Completely agree, feels like johnny cage had his cancels put in first, and then they decided to give other characters them too, but they have a bunch of other tools that he doesn't! His A-list would be very interesting and good if none of the other characters had cancels.
Basically JC's useable normals seem to be f34 113 d4 and f24, and sweet lord why are his JIP's and d1/d3 so bad. I know his d4 is good, but other characters have a d4 just as good and still have a 6f d1 having a rushdown character who is negative or 0 on everything with a poke slower than half the cast makes no sense to me.
And in fisticuffs i barely ever get the knuckles up, and when i do i then need to get in on the person and by the time i do its already timed out, so i'm basically using the variation for one normal string, which yeah is a great string but really..
I take it on the words of JC mains that their character is fine, but i just don't see it. Cassie does everything he does and better.