The go-to information depot is going to be https://virtuafighter.com/, the Tekken Zaibatsu of Virtua Fighter (F for Tekken Zaibatsu). While some of the written information is slightly out of date because of the recent balance pass, it's mostly still correct and generally won't steer you wrong, but you might have to put your critical thinking skills to use with some of the combo guides in particular since some moves have different properties or don't exist anymore.

Otherwise, I'd say check out Rooflemonger, who is really focusing in on the VF at the moment due to having been here for a while. I'd single out these videos in particular:

A lot of what I'm about to say comes from the game's tutorial modes and from videos like these, I've just quickly chopped stuff down into text format for if you don't have the time to watch a bunch of videos.

Despite how he looks, probably not Akira. It might be easier to learn bajiquan in real life than learning to play Akira, especially if you're not already familiar with VF. I'd also probably steer away from Vanessa and Aoi. Vanessa is essentially two characters in one, as her two stances have completely different moves, and Aoi is a character who benefits greatly from game knowledge, so she's unusually-handicapped by an inexperienced player. Pretty much anyone else is fine to pick up depending on what you're interested in:

• Grapplers: Wolf, Taka-Arashi, El Blaze, and Goh. Wolf and Taka-Arashi both have very traditional throw-strike games, while Goh has more utility and is sort of a middle ground between the two big boys, while El Blaze focuses on fast strikes and high mobility, along with a comprehensive grappling game. Pretty much everyone has a comprehensive suite of grapples in this game; the characters that are 'grapplers' are characters who are particularly focused on that aspect (for example, Wolf's normal throws are faster than normal).
  
• Strikers: Most of the cast fall into this category, with Jacky, Sarah, Jean, and Brad probably being the purest expressions of the concept. These characters have a suite of grapples, but those are complements to their extensive striking tools. Jacky is the purest 'striking strings' type character, while Sarah is focused on her Flamingo stance and Brad has a number of evasive sways; Jean has charge moves and strings that punish your opponent for blocking. Most of the cast is here, but the unmentioned others tend to spread out into hybridization, like Jeffrey being a hybrid grappler, the Chinese characters in general having strike->stance->strike gameplans, and so on.
  
• Gimmick: Eileen, Shun Di, Kagemaru. These characters have some kind of additional gimmick: Shun Di has an install that both unlocks new moves as he levels it up and then expends those levels to pay for some moves (or when hit by certain moves). Eileen has an extremely freeform playstyle that revolves around cancelling her strikes into one of her many movement stances, which themselves can chain into strikes that can cancel into stances. Kagemaru has a variety of strange movement tools and is extremely fast, but the focus is largely on his unusual tools rather than a pure speed character like Leon.

You can always change the character you play later, but you should pick a character who appeals to you for some reason; you'll have an easier time learning with a character you like.

Seriously do it. It's not quite as nice as some games today have (e.g. Street Fighter 6), but it will teach you some surprisingly advanced concepts, like fuzzy guarding (more on this below but this means something different in VF than it does in any other game). It will also explain some terminology to you, like 'circular', and teach you how throw-breaking works in this game (it's pretty different from other games).
On that subject, you can also do 'command training'. This will run you through the character's movelist and some basic starter combos, and it will also ask you to successfully deflect a move with any sabaki in your character's arsenal, which will help you learn how those work.

Virtua Fighter uses numpad notation, so Punch, Kick, and Guard are given using their initials (P, K, and G), and directions are given using arabic numerals. As a rule inputs are given with the assumption you're facing right, so 6 is forward and 4 is back. 2 is down.
If you're used to other games, the use of "while rising" might be confusing; VF doesn't use the same "while standing" state as a game like Tekken does. "While rising" means while rising in a jump (i.e. before reaching the peak of the jump), "while descending" means while falling in a jump.

Unlike in e.g. Tekken 8 where you generally have to sidestep pre-emptively to avoid attacks, Virtua Fighter has a more rigid system where you essentially become invincible to non-circular attacks, provided your sidestep begins after the incoming attack is launched.You can tell when you sidestepped successfully because you'll hear a loud 'wind' sound.
If you want to to step for position, do an Offensive Move (OM) instead. This is done by inputting sidestep~P+K+G. You'll move both sideways and forwards quickly, but this lacks SS invincibility and I believe you can't OM with a sidestep that dodged a move, but that might just be me being bad.

Tap G to stand up in place, or hold G and then press 2 after the animation starts to get up crouching. To roll, hold a direction and then tap G. To techroll, tap P+K+G (and optionally a direction) as you hit the ground. You can also tap kick to get up into an attack: K will give a mid attack, and 2K will give a low attack. These are actually pretty good, being safe in many circumstances and sometimes even allowing followups, but if you do them too much you'll become predictable.

You can check these in training mode. Most characters have a 12f jab and an 11f throw (Wolf's 6P+G and 4P+G are 10f). This is the impact frame, in Tekken terms, so a move that is -12 is jab punishable. -15 is launch punishable for some characters.
One important split that may not seem obvious is that there is a world of difference between being -5 and -6. If you're -5, you can fuzzy guard (33~G) to avoid highs and throws but block mids; at -6, this will get you thrown, because crouch becomes immune to high strikes on frame 1 but only immune to high throws on frame 2. (There's a tutorial about this, so make sure you do the tutorial battery.)

"Nitaku" literally means "two choices", and is a Virtua Fighter-specific term that you might see used without qualification in guides. Basically, this describes a situation where you can put your opponent in a 50/50 (so a 50/50 that advantages you). Much of VF, at any level beyond the basic RPS the game itself teaches you, revolves around this concept, especially in pressure situations.

VF recognises two kinds of combo extension, bound and heavy bound. Most characters only have one heavy bound move. There's no limit to the number of times you can trigger bound state during a combo, but there is a limit on how you cause those bounds: each specific move can only cause a bound once. In practice, this often means that you will get your launch, route into a bound, and then do an ender (at the wall, you can do much longer strings, so having your back to the wall is dangerous), similar to Tekken. For a lot of characters this means that you'll typically have pretty similar routes off any launcher, and juggles tend to be pretty fast.

Sometimes when you get hit, you'll see a wiggling joystick. This is the 'stagger' or 'struggle' mechanic, which nobody likes and we're all hoping will be removed for VF6. You can recover more quickly in this instance by mashing your stick and buttons. If you don't want to accidentally do some attack, start by holding G and then mash all your other buttons, which will cause you to recover guarding and stop you from throwing out some crazy move.

VF5 has a pretty lenient input buffer (it's like 11 frames), and that can sometimes be a problem. For example, if you land Taka-Arashi's P+K on most characters, you want to follow up with P, 43P, but if you just do that input then you'll get PP instead. What you want to do instead is PG, 43P. The G input clears the input buffer immediately, allowing you to terminate a string and do a different move (if the different move shares an input with the string).

This used to be more complicated but they compacted it for REVO, which I don't consider to be a bad thing.

• Lightweight: Basically every female character.
  
• Middleweight: Every normal size male character.
  
• Heavyweight: Jeffrey and Wolf.
  
• Taka: Taka-Arashi.

This compacting means that some combos that previously wouldn't work on Jeffrey and Wolf now will. Generally speaking you still need Taka-specific combos, but most combos that work on Taka will work on anyone (but you may give up a lot of damage).
Taka-Arashi has some special considerations: regardless of the move, he will not be launched if the move does less than 20 damage. He also won't be launched by knees, and has a special crumple animation for them instead. Some characters have Taka-specific combos that don't natural combo on other characters, or have juggle routes that wouldn't work on anyone else; the latter has more to do with his big hurtbox than his weight.

During mating press knockdowns (when the character gets slammed on their back with their legs up in the air), you can buffer ground throws during this animation and they'll still connect. This isn't a guarantee (throw escape is possible for non-catch throws), but it makes the window to make the attempt much more lenient.

This is basically like 'attack throws' or 'hit throws' in other games, but has some additional considerations. A catch throw is a move that does a throw-style animation, and may even use the throw button, but catch throws are categorized as attacks. This means that a catch throw will blow through a normal throw, but they can be sidestepped. Catch throws also universally cannot be escaped.
How can you tell if something is a catch throw?
Go into free training, set the CPU to break all throws, and then try some throws.
As a rule, if a move is "on hit P+G", like Goh's Murakumo (66K+G:P+G), it's a catch throw; this is also true for moves like Aoi's 46P:P+G. Conversely, Wolf's 66P+G and 9P+G are catch throws despite looking like typical throws.

You have to do the 236P+G input AFTER his foot touches the ground again. I have no idea why it's like this.

There isn't any. If you walk off the edge, or move yourself there with a move, you're out of there. Similarly, if you juggle your opponent off the edge and take yourself out as well, you'll probably lose, because you'll likely fall out of the ring first (since opp is being juggled in the air). Be careful, especially with characters who can move a long distance, like Vanessa with her Tackle.

In arcade mode, you can't continue if you lose to Dural, so play your ass off.

That's everything that jumped into my head while I've been practicing and reviewing information. Let me know in the comments if I made a mistake or if you think there's some info that's worth including.
This is really only meant to be some quick tidbits that you can skim through, as I'm not stunningly good at this game; I just wanted to condense some of the information I learned for other players.

Have fun out there!