S4 Gief is love.
Instead of picking fraud, weakling Abigail, you should go with Gief instead Akhos.
That st mp. 
Yeah well you didn’t bother to critique the last set of replays I put up so 
And @GetTheTables put the popcorn down get off your ass and fight me
Hey man I’ve just been sittin’ here watching replays. I’m ready for fisticuffs whenever.
Well you didn’t @ me at 6:15 so I thought your buddy showed up
Getting on the game now
Damn man its been so long I forgot the one combo I knew.
I pre-emptively blame all my losses on being iced.
Abi Abi Abi
Zekus move where he does the kick and it reaches almost full screen, isn’t that kinda an invisible fireball??
Gimme new ones I’ll look over the next batch
All of the best Zekus (including Daigo) make really good use of Y.Zeku s.HP. It’s easily the best button he has. Is it Urien s.HP levels of set and forget? Not really, but it’s a very easy to confirm button which makes the minus 8 irrelevant and the minus 3 at max range is also basically irrelevant
At this spacing there’s nothing Ken can really do about that. If he sticks out a button that’s too short he’ll get block trap whiff punished and any other button will be too slow and get counter poked or blocked down.
Daigo’s use of s.HP is pretty much the only thing I’m actually impressed with about his Zeku. Not that other top Zekus aren’t good with it, but it shows that Daigo will take it Bruce Lee levels. Practice one s.HP 1,000 times. His reactions are too good so he’ll almost never accidentally throw out the second hit on block. If he lands it on hit confirm second hit into run slide get your oki.
Zeku’s s.HK and s.LK are also safe and solid in neutral and buy time until he gets in. Daigo is papercut kill player so he’s going to still play this slow papercut Zeku when he really should just be walking in and frame trapping with s.MP and c.MP, but at least he gives Y.Zeku his own slow style.
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The first st hp in that image ken can react with st mp or cr mk, for the second i’m sure ken’s forward mk will reach or his st hk, If ryu’s in the same predicament st mk or st hk are good counterpokes. Young zeku’s st hp is great as in it’s one of those heavy buttons that doesnt whiff on crouchers and it can be confirmed however its range isnt anything great.
Gold is legit hard for me. I play and beat players that are in discord or players that are in discord in diamond. I can anticipate what a smart or experienced player will do. Everyone in the AU discord plays footsies.
But then I step back into casual and I get the kens that do fullscreen hk tatsu that is hard as shit to AA without a dp or invulnerable special. I get the Akumas that jumpin with nothing but airfireballs and normal jumps, that do pokestrings and then walk back or backdash looking for the AA. The special move wizards that don’t know their characters have normals.
Most of these people are easy enough to beat, but I have to play against them for awhile to understand their autopilot/flowchart. I’m not usually able to adjust to them in less than a round or even 2 games.
GOOD players I can adjust to in a span of 5 seconds. I see the strategy, I understand the mindgame and the context. Bad players I just don’t get till it’s too late and I rarely get enough games against them to read their style.
But playing in discord and playing the few special move heroes in there, I’m finally learning to beat these dudes consistently. I haven’t played rank at all because I don’t want to move on till I can beat these dudes with my eyes closed. I don’t care if I can make it to plat or diamond with a grind. If I’m thinking of ever entering a local or then some I have to be able to easily assess and take out the lowest common denominator. Until I can do that I can’t take the game serious and I wouldn’t want to just avoid them, because traditionally I’ve been bad against bad players. It’s something I decided I need to get worked out for sf5. But sf5 is bad and the will to work is barely there, but as I continue to play the game it grows on me and the willingness to do work is more forthcoming.
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Btw St hk is great against 4 framers up close but from mid range its an unnecessary commitment because of the risks.
St hp is great but 25 frames recovery can leave you open to a jumpin.
The move itself should be easy to confirm from.
St lk on the other hand is utilized more as a poke to keep players in check and to link into ex run.
Walking/dashing in and st mp, cr mp against most of the cast is where y zeku’s neutral sucks. That’s hazardous and will get you blown up. Young zeku is all about walking right outside the max range of the opponent and making a commitment with st hp and sweep.
Yeh, nah.
I tried bro, I was purposely stuck in silver/gold for the majority of the game’s lifespan with the same mindset.
It doesn’t work, you’ll never reach that point. The game simply doesn’t allow it.
And judging by your ethic, you won’t allow yourself to move on until you’ve reached that point.
Gold/Platinum is hell, and they will kick your ass until this game is dead and gone.
There really is no mastery to that rank and those kind of players unless you want to play each and every one of them in a first to 20.
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Zeku has the walk speed to generally make the s.HP effective at ranges that it wouldn’t be standing still so range isn’t really an issue for it. Especially against shoto/short footsie characters. As you can see Zeku has some pushback after it is blocked which is designed on purpose to space him for whiff punishes and counter pokes.
With the “punishes” you mentioned, neither Ryu’s s.HK or s.MK reach after spaced blocked s.HP. He’s getting whiff punished if he tries either of those. You can either try to react to the whiff or just press it and confirm the counter hit.
With Ken s.MP still whiffs. That button makes Zeku’s s.HP look long. s.MK would “hit” but it would just get blocked and then he’s minus 2 so it’s just a stalemate scenario waiting for the next button. Daigo can easily adjust his spacing to make to s.MK whiff as well. There’s no benefit to him throwing out s.MK other than also being minus 2 while moving himself towards Zeku which means he puts himself at minus 2 within range of getting frame trapped.
You have to play a bit fearless with Y.Zeku overall because he does have the movement to play that way and you only need one s.MP or c.MP to get going. You can be scared that someone will jump over your s.HP, but then Juris would always be too afraid to store and Akumas would always be too afraid to throw fireball. You have to condition people in this game and once you’re within range of something like Y.Zeku’s s.HP you’ll be able to force contact before they can jump any way.
If all else fails once Zeku gets VT1 it’s slide trigger time.
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But it’s really situational as in it does happen only after the slight pushback from absolute max range, and from there neither zeku or ken can do anything. Those situations happen a lot even with characters with stubby normals.
Also from that range you could throw a fireball anyway.
The “max range” isn’t really that hard to set up and you only really need to set it up vs like Ken’s s.MK. All of the other buttons are easy spaced whiff punishes after the block inside of max range due to pushback. If Ken chooses to do nothing then you get to walk in further or fish for another s.HP. The next move is basically win win for Zeku after the blocked s.HP. If they do nothing you get advantage and if they press something (which most top players wont cuz they know Daigo will counter/whiff punish) then you gain more control.
Fireball is insanely slow to attempt to throw after blocked s.HP and not worth the risk/reward at all. If you make the read that he’s going to throw something as slow as fireball you can just make the read and counter poke with c.MP into combo.
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Most of the cast have a move that allows them to steal their turn back after the opponent misjudges the reach of their normal. Even sakura can do st hk after pushback into st lk to catch the extended hurtbox of the whiffed opponents normal. It’s nothing special tbh. Also i wouldnt suggest whiffing the st hp yourself after hitting it first time expecting a reaction from opp. Because you can also get whiff punished.
I’m talking about the st hp reach as a standalone normal. Is it anything special in terms of range? no it gets outranged by plenty of fierce or roundhouse buttons such as ken’s st hk or ryu’s sthk, or old zeku’s very own crmp or st hk. It’s great because you can confirm it that’s it.
Ken is a personification of chaos. I’ll always eat an ex dp after his tatsus, even if it’s -8
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2 takeaways
1- The body proportions of characters are ideal.
2- Bring Oro back ffs.
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That’s how SFV works. The top characters aren’t necessarily the ones that have long buttons, they’re the ones that have short, low recovery buttons with decent walk speed or some type of dash to coerce the space needed to make it effective. Zeku’s walk speed with s.HP makes that very much possible. Like a slightly lower tier version of what makes Akuma’s s.MK so good. Zeku s.HP is not as good to whiff, but with Daigo’s reactions and Y.Zeku’s walkspeed that’s not going to happen much. That level of footsies you’re only going to place it in spaces that make contact. He’s going to be that precise.
I was just explaining that if you’re a lower tier/lower reaction player. A player far less than Daigo’s level will have the reactions any way, but Daigo especially will have the reactions.
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The short, low recovery normal with great hitbox describes cr mp and not so much st hp.
Walking back and forward looking for a clean opening with a 12 frame start up normal with 25 recovery frames normal isnt the best idea. I mean if the opponent is a sitting duck afraid to go offense themselves or low profile you, then sure.