Ultra Street Fighter IV/Akuma/Strategy

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Strategy

The Basics

Akuma is a very versatile character. He has everything you need for every situation. He has the fastest walk speed alongside Chun-Li, M. Bison, and Vega, so his ground game is already very strong. He also has amazing zoning tools, thanks to his arsenal of great normals, three different types of projectiles, and a variety of anti-air options. If that's not enough, he also has an amazing teleport that can be pretty difficult to punish, since there's no indication of which way he'll be going. Not only can he annoy you with amazing keepaway zoning tools, but if he manages to land one hard knockdown, his opponent is in his world. Even with delayed wake up, Akuma's mixup potential still stands strong. He has many options that he can do as you get up, only to knock you down again and even looping you into his vortex until his opponent dies.

That said, even though Akuma may have amazing abilities at his disposal, being able to win consistently takes lots of practice. By no means is he an easy character, in fact some may even argue that he is one of the most technical characters in the game. Not only is he difficult to win with because of execution requirements and knowledge of how to properly use his tools, but he also has the lowest health and stun in the game. You can only get hit so much before falling dizzy and eventually falling dead, so you must strive for perfection before being able to win consistently with Akuma. Another factor that plays into the difficulty of using Akuma is that a lot of his setups vary from character to character, so matchup knowledge is a requirement as well.

Zoning

Akuma has one of the best, if not the best set of zoning tools out of the entire cast. Learning to use Akuma's fireballs well can frustrate his opponents to no end, and being able to zone is an art form itself.

At the beginning of the match, there are a few ways to start. Obviously, starting with a Demon Flip right away can be quite risky, so it's probably best to start out a little defensive at first. You want to analyze how your opponent plays. It's best to vary how you start a round every time so you can throw your opponent off as soon as the round starts. Here are some ways you can you can start a round:

1) Do a defensive crouch for a few seconds.
2) Take a few steps towards your opponent before stepping back a bit.
3) Neutral jump Zanku Hadoken.
4) Back jump Zanku Hadoken.
5) Any ground Gohadoken.
6) Step back a bit before throwing a neutral jump Zanku Hadoken.
7) Walk right up and throw a cr. MK.

You're not limited to these round starters, as you can start a round with whatever you see fit... so long as they're safe. You want to make sure you act according to how your opponent reacts. Playing defensive lets you get a feel for how your opponent likes to approach the Akuma matchup. If you're seeing an opponent that jumps a lot to try to hit you out of your fireball, you obviously have an impatient player in your hands. At that point, you should probably focus on getting your anti-airs out. Akuma has his cr. HP for opponents above him or pretty close up. He has his far st. HP for opponents that may be positioned further away. He can use his MP, HP, or EX Goshoryukens if the opponent is in ranges anywhere in between.

If you have an opponent that likes to focus dash your fireballs, you can implement different strategies depending on the player. Stop some of the fireball barrage and play a bit of footsies at mid range. Take note of any habits your opponent may have if he or she likes to focus a lot. Once you notice a pattern, you can punish with a cr. MK cancelled into HK Tatsu for both solid damage and positioning. Even if there's no pattern, you can sometimes just react to the focus as long as you buffer the cr. MK with a quarter circle back motion before pressing HK button.

Now, if the opponent seems to be focus dashing, you have a few options. Depending on the distance, you can just use cr. MK to hit him out of his dash, or even cr. HK if you're up for it. This is obviously distance dependent though; if you threw a fireball at closer ranges, where the opponent might be able to focus dash through and hit you before you recover, then you already know that you were standing at an unsafe range to throw fireballs. That's not to say you should never throw fireballs at that distance, since you don't want to give up throwing fireballs as a poke. Likewise, it's still important to know your opponent's dash distances in order to make sure you're ready to punish any badly positioned focus forward dashes.

If you notice the opponent is focus back dashing more, tell your opponent that he or she can't do that forever. Take note of this though; the opponent may not likely be focus back dashing all the time. Sometimes, he or she may just block a few before focus back dashing again. Once you confirm that your opponent seems to be playing defensive, that's your cue to push your opponent down to the corner while still applying fireball pressure. Even if the opponent catches on and begins to push forward, that's still fine. Unless if the opponent caught on earlier, by the time he or she noticed what you were planning, you already gained positional advantage to start zoning again.

Now any good opponent isn't going to do one of these things. They will always vary how they react to different fireballs, so that's when getting a feel for their habits can get a bit more difficult. That's why it's important to vary different types of fireballs. Against non-projectile characters, vary with back jump air fireballs, neutral jump air fireballs, and ground regular fireballs. Mix these up, constantly. Make sure you're not leaving any patterns for the opponent to catch on to. The more variety of plasma you chuck, the more frustrating it can get for your opponent.

Don't just pray and hope that your opponent will eventually get impatient and do something stupid though. Opponents who play patient can and will gradually push you to the corner if you keep playing a keep away zoning game. That is why sometimes you have to switch from defense to offense when the situation demands it. At some point, if you notice you're beginning to lose space, that probably means you tried to play keep away for too long. Playing defensive is fine, but playing too defensive can make you lose positioning. Once you're cornered, your options become much more limited, so when you play zoning game, pay attention to where you are on the screen while you do it.

So let's say your opponent is gradually closing you in to the corner. This is where you have to play footsies. If you've been playing keep away for a certain amount of time, then your opponent may start to catch on to your playstyle. Well, break that impression and start pressing forward (well, not 100% literally...). Don't get overly aggressive now, because chances are this is where your opponent will also play aggressive too. You can play more offensively, but make sure you play a cautious offense with your pokes. Starting using a mix of cr. MK and close range fireballs to play footsies; these do wonders in pushing your opponents away. It may not look like it, but telling your opponent that you won't run away forever and will fight up close sends a message. If you win this poking game, you can get some damage and also push the opponent further away. If you feel like you've successfully done this part, great, go back to the zoning game and start frustrating your opponent again.

In the case that you are cornered, don't give up just yet. You are still free to throw the occasional jump back fireball, but also try your best to fight back and gain positional advantage again. If you feel that you've gotten your opponent to concentrate on the ground game, you can suddenly do a HK Demon Flip Palm to escape, and now the tide has shifted because now your opponent's back is closer to the corner. Be careful doing this though, because opponents may be looking for you to go to the air to try to escape.

Mix-ups

Vortex plays a large part of Akuma's metagame. Knock your opponent down, then find several ways to knock them down again as they get up over and over again until they die.

Starting the vortex

You're going to have to find ways to knock the opponent down. A successful cr. HK or forward throw will help you start the mix-up party instantly.

You can land cr. HK in footsies, but you should probably use it mostly for whiff punishing. The move isn't as overpowered as it was before, since you can be punished with either a focus or a jump-in, so resist the urge to constantly use cr. HK to fish for that knockdown. Using cr. HK to whiff punish is safer because you're not randomly throwing out a poke and risk eating damage, but you're more likely anticipating a poke from the opponent and countering it. Poke the opponent with a few cr. MK first to make them feel the need to poke back at you, and look for opportunities to whiff punish with the sweep.

You can also get a hard knockdown with cr. HK by fishing for counter hits. Akuma's cr. MP is famous for this, because if you land a counter hit cr. MP, you can link into cr. HK pretty easily.
On some characters, you'll be able to combo into cr. HK from a LK Tatsu juggle. This requires a lot of practice at first because timing can be a little awkward. This is entirely character specific though, as there are some characters where the cr. HK will just whiff if you try to juggle.

Characters that can be knocked down from LK Tatsu -> cr. HK: Adon, Akuma, Balrog, C. Viper, Cammy, Chun-Li, Cody, Dan, Dee Jay, Dhalsim, E. Honda, Elena, Fei Long, Gouken, Guile, Guy, Hakan, Hugo, Oni, Poison, Rose, Sagat, Sakura, Seth, T. Hawk, Vega, Zangief.

Characters that cannot be knocked down from LK Tatsu -> cr. HK: Blanka, Decapre, Dudley, El Fuerte, Evil Ryu, Gen, Ibuki, Juri, Ken, M. Bison, Makoto, Rolento, Rufus, Ryu, Yang, Yun.

Against characters with wide hitboxes, you can usually link cr. HK from a st. LP. While in footsies, if you successfully land a far st. HK, you can link into a st. LP and follow up into cr. HK for an instant knockdown.

Akuma's forward throw sets him up for his mix-ups really well. In the previous versions, all he had to do was dash forward twice before starting his Demon Flip mixups. This changed after version AE 2012, because he received a change to his throw in that there was now 2 more frames of recovery after the throw animation has ended, and this change has stayed in Ultra Street Fighter IV as well. The classic setup will still work against some characters, but you will have to vary your forward throw setups against some other characters too.

Here are some forward throw setups that you can use against different characters.

Forward throw -> far st. HK -> HK Hyakki: Ryu, Ken, Guile, Evil Ryu, Akuma, Yun, Yang, C. Viper
Forward throw -> Dash -> Take one short step -> HK Hyakki: E. Honda, Dudley, Ibuki, Seth, Fei Long, Sagat, Adon, Rose, Poison, Elena, Juri, Gen, Dan, Vega, T. Hawk
Forward throw -> Dash -> Dash -> j. HK / cross up tatsu / MK Hyakki: Balrog, Cammy, Decapre, Dhalsim, Abel, Rufus, M. Bison, Makoto, Gouken, Cody, Rolento, Sakura

Regardless of how you landed that hard knockdown, you will always have to deal with delayed wake up one way or another. Learn to time your setups according to how your opponent tends to respond after getting knocked down. A good opponent will always mix-up regular wake up and delayed wake up to keep you guessing, and it takes some practice to react to the TECHNICAL message.

The Vortex

Once you land that hard knockdown, it's time to put your opponent in a world of pain. Akuma has so many options to mix up his opponent, you're definitely going to have fun. Let's go over the options he has, one by one.

1) Demon Flip Kick
When you get the first hard knockdown, this is the move you should go for. Against most characters, you don't need to time the kick button that much to safely pressure the opponent, but against some you will have to delay the kick just a little bit to successfully safe jump. Most reversals will whiff completely, so you are mostly safe. Once you block, you have the opportunity for free pressure. Take this time to analyze the opponent. Does he have great defense? Does he have good tech timings? Does he like to mash out reversals a lot? Use this as data.
On occasions, the dive kill will cross up, but it's very rare. On hit, it gives you enough frame advantage to do big damage combos, so take advantage of any hit that you can land on the opponent.
It's probably best to do the Demon Flip Kick on your first two or three hard knockdowns. It may be tempting to go for tricky side-to-side mix-ups, but it's good idea to condition your opponent to block on wake up first. What's also nice about this option is that when Akuma does the Demon Flip, he takes a slight pause before he descends. If your opponent does delayed wake up, you can delay the kick button just slightly and you can still safely pressure the opponent.

2) Demon Flip Palm
If you land a max range cr. HK, or do any forward throw setup, you can use HK Demon Flip Palm. You're not using the palm strike to hit the opponent, but you want to land behind him or her. Once you land, start your pressure with crouch tech cr. LP + cr. LK. You want to do this after you do the Demon Flip Kick because you want to cross over the opponent when he or she's probably thinking you're going to hit front. A well-timed auto correct reversal will hit you out of this, which is why it's best to go for Demon Flip Palm after you condition your opponent to block first.
Alternatively, you can use Demon Flip Palm for safe jump Option Select. After a knockdown, do a MK Demon Flip Palm, and press cr. HK at a time just slightly after the palm would connect to the opponent. What will happen is if the opponent either gets hit or blocks, you'll land safely and you can pressure your opponent, or you can go for another mix-up if he gets hit. The beauty of this option select is that if the opponent likes to backdash on his or her wake up, cr. HK will come out and grant you another hard knockdown. The reason why this works is if the Demon Flip Palm gets blocked, the opponent will be in block stun, which delays Akuma's landing time. If Akuma just does an empty Demon Flip Palm, he will land instantly, so if the opponent backdashes, the Demon Flip Palm will act like the opponent isn't there anymore. Since there's no block stun to delay Akuma's landing, the cr. HK will come out, thus thwarting the opponent's backdash attempt. You also have to delay the cr. HK just slightly because if the opponent wakes up with a reversal, if you input the cr. HK too quickly, your cr. HK will come out and you'll just get hit out of it. If you add a slight delay, your cr. HK won't come out, thus you'll be able to safely block the opponent's reversal.
To add some extra spice to the Demon Flip Palm, you can also OS with HK Tatsu or even any of his Ultra's. These can be a little more risky because your opponent might do delayed wake up, messing up your attempt at Option Selecting, and you may potentially waste your Ultra bar if you're not paying attention.

3) Demon Flip Throw
Once you condition your opponent to stay blocking on wake up, that is when you are given the green light to go for the Demon Flip Throw. You can attempt this much earlier on, but there are chances when your opponent might just backdash or do a reversal and punish you. This move is severely punishable on whiff, and is usually guaranteed to get hit by reversals since you have to be in front of your opponent to throw. When you land the throw, you are in perfection position to go for another setup. You have the following options:

Demon Flip Throw -> cr. MP -> Demon Flip Kick / Palm: Will safe jump most reversals except for Dee Jay, Yun, Yang, T. Hawk.
Demon Flip Throw -> Dash -> Tiger knee fireball: If you throw the fireball low to the ground, you will hit up front. If you throw the fireball higher up, it will likely cross up. Do not attempt this against Zangief; he can wake up with EX Atomic Suplex.
Demon Flip Throw -> Dash -> EX Demon Flip Kick / Palm: The EX Demon Flip Kick will cross up on some characters, but the palm will make you land in front to create a potential side-to-side mixup.

4) Cross up j. MK / Dive kick mixup
Demon Flip is a beautiful move due to its eclectic mixup options, but you can mix the opponent up without it. If you land a sweep, or even a back throw, you can cross the opponent up with a simple j. MK. Don't worry if it hits or not, the main part of this is to make your opponent think you'll cross him or her up at close range. Once they feel that you'll cross them up again at that range, then it's time to get tricky and do the jump down MK dive kick to hit them up front. This is best used for later because most opponents probably won't be thinking about that too much when they fight Akuma. He's mostly known for Demon Flip mixups after all, so you want to use the dive kick when the opponent least suspects it. More than likely this might get into your opponent's head and will start thinking about this setup through the rest of the game.

5) Cross up Tatsu
Throw this out here and there. You get a free juggle if you can land this, and if you want to continue the vortex, just go for cr. HK again after the juggle. Unlike the LK Tatsu combo into cr. HK, Air Tatsu will juggle into cr. HK against everyone. If you really want to mess with the opponent's head, knock the opponent down with cross up Tatsu twice, three times, four times, however many as you see fit. Just make sure your opponent doesn't catch on because you would be too predictable with your mixups.

6) Jump-in low
On rare occasions, you should jump-in with cr. LK to catch the opponent standing. After all, if you want to block a jump-in attack, you have to block that standing, but going for a low attack instead can catch your opponent off guard. While you're at it, don't just input a cr. LK, but input cr. LK + cr. LP. This is in case your opponent tries to throw you on his or her wake up, and we don't want that to happen and lose whatever momentum we had.

7) Corner mix-ups
If you get a forward throw with opponent in the corner, you can setup a deadly mixup. As soon as you recover from the throw, do a neutral jump and time a LP Zanku Hadoken so it will hit meaty. In most cases, this should cover both regular and delayed wake up. Your opponent will be forced into block stun because you'll recover in time; if they do an invincible reversal, you'll be recovered long before they can even attempt to hit you. There are a few things you can do in this situation. You can jump forward while the fireball is still doing down, and go for a high-low mixup by doing a j. LK or cr. LK. You want to do j. LK because it can be quite ambiguous as to whether you will land in front or behind, so it can be quite tricky for the opponent to guess which way you'll be going. You're already adding another mixup to the table by also going to a cr. LK instead, so this is already a tricky setup to avoid.
If you feel that your opponent is just a chip away from death, here's another thing you can do. While the LP Zanku Hadoken is still on the screen, hold the HP button but do not release. When you land, do the Shakunetsu motion and let go of the HP button. If the fireball is still on the screen, you will be able to safely block if the opponent tries to do something. After all, if the opponent does an invincible reversal, it will go past the fireball. Since you cannot have two of your projectiles on the screen, the Shakunetsu fireball won't come out. However, if the LP Zanku Hadoken does connect because the opponent woke up blocking, and you release the HP button, the Shakunetsu will come out for additional chip damage. This is what is called Negative Edge, where you hold the button for a special move, then you release it after you do the motion. It's very effective in this scenario because if you were to press the HP button after doing the Shakunetsu, and your opponent does an invincible reversal, there's a chance you will get hit out of a st. HP. By using Negative Edge, the Shakunetsu will only come out when the game allows it to. If you do this setup with EX Shakunetsu, you can do even more chip afterwards by walking forward a bit, hitting st. MK and cancelling into HP or EX Shoryuken. This guarantees that you land all three hits of the Shoryuken. You can also add multiple layers to this chip setup depending on the matchup; for example, Dudley can use Ducking to avoid the fireball, but after you let go of HP or all three buttons for EX, you can quickly input grab to grab him out of the Ducking if he attempts it (and you will be blocking if he does the EX Ducking into the straight or upper and be within range to punish). For Gouken, he can EX Demon Flip out, but since he's within chip range, you can simply air to air him without risk of him absorbing the blow with the air parry.

If you manage to land a combo into LK Tatsu with your opponent's back to the corner, consider juggling with LP Goshoryuken. Afterwards, jump forward and do a j. LK. If your opponent quick rises, what will happen is the j. LK will hit cross up, but you will actually land in front of your opponent. This can give you a free opportunity to go for another damaging combo, provided that your opponent doesn't know how to deal with the setup. Once the opponent begins to recognize how to block, you can go for a jump in cr. LK + cr. LP to get tricky.

Raging Demon Setups

The input required for the Raging Demon looks daunting at first, right? Well, there's a way to make the input easier. You can reduce the amount of button sequences needed from 5 to 3. To do this, you can press LP twice quickly, and then you can input LK, forward / back (depending on which Demon you want), and HP all at once a to get the Raging Demon. This shortcut is vital to perform all Raging Demon setups, since most of them require you to input the Raging Demon in a very short period of time.

Kara Super

One of the easiest ways to Kara cancel into the Super is off of Akuma's overhead. It takes quite a bit of practice to get the execution down at first, but this can end up being a really sneaky way to send your opponent the fatal blow. The Raging Demon input has a lot of leniency put into it; it turns out that you don't need to push the stick straight forward for the Raging Demon input to register, but diagonal forward motions will work too.

A common mistake for starters is doing the overhead and then pressing two LP's quickly. Instead, a better way is to input hold forward and press LP+MP twice. So long as the game registers two LP's in some manner, you're already half way through the Raging Demon input. Since the game has already registered the first two LP's, all that remains is LK, forward, and HP. At first glance, it may seem like you have to return your stick to neutral and input forward again. Well, this is where input leniency will save you some trouble. You can just lean your stick to down-forward position as you press LK and HP at the same time, and the Raging Demon will still come out!

Even with the input leniency, this is still easier said than done. Most people who try to do this in their first few attempts will either just an overhead, or the Super will come out after the overhead has already hit. So it's crucial that you get the inputs down as quickly as possible.

Other setups for Super

Some sneaky Raging Demon setups
More setups for the Super

There's a few other sneaky setups to land the Super outside of Kara cancel setups. You can also tick two cr. LP's into the Raging Demon, but there's a trick to doing this. What you want to do is that during the second cr. LP, you want to buffer two cr. LP's instead of just one. In other words, you input one cr. LP first, and then in the follow-up cr. LP, you need to press cr. LP twice very quickly. You need to be quick enough in the second cr. LP so that you don't come out with a third cr. LP. After that, you just finish the last three inputs to land the Super. There are a few reasons why you want to input 3 cr. LP's in total rather than just two.

1) In case you did two simple cr. LP's, where two cr. LP's come out, your input may not be fast enough for the Raging Demon to come out. It might put you at an awkward spot where you might accidentally cancel the cr. LP into the Super, which obviously won't work because you can't land the Raging Demon while the opponent is in block stun. The other scenario is that if you just press two cr. LP's and Akuma does actually punch his opponent twice, the game might not register the Raging Demon inputs properly. Therefore, when you finish the last remaining inputs, you might either get a st. LK or a st. HP (depending on whether you did in the shortcut or not).
2) If you only did one cr. LP and inputted two cr. LP's very correctly, you're not giving yourself enough time to react as to whether the opponent got hit or not. That's why you want to make sure two cr. LP's connect so you can have enough time to see whether your opponent blocked or not. This is important because hit stun tends to last longer than block stun, so in the case that the opponent does get hit by the cr. LP, you can slightly delay the last remaining Raging Demon inputs.

Another sneaky setup for the Super is after a diagonal jumping light attack. Input two LP's very correctly while a jumping LP or LK is still active, and make sure no LP comes out from the ground. Once you land, input the last remaining inputs for the Raging Demon. This doesn't give you enough time to hit confirm in case you actually managed to land a counter j. LP or j. LK, but in most cases it will land because neither moves have a lot of block stun or hit stun.

Landing Wrath of the Raging Demon

One of the nice things about Akuma is that with the exception of cr. HK, you can cancel any of your normal moves into Wrath of the Raging Demon. The most viable way to cancel into the Ultra is off of a cr. MK, and this is because you lower Akuma's hitbox significantly. This is useful against jumping opponents because by lowering your hitbox, you lessen the chances of getting by a jumping attack.

When you have the Ultra stocked, unless if you want to cancel a cr. MK into a Gohadoken for fireball pressure, make sure you always input two cr. LP's while the cr. MK is still active. In other words, you should buffer two LP's for every cr. MK you throw out in neutral. This helps you be ready for two things; a jump-in and a focus attack. Once you see either the jump-in or a focus, just finish the remaining inputs for the Ultra. It still requires a bit of reaction on your part to see if the opponent just blocked a cr. MK or if the opponent did something about it. With a bit of practice however, you will be able to react consistently to your opponent's actions and punish accordingly. When you counter a focus with the Ultra, make sure you're using this on an opponent whose character doesn't have a backdash that's fast and travels far (Chun-Li, Fei Long, Rose etc). If you cancel a max range cr. MK into focus, their back dashes will recover in time to punish you instead.

This is also a solid anti-air option, and when it hits, it feels euphoric. You want to make sure you space it so that if your opponent does do a jump attack, you want to be in the range where it would hit. The ideal range to anti air with the Ultra is where if the jump attack would hit so that they would be in range to still connect with light attacks. This is because you want to cover both a jump attack and an empty jump. If they jump at a range where only the jump attack would hit, but outside of ranges where light attacks wouldn't reach, they could be able to bait out your Ultra with an empty jump and punish you. At closer ranges, the opponent is taking a risk even if they empty jump. They might be able to do an invincible attack, or do something that keeps them in the air longer, but you're still likely to catch them in their landing frames if you time and space it properly.

A successful anti-air Ultra would look like the jump attack is touching Akuma while Wrath of the Raging Demon is starting up. So when he's saying "Prepare yourself!", it should look like the jumping attack should connect. With proper timing and spacing, you will catch your opponent and give them one thousand deaths for a delicious reward of 510 damage.

Demon Armageddon Execution

This can be pretty difficult to execute at first, but it's a must for any Akuma player to be able to pull this off in a real match.

Comboing into Demon Armageddon off of st. HP is fairly easy. What you can do is st. HP, then immediately go either diagonal up or vertical up (this is purely preference). Next, you must go vertical down, down-back, back, up back and press three kicks twice. So if we were to look at this in numerical direction code, it would look like this:

st. HP, 72147 KKK, KKK.

Although the game tells you that the motion is two up + 3 kicks, you don't have to do vertical up to pull it off. You can even do diagonal up and the Ultra will still work. Also, you'll notice that you press the 3 kicks twice at the end. The first is cancelling the normal into a teleport, then the second kick will activate the Ultra. The Ultra works because the game stores the directional inputs longer when activating Ultra Combos.

Another way you can try is like this:

st. HP, 7 + KKK, 2147 + KKK.

This method should work too, just try any of these or other methods that you find yourself comfortable with.

When practicing the combo, first try to hit this at least 10 times in a row without failing. Next, try to hit the combo while doing fireball FADC combos as well, since it's important to be able to do the motion after dashing as well. This can give you more avenue for damage, so practice many, many times. Also, when practicing, try to make sure you can pull off the combo without Akuma ever having the red aura from the teleport around him. You can still combo even if the red aura is out there, as long as you timed the Ultra correctly. Being able to combo into the Ultra without seeing the red aura will always guarantee that your Ultra will hit.

You can also combo into Demon Armageddon with other normals as well, such as close st. MP, cr. MP, close st. MK, cr. MK, far st. HP, and cr. HP. The latter two aren't that difficult to combo into, since you're given enough hit stun, but the others are not so easy. With any of the weaker normals, you must cancel the Ultra in the very frame that your teleport activates. You'll sometimes see that even if Akuma doesn't have the red aura surrounding him and he's perfectly coloured the way he is, sometimes you'll still miss the combo, simply because you were about a frame or two off. These aren't as practical as cancelling Ultra 2 off of st. HP, but it's fun to do if you can pull it off consistently.

Ultra Selection

Akuma's Demon Armageddon is generally the recommended choice of Ultra against most of the cast. It gives you a safe escape option, and it also gives you a comeback factor. It doesn't do as much damage as Wrath of the Raging Demon, but since you can combo into it off of most normal attacks, you're given more opportunities to land Ultra 2 than Ultra 1.

Think of it this way; you have Ultra 1 equipped. You need to run away, but if your opponent has a move that can punish your teleport, you're guaranteed to eat a punish. Also, if your opponent has the life lead, the only way you can come back is if they jump and you Ultra 1 them... So what if they don't jump at you, and just sit back? What if your opponent is just outclassing you in the ground game, to the point where they don't feel the need to jump at you? Now your ability to comeback is limited, right? Lastly, even if you knock your opponent, since you have to guess whether your opponent is going to delayed wake up or regular wake up, option selecting into an Ultra 1 can be quite troublesome.

At least when you have Ultra 2 equipped, if your opponent makes a mistake and you can punish it, you can combo into it for massive damage. That, and you also have a setup you can do right after. If your opponent remains defensive, and you manage to frame trap successfully into a combo, you're at least guaranteed to combo that can lead into a full Ultra. Sure you lose damage, but you still get decent amount (think about characters like Ryu's Metsu Hadouken or Chun Li's Kikosho, which does very little damage, before you complain about the damage scaling you get from teleporting into Demon Armageddon). You have an Ultra that you can combo off of from a normal, which not many characters have. As far as anti airs go, Wrath of the Raging Demon is definitely a scary anti air, but that's only if your opponent is going to jump at you. It's not like Akuma has no other anti airs anyway, so don't think you're losing a lot by not using Ultra 1.

The only matchups where I feel you should pick Ultra 1 are Blanka (punishing Blanka balls), T. Hawk (punish Condor Dive), Rolento, Zangief (anti air), Claw (punish full screen off the wall dives), and Hugo (anti air). Rose is somewhat debatable, but for everyone else, pick Demon Armageddon and have no regrets.