The design is intentional. Many beat'em'ups try to both make hits look and feel like there is a ton of weight behind hits via hit stop, freeze frames and lots of recovery among other techniques. This slows down the game play in order to provide that sense of weight. Which is not a bad thing, but in VH I wanted to go a different route and make the game feel really good when you give it inputs. So you can control jump height, arc, turn around mid-air, dash in any direction, cancel out of a lot of moves into other moves. My design philosophy was, "if you think you can do it, you probably can". Within reason of course.
Think 2D Bayonetta/DMC/Marvel vs Capcom when it comes to input responsiveness and animations canceling and you got an idea of what I've gone for in game play. I've had a few tough critics play the game so far and all I can hope is that your reaction to playing is similar to theirs.