Getting hit by a wakeup Critical Art can be one of the most demoralizing things in fighting games; you have a setup planned off of a knockdown then BAM, hit in the face with a random Shinku Hadoken. However, if you are prone to getting hit by this most nutty of options, there is now a way to blow up wake-up Critical Arts with the use of a kara cancel.
Noticed by r/StreetFighter user ZacharyM123: upon sweeping their opponent, players can kara cancel any normal to mash out their own Critical Art during the animation of their opponent’s Critical Art. In the video example, after knocking down with Chun-Li’s sweep, Zachary whiffs standing medium punch to get his timing right, before whiffing a standing light kick to kara cancel into his own Critical Art upon seeing the enemy animation.
Any character is capable of doing this with any normal, but they have to be at zero to account for the knockdown advantage they have on the opponent quick-rising to do the wake-up Critical Art; that’s why he uses the standing medium punch to time the light kick kara cancel. While Zachary says he is at +1 for this setup, he is actually at zero and your character must be at a neutral state in order to mash the Critical Art during the opponent’s animation.
Zachary states there are possible oki setups with this, so get experimenting to see how you can get this kara cancel tech to work for you.
Sources: r/StreetFighter; Zachary Mallicoat