GGACR/Order-Sol/Matchups/Anji Mito

The General Gameplan

You generally control the pace of the MU due to better movement and lower risk medium to high reward options for stopping Anji's approaches. Your mix of good low profile moves (like 2D, 2K, Gunblaze) and very fast normals counter many of Anji’s common neutral options while your low jump arc prevents him from simply countering with low-autoguard.

Anji isn’t helpless though and has two major advantages coming into the matchup, namely his superior attack range and his Autoguard mechanic.

Anji’s attack range is enormous, allowing him to control significant screen space and making it difficult for you to approach. The matchup dynamic plays out like inboxer/outboxer match, with HOS wanting to be up close and Anji wanting to be afar. Like an inboxer, you have to use movement to manipulate positioning and force Anji to either overextend or retreat to the corner in order to not lose advantage, while at the same time slipping around his defensive pokes (more on those below), and then calling out or whiff punishing obvious attacks.

Anji’s other power is Autoguard, which allows him to block while attacking. This allows Anji to counter specific attacks by timing them precisely. Autoguard functions just like normal guard though, meaning it loses to throws. His main Autoguard moves (2H, 3S, 6K, 6S, 5D and 3K) all have their ups and downs, which you will need to be familiar with to engage with him. 6K and 3K have quick start up but have hefty amounts of recovery. Iit's best to hard bait these moves and whiff punish them, preferably Fafnir, but you can also punish with 5K into IAD loop or 2D CC 5K combos. On the other end, moves 5D, 6S and 2H are slower on the startup, but have more autoguard frames. 6S also has a huge extended upwards hurtbox which means you can quickly shut it down with rising jP, but it requires good spacing. 2H can be addressed by hopping over with jH into a combo, and 5D can be tagged by lows.

What can your opponent do?

Anji tries to stay on the ground and play reactive, mainly going to the air for air-to-air interactions. Although HOS's short-hop is a defining trait, anti-air 5P/5D/6K all work on HOS jump-ins depending on the angle, Anji just has to pick the right answer per angle. 2S is also an unusually good anti-air against every jump-in that isn't jH.

5P works well as an anti-air as long as HOS isn't directly above Anji's head. It works fine against all jump-ins that aren't jH. It has a slightly horizontal hitbox, and in general is good to throw out as a good low commitment catch-all poke that will catch random jumps, as well as counterpoke HOS's fS and 5H. In fact, 5P roundstart counter hits HOS's fS/5H into 5P CH > 5H > full meterless fuujin combo and is a decent round start option vs HOS.

Anji will also throw out 6S and 5H as a general stop sign poke, but these attacks extend his hurtboxes a bit on start-up, and all the pokes I listed from HOS can be timed to hit Anji out of those extended hurtboxes. HOS's 2S in particular can counterpoke 6S and 5H at a far range. That being said, Anji can also time 6S or 5H to hit HOS out of 2S (Anji has to time it earlier), scoring a Fuujin combo, so I think Anji is still encouraged to use these pokes due to the reward. It's a timing battle.

Against random Rockit/Gunblaze in neutral, Anji should be countering this with counterpoke 2D.

Anji should only really be doing Fuujin in neutral as a read against fS, Fafnir, lvl1 Rockit, and 2D (when done late). Sometimes it can tag 2S, but it's not likely.

Anji shouldn't really be doing much air-to-ground interactions aside from harassing with jS at max range, since it's quite easy to Gunblaze under, or run under cS.

On oki, Anji generally tries to condition by doing Shitsu into dash 2K or dash 2D, both of which should stuff GB or make SV whiff. Dash 2D is easier to time and even if it trades with GB, you both get knocked down, whereas if 2K trades HOS scores a knockdown instead. HOS can start doing IB Fafnir to stuff both 2K/2D, but then it just becomes a bit of an RPS situation.

What should you look out for?

The main things you, as the HOS player, should be looking out for are:

1) How willing is the Anji player to use Fuujin in neutral?

2) How willing is the Anji player to use autoguards in pressure, and which?

3) Is the Anji more on the aggressive side, or waiting to counterpoke or autoguard?

4) How good is the Anji at using 5P AA?

5) Can the Anji do 3S Cancel pressure?

These are the 5 main questions you have to address when jumping into a match against any Anji player. The first three are very similar, they're all different sanity checks, but very important ones, since the dynamic and positioning you wanna maintain changes depending on whether the Anji player wants to play around positioning or just bulldozing their way in. The fourth question is very important, since if they cannot 5P you, you can use jP very ignorantly and blow through 6S, 5H, recover before Kou, etc. The final question is about the Anji's pressure, if they can't 3S cancel, then the pressure is limited, and blocking it out is okay, but if they can, the dynamic during pressure changes, since blocking a 5S can mean your guard bar is flashing, and you're in danger.

Neutral and Spacing

As always with HOS, neutral and spacing is very fluid. The general idea is to stay outside of 6S and 5H range, and then weave in and out of it to force a commitment from Anji. Linear approaches are ill-advised, since Anji, through autoguard and Fuujin, has easy built-in methods to counter linear and predictable approaches. Now, this of course varies depending on your style of play, particularly how you manage resources, but given Anji's low defense and your ability to counterpoke him properly (which implies counterhits) you can often scrap with him without focusing too much on getting charge.

Be careful of backdashing in and out of range, since a good Fuujin callout can hurt a lot, esp if the Anji has worked on their routing, or if you've blocked a move before that. You can hang in the air a bit, since it is hard for Anji to AA AG you, but 5P is always a threat you should keep in mind.

Structuring Pressure

The strongest tool you have for fighting Anji is the fact that all his strong defensive options are big commitments, be it autoguard normals or Fuujin, he has to make a big read if he hopes to escape pressure, but this is precisely the thing you need to take advantage of when fighting him.

When it comes to pressuring Anji, you want to do a lot of safe, low commitment baits, lots of double jump pressure, lots of 2S into nothing, just giving him enough room to make a move that you can target. Obviously, Anji can counter by not committing as hard and just jumping out, but this is another part of the pressure RPS, you need to make sure he feels that his stronger defensive options are too risky to use, which in turn makes it such that, on your next move, he is less inclined to use them.

Against Fuujin in particular, due to it's long startup, a useful trick is to some safe string, and then press 2S in a range where it'd normally hit, and if you notice the whiff, press it again, since they probably hit Fuujin in that space, and you can collect your CH.

Against autoguards, since all of them are big whiffs, just FD brake > punish is more than fine, although be wary of things like 6K FRC, since it allows him to try and force a guessing game again.

There is another thing to look out for when pressuring Anji, as mentioned above, double jump pressure is very effective if he's trying to autoguard you, since he'll try to autoguard the jump-in to the timing of the first jump, not the second one, but there is a caveat, which is Anji 5P. Anji 5P is a very, very strong AA, and one you have to be careful of running into, since it can be very painful to run into, especially in the corner. The are 2 main counters to it, you can try to double jump bait it, but be careful, it has low enough recovery to allow Anji to press it again depending on your double jump timing. The other main counter is using jP to clash/beat it, but this also comes with the caveat of being possibly AG'd into Kou or FB Kou.

Dealing With Pressure

Anji's pressure is heavily based on reads, as he doesn't have easy access to plus frames, BUT, this quickly changes if the Anji can do 3S cancels. If the Anji is unable to do these, then you can usually FD him out, and force him to either:

A) Rely on very simple, low reward strike/throw and frametraps with delay cancels, most of which, if blocked, leave him out of range to do much afterwards.

B) Do a Shitsu reset, which you can IAD jP or Fafnir punish.

C) Go into Fuujin RPS, which, while tricky to deal with, is not the most favourable RPS, you can react to most things, such as IB Nagiha > dash 2S punish, or normal block > Fafnir. 2K or 2D under Rin. Run under fans followup, and throw hop. One of the scariest options is empty Fuujin, since it leaves nothing for you to react or respond to, but this generally gives you the space and time to FD superjump out.

Now, if the Anji can 3Sc, then stuff gets a lot more tricky, since now he has access to quick frametraps with 5S and rebeats from 5H. The good thing about it is, due to how 3Sc works, he can only cancel into 5S or 5H, both of which are vulnerable to lowpro, so you can go for callouts with 2D or gunblaze after FD'ing him out, or IB'ing between hits. But basic answer remains the same, try to FD him out, and force him to overextend on pressure.

Okizeme Options

Anji is the king of calling out predictable sequences, so mindlessly doing Gunblaze, 6K or 2H on oki will get you punished very dearly. The most common examples are Anji doing 6K+H to OS a throw and a mid autoguard 6K, such that meaty mids get hit by Sou, or if mispaced, they get thrown. Another common option is 214H on wakeup, such that if you do a mispaced meaty, you get thrown, but if you try to do Gunblaze, the Anji does a Fuujin towards you, and hits you out of it.

Thankfully, we have options, and the strongest option you have on wakeup is safejab or safejump into a 6S+H Throw OS, and then buffering a 5H behind it, it'd look like 2P~6S+H~H, by doing this, if Anji Fuujins, you grab it or hit it with cS, if he does Sou, you grab the Sou before it goes active, and if he does Kou, your cS comes out, and you dodge it. FB Kou and Kachoufuugetsu still catch this OS, but it's still good to represent and to force them to burn 25%.