Nekohashi

Nekohashi, a former Vampire Saviour player turned ST player, and an amazing one at that.
His partner in crime is Sako, also a VS player. So what are they doing playing ST? Hell if I know.
An established Yun player in 3s, chun-li in ST, and Bulleta player in VS. Together they make the Tougeki 07' SF:AE semifinalist team: Sakohashi!

..oh, and they qualified for SBO 3on3 as well, along with Nakanishi, who also plays VS. Damn those VS Players!

As a beginning ST player myself, I had the honor to play my good friend Nekohashi after some long discussions on characters. Luckily he has amazing grasp of the English language as he was a student here himself for a few years, and I didn't need to kick his ass with my sweet Japanese.

Nekohashi threw at me, various characters ranging from Guile to his godly O.Ken. I confidently managed to beat out most of his alternative characters, awaiting his world-class Ryu. Well, he eventually chose his main character, the nasty looking lime-colored Ryu. (I later will tell him to choose another color like the nice-on-the-eyes baby blue Ryu).

All I can recall from the relentless beatings is doing a wakeup reversal claw flipkick, and then getting hit by what I saw to be 80% life combos like f+hp(2hits), s.hp(close), super. Being a new ST player, I thought this was a revelation brought down by the ST gods of Japan. We played more and more games, and I slowly started learning that I couldn't rely on cheap tricks like slides and walldives at all if I were to win consistently. Neko told me to play solid ground games, and I started doing that. I would slim out perfects once in awhile, and beating Neko maybe one total game out of 5 or 6 matches. His mastery of the game makes me really look like I don't know what I'm doing at times (which I really don't mind you!) but it's a learning process I thought to myself.

Eventually, Neko called a "Best of 30 games" and I cringed. I was happy at the chance he gave me, but sad at the same time I know I would not give him any losses. After the games, I believe I came out with 7 or 8 total game wins and the rest of them were Neko's, an obvious conclusion I knew going into the games.

ST is one of those games that seems you need at least 10+ games to really pass judgment on a player, at least in my opinion. We exchanged good games all around, and Neko told me that I was quote "a lot better then I thought" which became music to my ears as I thought he would say something like yaritainda.