I’m a little surprised that this discussion has gone on for this long and no one has made a mention of Maki’s roll. Yes, it’s a tick shorter than everyone else’s, but rolls make for great 720 buffers. The natural reaction to a roll is to either throw if it’s a close roll or stick out jabs and shorts if it’s a far one. With a shorter (quicker) roll, Maki can get the throw distance a bit messed up, and get a free super.
A another nice property of the her air throw is that a hand gets stuck out, and to someone not familiar with it, this can look like an attempt an attack. People with counters/super counters (Hibiki, Yamazaki, Todo) might try them, or someone using S-Groove might dodge, and then when you land you have a fool staring right at you, waiting for a throw or big money super. You can also go straight to a crouch block or throw when you land, that is, like you did an empty jump. This is a property that people with regular air throws don’t have, and it’s nice to know.
A nice move to start a match is to immediately into a running slide (qcf+K->MK), but if someone anticipates this, you’re screwed. A better move would be to go immediately into a backwards run, then immediately back into a forwards run, then slide. The backwards run might bait a fireball character into throwing one out (expecting you to jump back into it), but by the time you come back and slide, you’ll be right underneath it and nail him. If they use ground projectilies, then you’ll obviously want to jump instead of slide.
That down+MP in the air command move is pretty damn handy from going from a cross-up depth jump to a regular jump. If you’ve got someone blocking for their lives, a cross-up jump in will have them blocking the wrong way if you plop down on top of them with d+strong in the air. It makes for great uppercut bait when used in small jumps, too.
The nice thing about Maki’s supers is that the kick and punch ones might hit your opponent even if they block them. The last hit of the kick super is an overhead (hits crouch blockers), and the last hit of the punch super starts low (hits high blockers). I’ve found it’s about 50/50 for either of these to land (even aginst the same character), and confuses your opponent as to which way they should block, against which super and which normal moves, as is the way of Maki.
Finally, a nice thing about the kick super is that you control when it comes out. If you’re way ahead in a fight, or you’re almost out of K-Groove Rage and are dead in a round anyway, you might want to try to just let the kick super out without comboing it. Your opponent will stand and block, ready to take chip damage. Instead of just immediately hitting a kick again, hesitate a moment. The other guy will think that the super is a bust, and try for an attack or throw. If you can time it just right (and have a bit of luck), hitting kick and releasing the super at the right time will give the other guy a face full of Maki’s boot. If you wait too long or get hit with some other quick move, you would have probably lost the round anyway (with no K meter, especially), if he blocks it, you might get a free hit on the overhead, and if you land it, you can laugh at the guy you just gave 60%+ damage in one shot. This is actually not all that out of the question to do, as I’ve done it enough times for it to be useful.
lolz