Guys... Try this:

Switch your guard from left to right. You notice that the animation change? Your hero have to raise his arm/weapon to a certain position?

I noticed that often when someone attacks me. He doesn't have to go through the same animation? He can switch from left to right and attack me SKIPPING the whole 1/2 to full second of guard switch animation... WHY? OMFG LOLZ PLZFIX KTHXBAI !!!

Also, did you notice that when you dodge, you do the whole dodge animation, but sometimes a Hero can dodge and then press an attack AFTER the dodge already started and he will change into a dodge attack !? This works on Nobushi the best because her normal dodge and dodge attack look very different. But this works on every dodge attack character. Why are they cancelling the animation of the dodge? I thought they dodged and then they bugged out into a dodge attack ! What happened? OMFG LOLZ PLZFIX KTHXBAI !!!

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Those are all "kara-cancels". They are in the same school of "bugs" as the "zone attack bug"; they are ALSO the result of the "input buffer". Without the input buffer, you cannot cancel anything into anything else and you have to press all buttons at exactly the same time. So you can NEVER dodge attack unless you can press a direction, X and R1 at EXACTLY the same time. You can't.

The Zone Attack kara-cancel works like this... You start a heavy attack, then CANCEL into a zone-attack (similar to a soft feint), that's why there are one indicator first, then cancelled into another. It's NORMAL and EXPECTED behavior. Stop being idiots. Due to the game having tight control inputs. When you press light + heavy, the game often read it as heavy first, then it registers the light as well. Now the game realize you want to ZA instead of heavy. So it cancels your heavy into a ZA.