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So once or twice in the past I have posted that the least viable puppets (accounting for all 3 styles) in the game were probably Akyuu and Kosuzu. The jury's still out on Kosuzu (her non-Extra styles seem to have very little going for them except maybe priority Word Break shenanigans for Defense, and even her Extra seems underwhelming at first glance), but I can now say with certainty that all of Akyuu's styles have a major niche that they can fill.
Assist Akyuu is obviously (an arguably inferior) Shedinja and Extra Akyuu has been getting a lot of attention in the expansion for priority Eternal Record = 8 turns of dual screens + Safeguard at the expense of a team slot, but after using her I'm now convinced that her least-talked about style, Defense Akyuu, is SEVERELY underrated.
To wit: Defense Akyuu has 50/70/65 defenses, which are barely passable even after being buffed to 60/80/65 in the expansion. She also has nonexistent offenses and a very poor 50 speed. What she does have, however, is priority Will-O-Wisp, Revolving Illusions (aka. Illusion-type Foul Play), St. Elmo's Fire (Illusion-type Knock Off) and First Aid Treatment. Yes, she's basically a Void-type Sableye with slightly better defenses as of the expansion, and that 80 base defense holds up extremely well when she can inflict at-will priority Darken. And just like Sableye, she does very poorly against spread attackers due to not having any status move that inflicts Weaken, so keep her away from those.
There are some differences between her and Sableye apart from those: Revolving Illusions isn't quite as good as Foul Play because Sableye gets STAB on Foul Play and she doesn't. Void also isn't as good a typing as Ghost/Dark: while they both get only one weakness (Dark or Fairy) and one major immunity (Illusion/Fighting are both fantastic immunities to have), Sableye has additional immunities to Psychic/Normal and a single additional resistance to Poison.
