Well, if you want players to pay attention and not be given the freebie of always facing the opponent, Ryu shouldn't have that mechanic either. So what if the Street Fighter games have you face the opponent? This is Smash Bros. And if this face opponent thing works only in 1 on 1 but not four player Smash or eight player Smash, that could mess some people up. Captain Falcon is not racing in his Blue Falcon (except to run over the target in his Final Smash). Sonic's not collecting rings. The Fire Emblem characters aren't moving one-at-a-time. The Star Fox characters aren't flying in their Arwings (except in the new Final Smash), the Pokémon aren't stationary on two platforms on the battlefield. Ridley had to be shrunk. Olimar had to be bigger. Not everyone has to be accurate to the gameplay of their original games. What next? Street Fighter health bars on top of the screen?
That's pretty backwards logic to be honest, at that point you might as well just give this mechanic to everybody and not have bairs
( like villager having the same fair and bair) and pivot- grabs,tilts and smashes at all in the game.
I mean I get that sometimes Sakurai gets a little carried away with how original and loyal, he wants to make certain character's movesets and quirks/abilities
( cloud and bayo come to mind), but that doesn't mean you should just omit every such speciality/privelege for other characters( as long as it's within reason, which it definitely is for ryu).
Not gonna lie, you just sound whiny with the way you're argueing. To give you an example, I once mentionned within the ganon boards, that it's pretty bull that bowser (Tough Guy)
had/has light armor compared to Ganon, despite being overall faster and more viable and not to mention Ganon actually wearing ****ing solid ass armor and when regarding canon, being untouchable by anything but holy weapons like Master sword and light arrows!!!
But does that mean I'm gonna go over to the Bowser boards and complain about this matter, while being way more justified in my reasoning?! NO! Just, no.
With your reasoning I could just as well say that ganon deserves Kirby's Inhale ability, just because his neutral B is legitimate crap >_>