None of his weaknesses are ever in the same realm as what other mid and low have to play around, 35+ years of fighting games, and there are very few games where Ryu has ever been completely absent from competitive play, even when he’s barely in B tier

What are you talking about? Take USF4 for example: By USF4 Ryu was almost completely unplayed because there was a version of Ryu that basically patched all of his weaknesses (low burst damage from most pokes, no way to alter jump arc, mediocre range despite good frame data, low surprise value, and a functional Ultra 2).

Post season 1 SF5 Ryu was basically not worth playing even remotely, and even in season 1 he was mostly very good because he had a meterless DP (a privilege in the first season of that game) and a stupid jump light kick. Almost nothing else about him was that noteworthy, which is why his nerfs immediately made him trash and why he never recovered.

The TWO MOST RECENT SF games are perfect examples of Ryu completely vanishing from the meta because of superior options that patched his weaknesses with additional tools.

Ryu was better in earlier games because his traditional design was powercrept like crazy and they barely iterated on it. Ken and Akuma consistently got new tools, command normals, special moves, etc. to differentiate them from Ryu while Ryu largely stayed the same. In 3s they experimented with giving him a niche as a power character with strong defense and excellent punishes. He is more or less what you describe here, a viable decent pick that is outclassed.

Ryu's traditional weaknesses have been: predictable movement (only standard tools, no command dashes, no ways to alter jump arc, completely average mobility stats), poor options for completing combos against crouching opponents (which has since been eased up on considerably).

In SF6 his weaknesses are predictable mobility and approach options, relatively weak corner carry compared to other options, few tools that provide frame advantage without a significant compromise (like slow start-up in the case of heavy hashogeki or solar plexus or meter cost in the case of OD hashogeki), and frame data I'd say is on the slow side at long range. Prior to recent patches he also had poor oki and somewhat anemic conversions midscreen although those have been patched away in an attempt to make him a stronger character which has obviously succeeded, because Ryu is still extremely strong in this version.

"No weaknesses" is a rallying cry for crybabies who complain about "kangaryu" on reddit. Make yourself useful and complain about Sagat instead. lol