Sup Lion King
Disclaer: This is all just from a gold bisons perception based on literally dozens of first to 5 sets against a buddy of mine who mained a plat cammy in s1.
So no idea about top of the foodchain gameplay.
I honest to god believe this may be a favourable match. At least slightly favourable (5.5-4.5 if you want)
His ground fireball feeds our vskill (and the store is super useful).
His air approach his hampered as well since vskill absorbs his dive and fireball with almost the same timing (he stays in air for a while, so after getting used to that, you can work around it, even with it).
The biggest weakness is akumas poor neutral, you can EASILY stack tons of grey life on him, especially since all his really good buttons are mediums and heavies, which can easily be v-reversal’d for guaranteed grey damage.
On wakeup, thanks to the dp nerf, he’s a sitting duck, he can easily be meatied and teleport is chaseable on reaction.
CC combos kill him very fast obviously, so akumas have very little margin of error against bison.
350-400 damage per CC combo means bullying in neutral with stacking grey life and 1 CC is almost always enough.
(Yesterday I managed to deal like ~300+ dmg for landing a st.mk)
having a stored vskill is always good for even more damaging combos OR blasting through shakunetsu fireballs for two hits and absorbing the last one (especially satisfying).
By the time we reach trigger (if we dont vrev more than once) one combo should seal the deal.
On a divekick/ demon flip heavy akuma you can also j.mp TC him easily into blast/inferno/ knees
All in all: forcefully staying between st.hp and axe range changed my perception of the matchup.
I dont think its a favorable MU, but here are my discoveries:
-Its very hard to AA Akuma. They will try to mixup the jumps, the problem comes with the fireball, and with v-trigger is worse, I spend almost all the bars in ex-stomp because it has proy. invincibility until it hits.
-A lot of them use the next block sequence: c.mp, mk+hadoken. This string is punishable with c.mp. If the string starts with c.hp is not punishable.
-You can punish a blocked lk tatsu with s.hk.
Because they can mixup the jumps I feel air to air TC is an option to try and rely on more.
Easily one of my best MUs right now. The guy just goes down quickly. And people still have to get used to him, it seems.
The char has low health, Bison has an easy time punishing teleport and there’s also the mind game with AA cr HP or VS/EX Stomp.
What’s a good way of closing in on an ultra defensive Akuma? He has amazing AA options, so jumping in on him is out of the window most of the time. I get jab > combo’d when I dash in and I’m forced to play a turtle game, which I hate and suck at. What is my most suitable footsie range and best footsie options against the bastard?
Akuma players like to buffer sMK, you should try to bait him into throwing it out and then use Shadow Axe to whiff punish. You can also annoy him with a few sHP pokes here and there and be careful, he’s gonna jump at you when you do that. Be ready to Hell Attack, or better yet, use my new favourite anti-Akuma move, EX Inferno AA. 
Also, play the lame game if he does it. absorb his fireballs to fill your v gauge. When you have v-trigger, sHP xx HP Inferno xx VTC can be your way in.
Another trick you can try is to empty jump from a range where you’d normally do a max range jHK. If they get trigger happy with the b+HP or parry AA, you can blow them up with a sHP whiff punish.
Thank you! That helps a lot. I’ll implement these into my play style and post the results here.
Man that particular Akuma keeps neutral and back jumping HK into 50/50. What are my ways of beating this? D.HP misses and O can’t think of anything else to throw out. I can back jump Hell Attack when the mixup starts and land one hit if Akuma does the move where he lands on you with his fist (is there a better alternative than this?), but I want to dissuade him from neutral or back jumping in the first place. I’ll upload a video of some of our matches and have my video analyzed. Is that possible?
Hell attack and EX Inferno beat neutral jumps from not too far, but sometimes I also manage to hit with HK Scissors people that neutral jump from afar. You gotta time it so you hit them when they’re close to the ground. I think it works because people don’t seem to press buttons on their neutral jump if they don’t see you dash or slide into it. Or if you hit them when they’re close enough to the ground their limb is retracting for landing.
Post a video I’ll check it out.
Hey, guess what, doing back jump > Hell Attack out of his 50/50 game myself actually made him complete his combos instead (rather than going for resets). And my own footsie game got better, since I stopped neglecting it and attacking him head-on with unsafe stuff. Doing LK SK from the maximum distance possible and oscillating between it and standing MK (I realized he would start n. or b.jumping at this point whether he got hit or not, so I added in df.HP to stop him from jumping) made my life against the demon a lot better. I also realized I didn’t try to throw him at all and that was because he would c.LP, c.LP > Tatsu me for dashing in and attempting a throw. He also managed to DP me out of almost all throw attempts with random DPs. That was what turned my gameplay upside down, since throws were a big part of it. But then I realized that when I stopped throwing him, he would warp all around the screen. At first, it was hard for me to react fast enough with a slide to catch him, but I eventually got the hang of it. Next thing, he would actually warp in the corner, making my slide go the wrong way. I learned to throw him out of that as well.
That was all I could study from my videos. Combined with your pointers, dear @LoupGris , I was able to beat him consistently. So, thank you so much!
I won most of our last lobby matches today (I beat him in a FT3 with 3 wins against his 2), but I still have a long ways to go. So, I’ll definitely put up a video here ASAP to have it analyzed.
Also, what’s the best punish combo for his blocked CA? He keeps mashing it when I’m close to getting the round.
The pushback on this CA is immense it doesn’t look easy to punish. But it is -30 on block. You should be able to dash forward then do Shadow Axe xx VTC, sHP xx HK Scissors then either EX Blast, Psycho Axe or EX Inferno xx EX Headstomp.
If you don’t have V-Trigger you can probably sMP, crMP xx MP Inferno.
master the art of cr.lp aa
believe me i hate jab aa but theres too much swag the way bison does it.
OK, here’s a video where I actually won. But you can see at 1:40 that I get bodied by a neutral jump due to my misplaced/untimely SK. Thing is, I either use SK or forward dash to get in, because jumping almost always gets me in a bad situation. He didn’t overuse neutral jump in this one particular video, but believe me, it’s overkill once he gets successful with it. What’s the timind on c.LP? And what’s your advice based just on this video @LoupGris ?
Man I think you played well. You can’t beat yourself up over that single bad SK. People have been baiting the scissors with neutral jump since forever. That’s something you gotta notice in your opponent’s habits. In this particular situation a heavy blast would’ve clipped him on his way down but you would have eaten a full combo if he’d jumped forward so you gotta commit. That said you would not have lost anything by just hanging back and waiting for him to do something. You were at a good spacing for that.
One thing I noticed is that you did a couple of pre-emptive Hell Attack that got you in trouble. I think you should react with Hell Attack but not do it pre-emptively like that. In fact, Akuma players that like to jump a lot get shut down hardcore by EX Inferno. It covers regular jumps and air fireballs.
Another thing is that crLP beats EX demon palm. I don’t know why it works but when Akuma loses one meter to try and get in and gets hit with this puny crLP, the feeling is delicious. And you have a meaty sHK after or a DP bait. You should try it in training mode to get the timing right. If he does divekick instead you have time to block and if he throws it whiffs because you are crouching.
The timing for crLP AA is hard to explain you gotta test it yourself. You kinda have to hit “just under” the opponent’s body. In some matchups you can’t use it though. Against Akuma it does work even against some crossup attempts that aren’t deep or meaty.
The pre-emptive Hell Attacks were a result of the Akuma player getting me conditioned for air attacks. That’s how much he loves to jump. But I’ve taken note of all your pointers and hope to put them to good use. Thanks, man!
Sorry for the double post, but man, did c.LP save my life against Akuma! I completely dominated our last matches thanks to that little miracle! I forced him to change his play style and he didn’t know what to do with his new one. 
Playing against another Diamond Akuma and training in secret also helped. Man, I feel so relieved. Thanks for the help, guys!