Introduction
A Japanese tomboyish teenager, Makoto, seeks to restore her father's dojo to it's former glory. She is one of the new characters introduced in SF III: 3rd Strike, based around a more traditional concept of Japanese Karate compared to Ryu/Ken's more wildly supernatural developed American Karate.
Makoto is very unique, and still is to this day, as the first female fighting game character to be fairly slow and hard-hitting with just as much stamina as the average males (like Ryu and Ken), whereas all other female fighters before her had always focused on speed and always had notably less. Although her normal walk speed is incredibly sluggish, she probably has the best dash in the game, as well as high priority and several mixups off a knockdown. Her best tool however is the Karakusa, a very unique command grab which can be comboed off of, making way for devastating damage and, overall, a highly dangerous and frustrating offensive fighting style.
Super Arts
SAI (Seichuusen Godanzuki)
Use this for the weaker stamina characters, including Yun, Yang, Ibuki, etc.* It does excellent damage, and has numerous hit-confirms, in addition to the guaranteed karakusa ones. Especially good if you get good comboing it out of dash punches, which are fairly easy to confirm. Weaknesses include lack of range and bad anti-air, but the first shouldn't be an issue if you combo into it, and the second isn't a big deal, as she has plenty of good anti-air normals.
- Some people use this super exclusively for all characters, which is fine, but not the norm. Even within the norm, there are some borderline characters, such as Chun-Li and Twelve, where it comes down to personal preference and skill. However, unless you really have a hard time landing karakusas, do not choose SAI for Akuma and Remy; always choose SAII.
SAII: (Abare Tosanami)
Typically used for higher stamina characters including the shotos, Urien, Hugo, etc. A lot of its usefulness depends on your ability to land karakusas, especially on your half of the screen, since the overhead link is virtually useless, and fierce -> SAII w/o karakusa is rare except for punishes. If you get good with karakusas, though, this super is excellent, as it has massive damage and stun potential. For the most damage, go the axe-kick, hayate, hayate route; for the most stun, follow it up with fukiage, hp/fukiage.
Akuma and Remy, having the shortest stun bars, have one of the easiest 100% stun combos in the game (the "fukiage, hp" follow-up to the super). Given their weak staminas (and therefore extra damage after the stun), this is why SAII is nearly always recommended for those two. Makoto actually has 100% stuns on everyone except the 5 characters with the longest stun bar (Alex, Q, Hugo, Oro, and Dudley), but they involve either two uppercuts after the super, kara-uppercutting either the first or second one. The timing on the second uppercut is very strict, and those 100%s are much more difficult to execute consistently. There is also character-specificity in which kara-uppercut to do. However, you can still get 80-85% stuns on those characters with the same combo than 100% stuns Akuma and Remy, so it's still an extremely worthwhile super.
The only downside (aside from its usefulness being totally tied to your ability to land stun grabs) is that it has absolutely terrible recovery if you mess it up (i.e. the fierce gets blocked, you land the fierce but the super comes out too late, the opponent is too far on the far half of the screen, etc.) This shouldn't be an issue once you get comfortable with it, but under virtually no circumstances should you use it outside of karakusa or guaranteed punish combos. In other words, terrible wake-up super, terrible super for punishing someone whiffing moves at a distance, etc. Just don't do it.
SAIII: (Tanden Renki)
Obviously the last super of choice, this is more a "fun" super than a practical one. If you can get your opponent on the back foot and guessing wrong once or twice, you can get insane damage by the time the meter runs out. However, if you're on the back foot against an experienced player, you're pretty much screwed.