Kara Canceling

I’ve seen a tutorial video on youtube for ken’s throws and shoryukens but

You cancel a move into another move. Similar to doing Ryu’s cr.forward xx fireball, but you do it much faster.

Watch a video tutorial on it, that shows the player’s hands. You’re basically pressing f+mk, and then throw a millisecond right afterwards. This makes it so that Ken steps forward to do his step kick, but then you cancel it immediately into a throw, effectively extending his throw range by a LOT.

[LEFT]A Kara Throw is when you cancel the animation of a move to throw.[/LEFT]
[LEFT]some people say kara = nothing/empty.[/LEFT]
[LEFT] [/LEFT]
[LEFT]like ken’s step kick.[/LEFT]
[LEFT]when ken step kicks, he moves forward, and he has a lot of startup.[/LEFT]
[LEFT]if you press throw right after you press F+MK, you’ll cancel the startup animations, and increase your throw’s range.[/LEFT]
[LEFT]ken’s kara shory is a little harder.[/LEFT]
[LEFT] [/LEFT]
[LEFT] you could also see this easier by doing sagat’s kara uppercut, knee, fireball, etc.[/LEFT]
[LEFT]sagat has 2 moves that can be kara-cancelled. F+LK and F+HK.[/LEFT]

my details may be wrong here and there, but thats sorta the gist of it

I recently fulled off Ken’s kara throw mid-heated match in the arcades. I tried it out of curiousity of it’s timing and hearing that it’s vitals to Ken’s game (Not my main but his f+MK is too great). After eating some combos trying it off and getting the full f+MK, I was able to pull it off at least 80% times thereafter.

I stopped playing primarily for Tekken 6 (trying out something new), but when I stopped I was really proficient with. Some training and you’re all set. I just had hard times finding setups for the kara-throw, so it was good for the extra range off whiffed moves.

Anyway, f+MK comes first of course – then immediately throw. You can still hold forward so it’s just your right hand doing the work. If you’re familiar with Tekken notation, consider it like a MK~LK+LP, some ‘just frame’ shit. When I see my chance for it, I hold my hand a little differently in preparation. I hit MK with my right ring finger, leaving my index and middle open to slam down right after. It’s like a more advanced plink I’d say.

You’ll know by training your eye to see the f+MK come out directly into throw. The projection of the f+MK increases the throw range by a small margin making his game deadly. Hopefully you’re still reading after all that, that’s just my experience with it.

Hope it works!

The reason why it works is that the game has slight leniency for the player. It doesn’t expect the player to hit lp+lk at EXACTLY the same time for a throw, or mp+mk at EXACTLY the same time for a focus, or hp+hk at EXACTLY the same time for a taunt. So it gives the player a tiny bit of leniency to be able to hit the buttons slightly apart.

Some moves cause the character to move forward a drastic amount on the very first frame of the move. If you take the game’s leniency, this means you can turn that initial forward momentum from f+mk into extra range for a throw. It’s a similar concept to whiff-canceling, except it’s much more strict in timing.