Chun li has excellent fundamentals. Probably some of the best in the game. However, I would have to disagree with her being an unfavorable match up against R.Mika.
The reason I believe people have been struggling fighting her in general is simply that to fight Chun Li you must:
- know your reactions
R.Mika’s buttons are not great in terms of start up time or active frames, but she does have some great tools that can help you get around a novice Chun Li player. As a novice yourself, the key is to block her cross ups. It is easy to chain damage from them and requires ‘easy’ inputs from the Chun Li player (well relative to Chun Li’s other stuff.) I know this may come off as condescending but I cannot tell you how many times I’ve had to force myself to just block her damn cross up and ‘do nothing while Chun Li does a lot of leg work’. If you don’t you’ll get blown up by Chun Li. Her rushdown is too strong for R.Mika to fight aggressively.
Use Wingless to condition Chun Li to fear it enough so that she spends a lot more air time doing things that would punish it. It can stop things like her V-Skill if timed right. You can’t beat Chun Li in the air but R. Mika does have decent anti air options (standing medium kick, wingless, peach, cr. medium punch.)
You will do most of your damage by reacting to things she does. A lot of what Chun Li can do is safe on block but you have a few things in your favor here. R. Mika’s decent anti air options, jab confirms (punishing whatever she uses that is /not/ safe on block. Read up on her frame data.), and your higher throw range (she will try to throw you or shimmy if you let her get too close and stay defensive, but since your throw range is longer you can use that knowledge to your advantage.) These give you the defensive edge needed to level the playing field.
- play R.Mika in a non-standard way
So you got your defensive game up to snuff, but how the hell do you damage her? The biggest problem I have seen so far is that standard R.Mika likes to play footsies and use mid-range pokes. But who else do we know likes to do this? The queen of fighting Chun Li. Both of you share a niche in this sense, and more importantly you both are pretty versatile characters. So how do you get in on her given her pokes and footsies are better? Be slippery. R. Mika has a ton of weird tricks.
Dive bomb, for example, while not safe allows you to punish a lightning legs if you jump over her. Drop Kick and Shoulder Roll on the other hand allow you to hit her safely from a range, getting Mika away from the zones where Chun Li’s Hakkei can out poke her jab confirms.
Another non-standard thing you need to focus on is using meaty moves to your advantage. Without meter, Chun Li has poor wake ups, almost all of which can be beaten by command throws and Lady Mika. Therefore part of your goal is to try and bait out her ex meter. She builds this quickly, however, so your windows and timing will be narrow. But if you focus on baiting out her ex legs and ex spinning bird, you can start going on the offensive more safely. A meaty command throw and Lady Mika can be interchanged to force Chun Li to lose on wake up nearly every single time if she she does not have meter.
Chun Li is forced to play fairly predictably as a general thing. Because of this, R.Mika’s toolbox becomes a lot more subtly destructive to Chun Li, since R.Mika has a lot of different ways to get the same result. For example, ex Peach and Ex Wingless are great for escaping, yet have very different vectors for doing so. This makes it harder for Chun Li to keep her in a corner. Combine that with Rainbow Typhoon and the option set becomes even more of a headache.
I realize a lot of what I said is fairly basic stuff, but Chun Li is a character that forces you to know your fundamentals and know them well and yet play in a way that isn’t really standard to how R.Mika fights. But like most opponents that face R.Mika her strength is that she can adapt due to her wide toolset.
or you’ll eat whatever combo they can muster.