1/ His normals have limited reach. I don't think that's a very subjective statement; it might be relative, but he's the smallest characters in the XIII roster and in this case has one of the shortest reach if not the shortest.
2/ His specials ARE mostly unsafe. He only has two safe moves which aren't specials technically, they are EX Specials. Both counters, both versions of qcb P (non-EX) are unsafe. Anything you free cancel off the hcf K including df B (which is technically listed as a command move) is punishable. Df D is also punishable. Once again, only his Ex hcf K and Ex qcb P are -1.
3/ You cannot activate HD off his overhead. You can after you follow up his overhead into stance cancel s.C.
I also wrote ^that back in the arcade days when he didn't have the s.C cancel from d x2+K but those statements are still true unless I'm mistaken which I will gladly correct if that's the case.
1/
Globally yes he his short in his normals, but he has some of the best long range moves in this game, his far C comes in 6 is cancelable and goes hella far, his j.CD, doesn't have a long reach but the hitbox is so fucked up that it works in the same way you can't win into the air against him. d.B moves him forward while hitting, it makes for the short range and allows him to be one of the few character that can do something like d.B,s.A,d.B,s.A
And you know what? It has more range than Kim d.B, the character known for having long legs.
Hit slide goes quite far too.
2/
In the frama data you're right. In game it's a bit different. The hcf.K are unpunishable without a fast invincible SDM because of the canceling properties, and the pushback. Because else if you can punish it with a long range normal into an hd combo the delaying of the cancel will certainly screw your timing. This move is a weird rekka, you can't punish it for sure without it costing a lot of meter (2Ex for the few ones with the SDM for doing that).
The counters are definitively punishables (The whole match up turns around punishing those).
qcb.P are punishables if close but the problems is the same than with the hcb, because of the pushback you often ends too far away, and anyway a Chin won't do this move in guard if it's too easily punishable because he has no interest into doing it.
Lot of char have -10+ or so moves but they can still use it because in fight you can't punish them for doing that that much easily.
3/
Here it's my fail i copy pasted it but the people who talked about this understood it has "He can' hd after his overhead"
So if it's not true litterally you might want to remove it for clarity purpose.
-King's neomax is 1F, not 0
King's NM when done in the air, is 0F. Test it yourself, try jumping at the opponent, right when you're at about 1'0 clock of the character do the NM, AFTER The screen flashes try holding block--it won't work.
If you weren't blocking before the flash you will eat the NM. This much I know is true as I remember testing this back at Atlus, in fact it was Yu Namba (project manager for XIII console release) himself who showed it to me.
The same way i thought King EXSDM was 3 frames (instead of 2), the NM is 0. It's just you can't tell the difference between 0 or 1 frame with a regular test, same thing goes for weird hit box which make things seems slowers.