I've covered Voldo on the first page, I dont know what else to add...
Mitsu gets a lot of mix up opportunities on voldo voldo cant step and Voldo has no tools to deal with stance (both of them), mitsu can step Voldo and use his strong SS punishers, so basically mitsu should rape voldo. The only advantage voldo has is his strong punishment which CAN be a factor in this matchup, but in fact it isnt b/c this punishment (6:6B) is only applicable to RLC B in other cases it is only possible if mitsu is either reckless or require dire amount of anticipation (like with punishing b:A for ex). Mitsu combos get great on BT voldo..
In USA I've played MM's against Bibulus (5-2) , Esom (5-2) and Manta (4-5 or 3-5 dont remember). During this money matches I've realized how very troublesome Voldo SG damage is. I am well aware of his strong SG game but when ppl have specific game based around damaging SG - I've encountered it for the first time.
during his mm's I was totally dominating the game, but I still lost games due to this SG factor. As for Manta, his Landfish and MC setups were so surprising to me and I never saw anybody use it, it was very impressive and in fact, once he realized I dont know how to hadle this, he just abused it. At this point I must add just one more thing Manta opened my eyes to. I know GI is/might be troublesome for Mitsurugi, so I figured as much as voldo has great GI it might be bad, still I thought Mitsu GI is great too, so it would turn out fine in the end, BUT I've never realized how effective 4_1G with Voldo is! Manta used it very effectively (in fact I've never seen anybody GI so well) and bulit up SG damage extremely fast.
All this along with aforementioned just lead me to losing this MM. But I think Manta would agree with me that if we played another MM after this I would have won that since main thing that gave him a good edge over me and won him the game was my unawareness of LF_MC transitions and tech traps.
So what I want to say by this I still believe that in reality this matchup is either favorable or neutral, but in theory it should be bad for mitsurugi b/c of how powerful Voldo's 6:6B punisher is. Same thing with Sophie, I've played Suriad about hundred games during my stay in Vegas and I destroyed him badly even though he's a great player with incredibly good sophitia knowledge and application, but still I dont think anybody can punish everything as long as you put some pressure on him. Thats the bottom line. In my belief Voldo-Mitsu is 5/5 and Mitsu/Sophie is 6/4 (mitsu adv) b/c I value factors like distance and opportunities to set up damage above numbers. But on paper those matchups are horrible for Rugi, so I'm thinking maybe I've never met a proper Voldo and Sophie player, though Manta and Suriad seem pretty damn close to my vision of perfect Voldo and Sophie.
Now on Cass. I must say I didnt have a lot of Cass practice, but her key advantages is her strong GI, strong punishment and great step as well as good CH and decent evasion. she can deal with stance way better that voldo and her punishment is way easier for many mitsu moves since its faster and easier input. Since her ability to deal damage is mostly reliant on CH, punishment and spacing - I find those the most troublesome for mitsurugi, but on the othe hand Mitsu has a lot more range than her. During my play with KDZ - which at least it seems to me that way is the best USA player , once I was past getting RO'ed by stuff I didnt expect in first two games (lack of char knowledge you see) I felt like I could really press the advantage slightly more often than he did, but then again he might punish me harder from guessing correctly. The only way I could match the damage is by 6B+K'ing under throws, which I did a few times, but overall, as good as it is, it is less reliable than simply ducking, so yes I could force my game more often, but got punished slightly harder for guessing wrong. Then again - calculating stuff like punishment and mixup damage is easy, what is hard, is to consider how effective spacing and opportunities it creates is for the particular match up. Stance play, especially relic is so amazing against characters with shorter range, even if you consider it weak on paper it works like magic in reality both upclose and for keep away/reverse mixup. this are things you cant reliably calculate. I think this matchup is about 5/5, with a slight adv to cass is you go by math.
