Free Step Dodge

DOA5 Akira joins DOA5 Gen fu and Kokoro in the "characters who are so strong that the only bad thing you can say about them is that they're linear" club

shame he wasn't more popular despite his strength, but him being hard to play and not a waifu made him a complete dud with the larger casual crowd and mostly a character for enthusiasts, so yeah, strong af but woefully underrepresented

As an Akira main back in DOA5, I always did think he was a slept on character. Guy's got some awesome moves. That said, imo Hayate was the best character in DOA5. Now that character I felt, had everything he needed to win. I believe Japan also felt he was the best character too.

The best character... is the one you are best with. (￣ヘ￣)╮mmph.

@samuraihachi - Are we talking base DOA5 Hayate? I don't remember his kit but I know he had some good tools and sit down stuns that made him very strong.

About 5-6 months ago, myself, Kwiggles, and Xcal had a conversation about it ironically with DOA5 in general.

Kwiggles believes that Akira is top 5. Xcal made a tierlist last year and mentions that he probably should of bumped Akira to top 3.

I personally believe he's also top 3, but in terms of movekit and damage he might actually be the best character even if it's on paper talk.

Hilariously enough, the main issue Akira really had was statistic usage because he's not a waifu.

Since the character has won a major tournament (NEC), he has already put a stamp in history that the idea does exist. If he didn't, it was a conversation most people wouldn't do even if the evidence was there.

@samuraihachi
imma say it, Hayate was the potential man of DOA5

Japan swore he was number 1, everyone says he has all the tools you need to win, yet when it came to winning when it counts, he was nowhere to be seen. you run into this character in pools all the time, yet you rarely see him in a top 4, so was he was actually all that or was he just all talk? who's to say

Jokes aside, I don't actually think Hayate is bad, Perfect Legend was consistently doing work with the character, and you had players like Shade, Rojikku, and even Hajin making top 8 appearances with him, but in retrospect it just seems like the amount of talk of him being the strongest vs the amount of times we saw him being strong in a competitive setting was severely lopsided

^ That was the time period where people thought Eliot was low tier though. The game was fairly new at the time and results weren't exactly finalized in game documentation.

Most of the stuff Hayate did back then was due to the vanilla ground game at first which made him pretty strong. That's more of a game thing than a Hayate thing. Hayate wasn't exactly pulling DOA3 cartwheel version of him.

I was looking at tournament videos of JC Akira and I was thinking to myself that the character is super solid with crazy comeback potential due to his damage output. I think he arguably has the best Kit in LR; Plus frames, good neutral, great oki, guaranteed setups, punch parry, and damage. Could literally melt your health in 2 combos.