The General Gameplan

What your Opponent Can Do

Anji's unique mechanic/ability is auto-guard and a bunch of extra command normals. Having auto-guard windows on normals is far stronger than it initially sounds if you've never dealt with anything like this before. It's easier to recognize why Zato's ability to attack in tandem with Little Eddie is strong, or why Jam having a parry is useful, but maybe you've never dealt with auto-guard beyond Baiken's terminator run. Let me give you some examples.

Normally you have multiple options to try to deal with an opponent's attack:

Stuff the startup with a faster or already active move.
Beat the hitbox directly.
Whiff punish the recovery.

But Anji's auto-guard removes some of these options. Your attack may have been able to beat the hitbox by reaching past it to the hurtbox with something more disjointed, but he was auto-guarding that kind of attack and you failed. Or you tried to stuff his move with something faster, but he was auto-guarding that move at that time. Or you said "I know you're going to push a button here, so screw it, VV!" But then he was blocking, and somehow canceled into something to punish? So your play-space to challenge him is reduced by some of his options, but he still has all of the different ways to challenge your attacks. While he only has a handful of moves with auto-guard windows and they have their own weaknesses, being unprepared and over-confident will lead to your demise.

Moreover, his toolkit includes Fuujin, which is a horizontal DP that cancels into follow-ups, making it a little nonstandard to try to punish, especially since the follow-ups are each designed to be good at dealing with different defensive & escape options. He also has a projectile that bounces into the air and drops on you after it's blocked that sets up his oki and supplements his pressure well, with a force-break version that hits overhead when it drops on you, allowing him to run unblockables if he gets the right knockdowns.

Anji can be played totally ignorantly and derp his way to success if you're not running counterplays against "Fuujin spam" and baiting wakeup buttons that "just win anyway", but also has all of the tools he needs to play a very dominant and calculating cerebral game.
"The state of minds vary according to the angle under which one examines them." - Ancient Anji-player proverb

Move Interactions

Buttons

5P:
2P:
6P:
5K:
2K:
6K:
c.S:
f.S:
2S:
5H:
2H:
6H:
5D:
2D:

j.P:
j.K:
j.S:
j.H:
j.D:

Special Moves

Spacing & Advantage (By Screen Position)

Up Close

Round Start Range

Long Range

Full Screen

Pressure

Oki

Escaping Pressure

Escaping Oki

Anji is going to shoot a butterfly at you, and after you block it the games begin. There is a gap between the butterfly floating into you and then dropping on you from above, which is 2 hits.

Weaker Anji players will not enforce respect in this gap and will just try to run a mixup. If you hit Anji the butterfly goes away and you "steal a turn" so to speak.
Anji has more than one way to enforce respect here, but his go-to options are 5P, which is pretty fast and disjointed and +3 on block, or 2K which is a low and only has 6f recovery (if baiting wakeup super).

Special/Notable Confirms

Advanced Gameplan

Your Opponent's Gameplan (Breakdown by Klaige)

General Assessment

Like all matchups you want to assess areas of weakness on both sides. Anji's most notable weaknesses are strong lows, challenges to butterfly okizeme, and air superiority. In this matchup I-no has some solid lows, but falls short in challenging butterfly Oki or establishing air superiority. Thus we now look to our strengths and the potential weaknesses of I-no. I-no's biggest weaknesses from my perspective are her noted deadzone at midrange aside from using HCL, her lack of fast far reaching pokes to contest pressure like butterfly oki, and dealing with anyone who can reliably contest or force major concessions in her note oki. With these ideas established I move on to how I want to approach a matchup in terms of the basis of my overall gameplan.

General Gameplan for Anji in using his best tools:

For Anji the first thing to usually look at is “How viable is Fuujin”. If a character cannot easily contest Fuujin or has to take great risks to do so that becomes the base of both the neutral and offensive pressure gameplan.
- In this case I-no has some good tools to snuff Fuujin in 2S, Stroke, and 2D. However the best answer (stroke) comes with the risk of being easily counterhit by Anji's 2S, which leads to a full combo. This means that if we can snuff out stroke a few times I-No is going to become much more hesitant to throw it out as an anti-Fuujin option. Once this happens Neutral becomes heavily favored towards Anji as HS Fuujin is now a consistent threat.
Further highlighting risk/reward, this starts to favor Anji heavily as I-no is not only lightweight, but has a wide falling hitbox which allows Anji to hit his most efficient combos for minimal meter usage. While Anji cannot keep pace in a raw damage race, his opportunities for his biggest confirms come more frequently once Fuujin is safely established.
Alongside Fuujin, the next most important thing to establish is how strong Butterfly okizeme and pressure is in the matchup. In this matchup I-no has almost no ways to contest butterfly on oki without committing to 50% meter for reversal super or using a DAA. Her normals are too slow or lack reach to contest small gaps, and her backdash while traveling far is not overly fast, and thus anytime she is under 50% meter Anji can run his entire gambit on mixup.
Even when I-No has 50% meter there are plenty of options to bait both Super and DAA, Gatling into Fuujin or 6P can stuff DAA, and while Super is almost impossible to punish if blocked, planning a Fuujin, or going over the top with a K stomp or super jump J.D into falling normal allow for consistent pressure and will make I-no feel uneasy about committing the meter
This also means that since I-no's counterpoke and escape options are fairly limited Anji can utilize heavy frame traps or longer pressure strings to crank the risc guage. Once I-no has even modestly raised risc she is in real danger of eating obscene damage (often 250+) into another knockdown.
FB Butterfly is extremely viable in this matchup. I-no's wakeup timing fits well, she has a deceptively wide hitbox, and without meter her options to contest are sub-par. When Anji has 50% to combo an unblockable into FB Rin or is near the corner to take advantage of the big corner combo knockdown options he has against I-No this is particularly alluring option to take.
Even forcing a burst out of a FB butterfly setup is a net gain for Anji. 25% meter to take away one of I-no's prime escapes from pressure is huge especially considering that Anji is one of the easier to burst characters in the game when doing optimal combos.
In general a knockdown should only be sacrificed against I-no for obscene added damage or a combo that will finish the round, she has to hold butterfly mixup in most ideal situation and even some less than perfect spaced ones, and when I-no is blocking, she is not putting you in her own mix, so seek these knockdowns accordingly.

Neutral Gameplan:

Normals, counter-pokes, and challenge options:

Now that we've established both Fuujin and Butterfly are potent options in the matchup we can start looking to more neutral centric options in the form of pokes and movement. The usual solid pokes fron Anji (5P, 6S, 5S, 2S, 6P, 3K, 6K) all have their uses and can lead to strong rewards especially on counterhit. I'll highlight specific ones in the situations where they shine.
- 5P hits I-no standing and as always is a solid anti-air and anti airdash poke. Reward on CH is bonkers for the minimal risk and since 5P is a level 3 move and very + on block it should not be ignored as a safe check option against a dash happy I-no.
- 6P is especially good in this matchup as it can blow through HCL for a counterhit when properly timed. As always this is an execellent anti-air dash poke and can easily deter I-no from hover dashing in without first covering with a note for safety.
- 2S as highlighted in the Fuujin section is an excellent poke to stuff any use of stroke to get in. It reaches far, hits low, and on CH leads into 5H xx HS Fuujin for full confirms.
- 6K is incredibly important in this matchup for contesting hover dashes, notes, and especially dives. This is Anji's best autoguard normal and autoguard can do heavy work in this matchup. Blatant dives should be swatted with 6K and 6S as often as possible to try and shut it down as a go to option for getting.
- In general Anji outranges I-no heavily aside from use of HCL and note zoning. Both HS Fuujin and 6P can punish attempted HCL in neutral for a big payout. The optimal space to be in this matchup is right around max 6P range as this is a notable deadzone for I-no and she will have to resort to trying to counterpoke with things like Far S or stroke, both of which we have answers for if Anji doesn't commit too harshly or overextend his pressure.

Movement options:

Movement in this matchup also favors Anji in most situations.

Anji's superjump along with J.D provide plenty of air mobility and options against a character who has to use pretty heavily committed buttons like 6P to anti-air, or have to resort to stumpy anti-airs like 5P.
Threats of HS Fuujin, autoguard normals, super jump, and strong air normals allow Anji to move forward into his ideal range with relative ease overall.
- I-no often has to commit harder than Anji to get to her ideal position of scoring a knockdown. HCL, dives, and stroke all can be rewarding with a confirmed hit, but are challenged by Anji's ability to HS Fuujin or look for strong counter-pokes or autoguard, all of which carry fairly minimal risk as long as they do not wiff (and even HS Fuujin on wiff allows for wiff followup scramble situations, which can often be beneficial to Anji).
Both of these characters have good mobility options and can definitely chase each other down, however Anji gets to do so with overall better risk/reward since without utilizing air dives I-no's general mobility becomes much more linear and thus more viable to counter with a well placed poke or autoguard.

Defensive Gameplan

On the defense side is where Anji truly tips this matchup in his favor in my opinion, this all revolves around 2 specific options: HS Fuujin, and FB Kou (autoguard counter)

As a foreward I strongly suggest bursting early if I-no gains offensive advantage. Even though Anji has potent ways to contest note oki, I always advocate bursting early against strong mixup characters to maximize opportunities for multiple bursts if needed. I-no absolutely qualifies in this category.
Reversal HS Fuujin is always a threat and thus I-no is put at great risk if she attempts any note oki that isn't extremely meaty and spaced well enough that she can challenge a reversal Fuujin with a poke or option of her own. Any hoverdash behind a note that is bypassed by Fuujin puts I-no at very high risk of being smacked out of her dash.
Once Anji has 25% note oki becomes essentially off the table. As long as the Anji player can reliably wakeup 6K the note (which can be tricky but extremely consistent with even modest practice) I-no now must abandon any attempted mixup as FB Kou is a free escape for Anji, and a knockdown if I-no is caught up in the counter animation.
Because of this anytime Anji is at 25% meter I-no has to forfeit her best offensive position as she has absolutely no way to punish or call out FB Kou since it is invulnerable to strikes for so long and recovers so quickly. This puts I-no in the precarious situation of having to adapt mixups that revolve around empty hoverdash into meaty lows to try and snuff 6K or reversal Fuujin attempts, this is a huge win for Anji overall as meter is plentiful in +R and thus by being judicious in not over using it for combos or pressure, Anji can effectively negate I-no's strongest position in the matchup.
If I-no starts commiting to more bland oki like meaty lows or meaty far S Anji gains even more options to contest or escape such as wakeup backdash, wakeup 3S to autoguard a low, or simply blocking and FD-ing to create a little space, as without a note atop him I-no's pressure and mixups become much more manageable overall.
In non oki situations, re-dashes or gaps from I-no are very succeptable to being interrupted with auto-guard so she cannot play carelessly even when offensive advantage has been established.
Strong I-no players will try to adapt to this by adding in more tick throws or empty dash throws to maintain pressure and score damage. Watching for this and challenging with backdashes or 3K due to it's throw invulnerability are always viable options, and if you're forcing I-no to look for throws instead of a high/low mixup that's already a big tipping of the scales to your favor.

Overall Analysis and thoughts:

In general this isn't a horribly lob-sided matchup. I would put it as a 6-4 or 5.5-4.5 in Anji's favor, I lean more towards 6-4 for the fact that Anji can be so disruptive to I-no's best oki situations, while I-no struggles to be disruptive to Anji's. All that said this is one of those matchups where it's going to feel a lot smoother for Anji than it is for I-no despite being closely contested.

Anji's ability to shut down note oki with 25% meter, the threat of HS Fuujin blowing through zoning or pokes, and general risk/reward can all be extremely frustrating for I-no and force her to take risks that in the long term do not pay out nearly at the level or consistency that Anji can grasp in this matchup.
Neutral must still be navigated carefully for both characters. Anji's who recklessly HS Fuujin as their main tool in neutral will find themselves being counter-poked or even hit with CH Stroke for serious damage. As long as Anji uses the threat of HS Fuujin to compliment his other neutral options he will find it much easier to gain offensive advantage in most situations than I-no will.
The threat of HS Fuujin forces I-no to be more diligent in neutral and not recklessly zone with notes or HCL as getting CH leads to full confirms and a knockdown for Anji. Once Anji has a knockdown I-no is in a very difficult position as without 50% she must rely on risky options such as slashback to truly challenge butterfly oki.
On the flip side, I-no scoring a knockdown is usually a huge reward for her and allows her to start some of the most oppressive offense in all of Guilty Gear.
- However Anji's FB Kou negates a vast majority of her best note Oki and forces I-no to take much less air tight or rewarding routes to establish consistent oki. This is probably the single most favorable aspect of the whole matchup for Anji. I-no must respect Anji's oki. Anji can disrespect I-no's without any meter and can often times completely negate it for 25%
I-no stays competitive in this matchup by having massive rewards off any CH. If she calls out a Fuujin or baits an auto-guard her reward and damage payouts will almost always outpace Anji's.
For I-no to succeed in this matchup she must maximize every confirm, and be willing to adapt to unorthodox mixups to work around auto-guard and HS Fuujin. Looking for more tick-throw or empty dash throws will be a key component to I-no establishing any foothold on offense. Always remember, HS Fuujin can be thrown and it has long startup.

Final Thoughts:

The general way to look at this matchup is that Anji can play his usual game almost to the T outside of not being overly reliant on HS Fuujin and more using the threat of it's existence in neutral to force I-no to take concessions. I-no however must work around HS Fuujin, respect autoguard and FB Kou, and will struggle to escape butterfly pressure without strong defense and careful meter usage. I-no will have to make more adjustments than Anji by a wide margin and thus while learning this matchup it will feel extremely frustrating at times. It is by no means unwinnable as I-no has plenty of tools to succeed, she will just have to play outside her normal comfort zone to do so.