Shotos

01/15/23

There’s a little bit of debate about the definition of “Shotos”, but for the purposes of this post (and I’d argue in general when talking about Smash Bros. Ultimate), it refers to Ryu and Ken. Here are some huge pictures of them that I don’t want to learn how to resize:

Normal Canceling

This is the main concept that differentiates Shotos (well, and Terry) from other fighters. I’ve seen it referred to as “Special Canceling” or just “Canceling” as well. The simplest way I can think of to explain it is “chaining moves together”. However, there are a couple concepts that I need to explain first before I can really get into the details.

Attack Animation

When a character performs an attack there are 3 basic stages to the animation:

Startup is the animation that happens before the attack can do any damage. Think of the Falcon Punch, while he’s saying “Falcon…”.
Active frames are the parts of the animation during which you can inflict damage on an opponent. During these animations, the character exposes hit boxes, which are the areas that cause damage when they overlap with an opponent’s hurt boxes. Think of the “PUNCH” part of the Falcon Punch, where the hit boxes are around his fist and the hurt boxes are Mario’s friggin’ face or whatever.
Cooldown is the period after the active frames have ended, but before you can control your character again. Think of all the time your opponent has to body you after your corny-ass Falcon Punch misses.

Normals and Specials

I think this concept originates from Street Fighter itself. I don’t play Street Fighter (at least, not as much as I play Smash), so I’m probably going to get some of this wrong.

Normals are the basic moves that come out when you hit a button, i.e. “punch” and “kick”, and their weak/medium/strong variations.
Specials are the moves that require a combination of buttons, e.g. the famous “Hadoken”, which is performed with the inputs ↓ → + punch.

In Smash Bros., this translates roughly to “Normals” = “A moves”, and “Specials” = “B moves”. However, you can also perform specials using the original Street Fighter inputs for a little extra damage. This is typically how advanced Shoto players perform them.

Another thing I should mention is that shotos have certain variations on their moves that other characters don’t have:

Weak/medium/heavy is determined by how long you hold the button. Weak is the shortest and does the least damage, heavy is the longest and does the most. Typically only specials have medium versions, while normals only have weak and heavy.
Near/far is determined by your distance to the opponent when you perform it. I’ve seen the near-versions referred to as “proxy-”, e.g. “proxy-jab”. These are typically entirely different moves, despite having the same inputs.

The Rules of Normal Canceling

For most characters, there is no way to skip the cooldown animation unless an opponent hits you out of it. Shotos, however, can use normal canceling to skip the cooldown animation and immediately perform a follow-up attack. But they can’t just cancel every cooldown animation willy-nilly. Here are some rules:

Only certain moves can be canceled, and they can only be canceled by certain other moves. In general, only normals can be canceled, and only by specials.
You can only cancel a normal move if it “lands”, that is, if its hit-boxes collide with a hurt-box. This can be another character, their shield, or any active item such as a projectile.
You only have until the end of the active frames to input the next move, after which the input will be ignored.

There are of course some exceptions to these rules, mostly around down-smash:

Down-smash is the only smash attack that can be canceled as a normal.
Down-smash can be canceled while it’s still charging, that is, before any active frames have come out. This is a callback to a Street Fighter concept called Kara Canceling. Once you let go of the charge though, it follows the normal rules of requiring a hurt-box collision to be canceled.
For those of you who play with Final Smashes enabled, any attack can be canceled into a Final Smash.

I may have missed some rules/exceptions, but that’s enough to get the basic idea.

If performed correctly, you will skip the cooldown animation and immediately perform the special move. As you can imagine, this is an excellent way to land combos and deal a lot of damage. It’s also a practical way to “anchor” your character in place so the directional inputs of your special don’t get interpreted as movement.

Applications

At this point, you can basically mix-and-match your normals and your specials into infinite combinations, although some work better than others. Here are some of the most common: