Ridley (SSBU)/Neutral aerial

Overview
Ridley backflips in the air whilst swinging his tail around himself, similarly to 's neutral aerial albeit backwards instead of forward, possessing a sweet spot on the tip of the tail. The move loses some of its power in the later half of its duration, as Ridley almost completes his backflip.

Neutral aerial has the lowest start-up, end-lag and largest coverage of Ridley's aerials thanks to its large hitbox and duration, making it one of Ridley's most important moves with a surprising amount of use cases. The aforementioned properties allow it to combo into certain grounded options at lower percentages such as jab, forward tilt, down tilt and grab, while allowing confirms into forward aerial or another neutral aerial upon reaching mid percents. Its ability to auto-cancel from a short hop allows it to be used as an anti-air, effectively catching opponents attempting an aerial approach on Ridley as well as assisting Ridley in his own approaches.

However, the move has a few shortcomings, some of which can be exploited if used unwisely; though it is able to auto-cancel from a short hop its duration allows shielding opponents to quickly counter attack out of shield should they block it during its early stages. Additionally its safety on shield leaves a lot to be desired, only being as safe as -7 if landed properly with the early sweetspot hit-box. Finally, despite possessing a sweetspot on the tail its kill-power is lacking, only being able to score kills at much higher percentages or if used offstage while edgeguarding opponents.

Update History
 

Hitboxes

 * }

Attack
The move enables ledge grabs from both sides starting on frame 64.