One of my few technical gripes with the way sprite-based fighting games are made is that when the characters connect it feels like a sprite cutting into another sprite, be it Mugen or the meticulously hand-drawn Blazblue and its ilk, whereas in 3D fighters the collisions feel more "believable", especially when grappling: Barely noticeable clipping and characters that usually react with an adequate physical model to being kicked in the face.
My question is what is the most impressively animated 2D fighting game/series that you can think of, in terms of the aforementioned scrapping animations?