Doonpa

I'm not too sure of how you are setting this up and what exactly is happening. If possible, record this because I feel like its just another case of her IK moves glitching out when the opponent is at 0 fate and the proration/SMP is cranked at the same time.

Have you checked the dustloop wiki page for her? A lot of general stuff is covered for her, but I'll just give a quick summary of stuff anyway. Generally with Naoto, you want to create space between you and your opponent to give yourself enough breathing room to set up her traps (214C/D) to get screen control. From there, you generally want to keep the opponent out by anticipating how they want to approach you, and contest them with stuff like gunshots, 5D, j.A/j.C, C Zapper, etc. and try to force them into blocking one of your traps in neutral and then going in on them to start your pressure. When you are on offense, you generally just want to be really annoying by mixing in throws, a lot of staggered 5A 2A 5A stuff, jump cancels into j.C, and stance feints to bait out DP/Supers. Her pressure isn't that good, so against characters who have good tools to get out of Naoto's very basic offense, its often better to just peel off and run away back to a fullscreen position and play from there. Naoto's basic gameplan of playing pretty passively and focusing on fighting from a distance is probably the safest and most annoying type of play for your opponent, but the thing is this won't always be the ideal way to fight people because of their character choice. Characters like Margaret and Yukari can outzone Naoto and beat her at this, so against them you'll want to focus on getting in on them instead of zoning them out. There are a lot of little nuances that you'll pick up on vs the cast that will make you change how you have to play, but for the most part passive play using traps and gunshots and quickly switching it up by making them block a trap and going in on them is the general gameplan you'll want to have most of the time.

I played this MU a LOT from both ends of the MU. Here is my take on it: Overall, this MU is one of those that are very much decided on who plays the better neutral game as both characters aren't too great vs each other's offense. Both characters effectively do the same thing gameplay wise, which is focusing on abusing their range and overwhelm the opponent with pressure to force defensive mistakes. Due to both characters having slow start up 5As, mashing out of pressure is typically done with DP which is incredibly unsafe from both characters. Both Mitsuru and Minazuki are very good at preventing the opponent from successfully rolling away with their 5As and both have ways to space themselves to make guard cancel attacks whiff. So ultimately, either character really has to really commit and read the opponent's intentions on offense to successfully escape otherwise both characters natural ability to stop common mindless attempts at escaping really will get you killed. From Mitsuru's end: Neutral game is fairly straight forward for her here. 5A gives Minazuki a lot of trouble on the ground as he doesn't have a good way to go under it and it can be hard to whiff punish it because of how easy it is to space properly. In the air, Minazuki is very dangerous because Mitsuru can't reliably 2B Minazuki's j.B and the alternative ways to stop this attack require big commitment (DP ant air) or run the risk of trading or losing at certain spacings (j.A/Air throw). 2D works well vs j.B, but the downside is that missing with this move is kinda bad but your risk/reward makes it worth going for if you are farther away from him and anticipate his approach with j.B. Good Minazukis will stand at your 5A range and jump over it and hit you with j.B for trying to poke. You have to be ready to recognize this spacing and mix up when you are going to throw out a 5A and when you want to peel off with a backdash or a fade away j.A to stop the j.B approach. Mitsuru can droit under A ver. of knife toss, which is good if you can react to which knife he tossed in time. If you are fast and see it quickly enough, you can flat out hit Minazuki with like SB droit and push him really far towards the corner. If you don't have meter, you can at the very least use a well spaced B droit and get some + frames to start your offense if you don't flat out tag him during his recovery. On defense, you really have to block patiently and choose your spots to disrespect. DP stops frame traps and attempts at restarting pressure with stuff like teleports and j.B. Mashing out with 5A stops him from command grab tick throws, most forms of throw baiting, and takes away his turn if he opts to just try to bait your DP out by waiting and blocking. Jumping is generally a really safe alternative to mashing out as it will cover most options such as command grab attempts and DP baits as well as giving you the option of attempting an escape from a place like the corner by getting away from him. On wake up, you can OS against most of Minazuki's common options they'll go for on wake up. OSing a backdash + throw and downback afterwards works great because you can't backdash for something like 4 or 5 frames when you initially get up from the ground, so you'll just sit there and stand block within that time frame. So what this means is if Minazuki does a proper meaty 5A, you'll just block. If he tries to throw you right away, you'll tech because you masked a throw tech input in that same backdash input. If Minazuki attempts a command grab on your wake up, you'll back dash because the start up of his regular command grabs are 8f, which is just outside the frame window where you can't backdash, so you'll avoid the command grab and get a fat punish. Of course, the obvious weakness here is that he can just hit you meaty with a low and that will catch you, but there are times where he can't do a perfectly meaty low on your wake up or you can just RPS him at this point with other stuff to throw him off. Also, minazuki gets really really low damage off a 2A starter, so you can afford eating less than 2k damage at least once or twice to escape the other crap he has. The other way to stop this is by letting the opponent backdash and hitting them out of the air. This is the harder read but is also infinitely more rewarding for minazuki to do. From Minazuki's end: This match up is kinda a pain and requires a lot of patience but its fun at higher level. Its a high powered match of footsies with giant normals at the end of the day. There are namely two spacings where you want to most stay at vs Mitsuru and those are fullscreen and in her face. Mitsuru no longer has her special 5D to extend her whip range to hit completely fullscreen, so you can throw knives pretty safely when you back is to the edge of the stage and harass Mitsuru and eventually go in behind a knife or something. If she attempts 5D anyway, know that you can run under it just by dashing in on her normally. When you are in her face, you have all the control really. Your buttons are really oppressive and her defensive options aren't too spectacular. The ranges inbetween those areas are spacings where Mitsuru can fight you decently, but you can force an awkward guessing situation if you stand outside 5A range. The mitsuru player has to be careful about hitting 5A here because of j.B, and if they decide on just waiting for the j.B or peeling off, you can go in on them instead on the ground. Really annoying for both sides, but the risk/reward is generally in your favor in most situations. Be careful with knife throws and using j.2D/2D in neutral, as Mitsuru can take advantage of getting the read on you and tagging you for attempting these moves from spacings where she can punish. Ultimately, you are the scarier character on both offense and defense. If you decide to mash out, you get a knockdown off anything for your troubles, which includes your DP while Mitsuru does not get the same luxury. Your mix up game is better than Mitsuru when she does not have 50 meter so you can force more hits on her just for blocking than she can. You really want to focus on varying your offense and pay attention to what the player defaults to on defense. If they mash DP a lot, bait it and punish hard. If they choose to block a lot, grab them. If they are upbacking, catch their jump start and flat out call out their jumps with 2B. Its a very simple gameplan but its what Minazuki shines at. If you have any really specific questions about stuff, feel free to ask.

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s462/sh/9657cb40-9ef7-4f62-87b9-6da29282dbab/997823b279b35e92b280e4e624d5f755 So this is something i wrote on my own time, and I feel its relevant to this thread as well since i think it touches on some of Dmac's point and I think it gives a good perspective on fgs in general as well as Persona specifically.

@kupo_asami About your ground burst safe route, I'm having trouble getting the A Myriad Arrow (OMC at the crumple) Mahabufudyne, B myriad arrow part. Could you please break down that combo in more detail?

Yeah, the wiki should be ok to use, though I'll admit the evernotes can be kind of overwhelming since those were originally for my personal use and I'm nutty about combos. My youtube channel has playlists of combos and stuff for visual aid to help as well. Any questions or any requests for stuff Naoto related, feel free to post here and ask me here if theres anything that I missed.

Feel free to post any ideas, strategies, or questions about the match up here.

Feel free to post any ideas, strategies, or questions about the match up here.

Feel free to post any ideas, strategies, or questions about the match up here.

Feel free to post any ideas, strategies, or questions about the match up here.

Feel free to post any ideas, strategies, or questions about the match up here.

Feel free to post any ideas, strategies, or questions about the match up here.

Feel free to post any ideas, strategies, or questions about the match up here.

Feel free to post any ideas, strategies, or questions about the match up here.

Feel free to post any ideas, strategies, or questions about the match up here.