vf4 series: kg

kg refers to doing a normal standing roundhouse kick then cancelling it in mid-animation(hence kg, for pressing kick(k), and then guard(g)); the characters who can do this are:

akira
kage
lion
sarah
wolf

there may be more characters who can kg.

the point of doing kg as an offensive tactic is that when the opponent reads an immediate attack-throw game aka nitaku, they can avoid it by doing E-DTE-G. or in certain cases, ARE. kg will force a successful evade to occur(because the cpu will read that you did an attack before they evaded, hence the fast, wide evade will occur), but your character will be free to move. a successful evade is actually SLOWER in recovery; it just doesn't seem like it because the character moves a FAR distance, dodging the opponent's attack.

now the advantage your character gains is not a lot, but if you quickly buffer a high throw, any normal high throw, it is guarenteed; they can of course, key in throw escapes, but that's a different story.

kg-> throw will foil EDTEG and ARE by forcing the opponent to essentially eat a delayed throw, since your throw will come out later, which gives it a very good chance of delaying the throw til the throw escape window has passed.

but you may wonder; couldn't you just do a delayed throw instead? yes and no. this could work vs EDTEG, but kg-> throw can foil ARE, which is its best use.

ARE is all round escape; it is done by doing an evade, then quickly doing a crouch dash. the unsuccessful evade, though slow, CAN be cancelled into a crouch dash, which will avoid high throws. if the evade is successful, the crouch dash will not come out at all, and instead, your character will be free to move and punish.

kg gets around this by forcing an ARE user to remain standing and eat the throw.

case in point, this is why vf4:ft akira users do kg-> spod at large advantage; the successful evade recovery's been increased from vf4:e, giving a guarenteed spod if the akira buffers it perfectly after kg.

kg is also sometimes useful as a defensive tactic; it will foil high throws, while still giving you enough time to block any mid-level attacks. will of course lose to delayed throws.