Sagat kara-cancelling his Light Kick to reach and punish Ibuki with a Tiger Uppercut.
A Kara Cancel is a mechanic that started off as a glitch in Street Fighter II that was later allowed as a mechanic and even used as part of character balancing in Street Fighter IV and Street Fighter V.
Description
Under most circumstances, many normal attacks have the character stay stationary during the animation. However, certain attacks move the character forward or backward in their initial startup, such as Ken's Forward Step Kick. It is then possible to immediately perform a second move that gains the properties of the first move, most commonly a throw. Though incredibly precise to perform, kara-cancels allow throws and special moves to gain extended range, enabling certain combos that would otherwise be impossible.
Initially, kara-cancels were a by-product of an intentional design to increase input leniency for Street Fighter II, allowing normal attacks to be cancelled into special moves in the first few frames of startup. Later titles would make kara-cancels a dedicated mechanic for certain fighters, most notably Sagat being able to cancel his Step Low Kick into special moves during its lengthy startup.
Tactics
Characters with effective kara-cancels such as Ken and Sagat benefit by having increased range in their attacks. Ken is notorious for his kara-canceled throws that make his regular throws rival the range of some of the longest ranged command grabs in the game such as Zangief's light piledriver. Sagat, a character with relatively low mobility, can kara-cancel into his special attacks to increase the range of his Tiger Uppercut or to slowly approach his opponent while pestering them with his projectiles. It should be noted that Kara Canceling doesn't offer any invincibility or safety of any kind and has their hurtbox move horizontally to quite a noticeable degree while moving forward.
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