V System

V-Skill

Nishodoku

Nishodoku: F.A.N.G.’s signature poison attack, this slow-moving, unblockable poison puff travels slowly for just over four seconds before dissipating. Nishodoku is unique among Street Fighter attacks in that it doesn’t cause hitstun or blockstun. It doesn’t even interact with opposing projectiles, passing through them instead. Indeed, all it does is inflict F.A.N.G.’s standard 50-damage poison effect the opposing character. You can still throw Nishodoku when Nishikyu and Ryobenda projectiles are on screen, and this serves to supplement those ranged options. Nishikyu covers the sky, Ryobenda blankets the ground, and Nishodoku works as an annoying almost-unavoidable luxury when you can get it out. If you’re against an aggressive, attentive enemy, they’ll probably respond to Nishodoku by immediately dashing in because it doesn’t actually control space. If you have HK/EX Ryobenda out beforehand, and they’re not sure when you’re going to use LP/MP Nishikyu instead, that’ll go a long way toward allowing you to safely deploy Nishodoku. Unlike Ryobenda’s poison mine, Nishodoku remains on screen if F.A.N.G. gets hit after throwing it.

V-Reversal

Nikaiho

Nikaiho: One of the game’s most specific V-Reversals in what it’s useful for, Nikaiho features F.A.N.G. interrupting his blockstun with a wiggling forward crab-walk that moves half the screen’s distance forward for 35 frames, with the last four frames vulnerable to attack. Against light attacks up close, this won’t lead to anything—F.A.N.G. will end up well behind the enemy, won’t have a shot at a counter attack, and might even be at a disadvantage. But against certain blocked specials and mid-range tactics (like half-screen fireballs, Dhalsim’s pokes, and specials like Birdie’s Hanging Chain), Nikaiho becomes a free path to close range and maybe a guaranteed combo or throw.

V-Trigger

Dokunomu

Dokunomu: F.A.N.G. flickers briefly to indicate the onset of his V-Trigger state, but then can move as usual. Like with most characters, V-Trigger activation itself can be extremely useful as a hit-check tool. For F.A.N.G, this means extra link combo opportunities after important normals like standing and the second hit of standing , and an extra hit-confirm tool off the first hit of his Nirenko unique attack.

As for the actual power-up state, Dokunomu is probably the simplest and easiest to apply of the game’s V-Triggers. For 15 seconds, F.A.N.G. is surrounded by a poison cloud in a large box area extending across his full height and armspan, and any enemy who touches this cloud is afflicted with poison: one point of stamina damage every 10 frames. A foe kept inside Dokunomu’s confines simply keeps poison on until they leave the field, and then poison ticks down for 500 frames (or until F.A.N.G. is hit) as normal. Staying in the field doesn’t stack; as with Nishodoku and F.A.N.G.’s poisonous specials, poison can’t be stacked, only refreshed.

This means that F.A.N.G. can dodge in and out to reapply poison (ideally about every seven seconds, without taking hits in between), rather than feeling obligated to stick to his opponent the whole time. (You can easily reapply poison at any time from full screen with HP Nishikyu EX Nikankyaku, then a hit-check into Sotoja knockdown or LK Ryobenda blockstring, then a backward jump into runaway tactics while poison ticks down.) On the bright side, if F.A.N.G. does stick to his foe and they hit him, they won’t knock poison off; they can only knock poison off by leaving the Dokunomu field, then hitting F.A.N.G. with a ranged attack without entering the poison cloud again. Realistically, the most you can get out of Dokunomu is about 140ish damage from the equivalent of three poison re-applications (along with an extra ~60 damage in a hit-confirm combo if you link in and out of activation). Since F.A.N.G.’s V-Reversal is so peculiar and specialized, and since Dokunomu is a two-stock V-Trigger, you’ll probably get a chance to use this poison cloud every single round.