Thanks for taking the time to have this discussion. I know it can be really unpleasant to have someone show up to talk about your project only for them to go "Well actually..." -- I hope it comes across that I'm saying all this as a fan of 2d fighters and also as a fan of your concepts.
That said, I don't feel like I'm looking for "simulation" here, but I think I'm looking for something that uses more than the trappings of 2d fighters. To be clear, I'm not asking for any of the specific examples in my previous post, but rather, I was using them to show the types of decisions they represent -- the sort of "I think I can guess what you're going to do, so I'm going to try to counter it" style of thinking that forms the core of these games. It doesn't have to be "at 100 miles an hour" -- in fact, I'm not really sure how you'd go about pushing that in a TTRPG format -- but from my perspective, a little bit of "Yomi" is what would make the difference between "this feels like a 2d fighter" vs "this feels like two guys punching each other in most RPGs." That said, it's starting to sound like you're actually aiming more for the vibe of "anime based on a 2d fighter" rather than trying to actually evoke the feel of the 2d fighters themselves, which is fine, but different.
Having said that, I have concerns about reling on players adjusting and tuning characters across multiple fights to solve something as simple as "A fight between two base characters is literally unwinnable by one of them." Especially if the solution is "You can't play a full grappler, because you'll just lose fights to zoners. You have to take some levels in zoner to compete." I think we can probably agree that having a common archetype like that be functionally unplayable without mixing in something else is probably an undesirable situation.
But ultimately I guess what I'm really trying to get at here is: What are the benefits of the way you are doing it now? What is it giving you? What sort of experience is it creating? I feel like it's easy to use "turn based with initiative" as a sort of default, instead of questioning the pros and cons of the approach. Is it giving you a feel you want? Is it fast and easy to learn relative to other approaches? Does it consume comparatively little time in play? What are you gaining from this design choice?
Ultimately, I understand the desire to make a game that's as much about the 'adventure' as it is about the fighting in these sorts of games, and I think the systems that support that adventure will be equally important, but I think if you advertise your game as being based on 2d fighters, you're going to set up a certain degree of expectations that you'll want to either try to meet or work through.