About Stepping

Do most high level Japanese Akira players use that advanced stepping? I honestly don't know. The flashiest Akira in that department is Minami Akira by far, but I know that Ohsu does a lot of fast movement, mainly fast CDing back and forward. Mukki and Homestay I don't recall being as fancy footed, but they're very high level Akira's nonetheless (which should tell you something about the overall importance of fancy stepping -- i.e. it's not that important). Another high level Akira I like is Teppei, and he's got some fast and impressive movement too.

The Taiwan step was introduced in VF2, and this was constant crouch dashing back and forward all the time. Akira players would fight like this for entire round, and would only ever stand to (fuzzy) guard. Hitting them was hard since they'd always stay away, and your high attacks always whiff. This was very hard to fight against when a skilled opponent was tai stepping.

Korean stepping was introduced in VF3. Since you couldn't Tai step anymore (since there were no more backward CDs), this new stepping involved cancelling dodges with forward CDs, and then cancelling the CD with another dodge, and so on. Korean stepping wasn't as 'useful' as Taiwan stepping was. It was more for flash than anything else.

The 'box' step is just a back dash - dodge - CD and repeat. You an do this in VF4 as well, and some people call it silly things like the "linney"

I'm not sure about frames for fast CDing but here's something you might find interesting on 1/60 sec site:

http://www.dcn.ne.jp/~kazu68k/doga_ev.html

scroll all the way to the bottom until you see two charts with a bunch of 5s, 3s, and Gs. The links above each chart is a short movie demonstrating what the chart is showing. And the chart is basically the inputs which result in what you see in the movie.

They're using numeric command notation, and in case you're not familiar, you just need to know that 5=neutral, 3=df and G is the Guard button (duh).

Now each column in the chart represents 1 frame. So the first chart is something like this:

(1)(4)+(1) and repeat

This is a CD with a + entered after 5 frames. Watch the video and see how twitchy the result is.

The second chart is as follows:

(1)(9)+(1) and repeat

the difference here is that the + is entered on the 10th frame. It's less twitchier and the 5th frame cancel version.

So, as you can see the faster you can cancel it, the twitchier it appears. The most important thing I think is to develop a rhythm. Doesn't matter how fast or slow it is, but it has to be constant. If you can do that, then your cancelling will look smooth and consistent, and the better at the rhythm you get, the faster you'll be able to make it eventually.