To be fair on logical approaches, he didn't necessairly needed any changes. That's catering if you want things to be nerfed on your needs. Especially on terms with the actual word "reasonable" and how carelessly the word is being tossed around.
As for the topic, it was safe because it's the fact that he's linear to begin with. The initial weakness is that majority of his moves do not track. From here on out, people have no right to complain about Akira technically speaking. (Only justified changes were from vanilla to 5U. Players had no real reason to complain from there on.)