi work on (so far ryu,ken,akuma,cammy,fei long,).
The same setup with the mk tsurugi a lil higher works on guile and rose.

hey man, take your time. thanks again for all the hard work. i really want to include it in the reference guide i’m writing:

but i figure it’d be best for you to be satisfied that you’ve found the more reliable / easiest setups for each knockdown before committing anything to my file.

I like how you call it … corpse hop hahahaha

snip

if you are using makoto from 3 days I cant really tell you complicated advices so my first suggestion is to go to the first page of this thread and look for matchups , the tips I’ll give you are fairly simple but very effective. Okay so first off try to hit his cr MK with tsurugi (i hope you can do it instant) when he’s poking , another thing is ryu players like to tech with cr MP (which is more punishable than lk obviously) so what you can do is go into a block string and kara throw him twice, the third time do a medium kick tsurugi instead of throw , that will most likely give you a free ultra or very damaging combo , also dont dash too much cause good ryu players usually throw out F+HP from time to time against makoto, this has happened to me , played against a very good ryu player and he was predicting my dashes and intercepting them with F+HP (he still lost though) another thing you can do is try to counter his fireballs with HK Tsurugi , it grants you a free knockdown (which is your objective) You can also dash trough a fireball mid range and just sweep him , they never block it cause they have already buffered another fireball, also if you see a ryu jumping in at you after he sweeped you that means its a safe jump (so however you try to reversal his OS will beat you) so your best bet is to block. I’m out of ideas , maybe someone else can help you out cause I’m very sick and my brain is dead right now

EDIT: You can watch VRyu destroy people on RFD , that’ll give you a general idea about Makoto. Red Fight District (RFD) is a tournament that’s gonna be broadcasted tomorrow , dont know where you are from , but I suggest you watch it if you are thinking on making her. Honestly im sooo hyped for this tournament, so many interesting matches are gonna go down.

like every else (I hope), Ive decided to spend some SERIOUS time practicing the OAR tech. Ive decided for simplicity of muscle memory to concentrate on back throw> cr. rh> rh tsurgi because it is on the list for 99% of all characters and to me its easier then one of the dash versions. it produces a knock down which I think should be a shock to the opponent. currently trying to develop a cross up follow up, maybe cr mp> cr. lp> mk tsurgi? I dont know
Anyways Im i wrong when it seems that a shoto can delay the wake up srk so that it auto corrects and beats the cross up? I recorded the cross up and when I played it back instant srk reversals will wiff but waiting a sec will auto correct. If so I hate shotos! Another thing, it looks like ryu can escape easily with a wake up tatsu, and the ex version will hit poor Makoto. I only tried these for the Crouch Round house cross up so the others may or may not apply. Thoughts?

I dont think you need to be scared of a wake up tatsu. Pretty sure most ryus dont even consider doing that.

True

While I won’t tell you not to practice OAR’s tech, I think the most important thing mid level players such as you and I should be doing is constantly evaluating our fundamentals. OAR’s tech won’t mean anything if we can’t get close enough for a backthrow, defend pressure strings/tick throws, or make a solid read. Although these new xu Tsurugi set-ups ARE the best thing since sliced bread, I still spend more time refining my spacing, footsies and overall match-up knowledge.

But I gotta admit, even in an unrefined form, OAR’s tech will make a great addition to your game. Even if you’re not timing the xu right, reversals sail underneath you or you’re catching your opponent in a backdash. Just be on the lookout for when your opponent starts crouching cuz your Tsurugi will whiff leaving you completely AOL (assed out of luck). Just follow V-ryu’s advice and start using (EX)Oroshi instead of Tsurugi.

BTW, the HK Tsurugi set-up you’re trying to learn is techable. For that reason, I shy away from using HK Tsurugi for the xu. I’d rather have high damage combo potential than the uncertainty of an opponent quick rising. Also, if they happen to block it, you’re fucked because HK tsurugi has high recovery. It was never meant to be used that close to the opponent.

I’ve been tinkering around a little bit lately with FADC after LP and MP Oroshi. Basically, you do a typical string, like c.LP s.LP s.MP > LP Oroshi > FADC > do another string or whatever. If the Oroshi hits, you land the damage plus resetting positioning after the FADC. I haven’t really worked on comboing after the FADC (assuming there’s enough hitstun to even do that), but what’s the overall consensus about this kind of a trick? It likely wouldn’t work more than twice and it’s certainly not something you’d want to do against someone you know who likes to mash DPs.

You’re going to burn 2 bars so you can continue a block string or a throw? Maybe to win the match, but otherwise I recommend against doing that too often. Makoto needs meter for both offense and defense. EX Hayate and EX Oroshi are two important tools for getting that all important KD, while EX-Tsurugi is needed for her corner combo. In my experience, I rarely ever have more than three bars, so burning two for FADC is generally not an attractive choice. If I do FADC, it’s a backdash cancel off of a blocked Hayate. But even then, I’m loathe to give up two bars.

Don’t cancel s.MP into LP Oroshi. It never combos.

s.HP xx MP Oroshi is what you’re thinking of. CH combos into death up close, and lets you maintain pressure with good damage from afar.

its safe most of the time so its gd 4 chip but there are better options.

While I agree with much, if not most, of your response, I do feel its essential to practice the OAR tech. And the reason why is- of the opponents that beat me online, many of them win by spamming cheap or ambiguous stuff and hey if thats all it takes to win 40-50% of your matches then I’ll take it : )

Sooo my second question is- theoretically is it even possible to practice the cross ups against the cpu? I mean, even if you time it perfectly the computer will still block (or get hit, but not because it crossed him up)??

If you want to test if your xu is working, there’s a couple ways of doing it. First, you can record the dummy to walk backward. If you do the xu right, the dummy eats the Tsurugi. If you want to test the xu against reversals, then you need to have Makoto as the training dummy. Record your set-up and play it back. If you can hit Mak out of the Tsurugi, obviously you’re doing it wrong.

this takes so much time … the thing with the dummy … I would much rather preffer having a friend helping , but guess how many ssf4 players exist in bulgaria … I bet you guys dont even know how the flag looks like haha