Japanese Title: Street Fighter II Movie
Related: Street Fighter II V (series version)
Similar: Spriggan
Watched in: Japanese & English
Genre: Action
Length: 1 hr. 41 min. movie
Positives:
- Faithful to the characters from the games.
Negatives:
- Not much to it outside a series of duels.
- Animation stops between fights.
(Request an anime for review here.)
It’s not easy making a story based on a fighting game property. Fighting game stories have the problem where no one can win, just as one girl can’t be the “one true pairing” in a harem, otherwise you invoke the wrath of all who aren’t fans of the winner. Even when the story is a simple “heroes versus villains” affair, they can’t kill off the villains because it didn’t happen in the games. (If they ever do, they pretend it never happened in the sequel.) Really when adapting such games, they should do what League of Legends did a few years ago – retcon all lore and remove any ties between game and story beyond having characters in common.
For Street Fighter II The Movie, it’s the straightforward approach one would expect of the genre. Supervillain M. Bison has set plans in motion to crush the competition by brainwashing powerful fighters into becoming his pawns. Chun Li of Interpol heads up the counteroffensive, trying to recruit Major Guile and other fighters to her side. They are against the clock as Bison closes in on Ken and the legendary fighter Ryu.
If you haven’t guessed already, this brainwashing plot is merely a means to have Ken fight Ryu for the ultimate fan service action. I’d say it’s a spoiler, but why insult your intelligence? The whole film is fan service. This is why the fans are here.
Street Fighter II pairs up fighters with some semblance of story connection, such as Chun Li vs. Vega, as it moves from one duel to the next with a little story in between. I suspect the production team’s decision to have Ryu on a wanderer’s journey through Asia was just a means to encounter various fighters along the way. You know what? It works. At least they didn’t go for the clichéd tournament story. Though a few characters do feel shoehorned in with barely a justification, story-wise. Again, fan service.
If you want more story, you will have to see the live action Street Fighter movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as Guile and Kylie Minogue as Cammy (yes, the pop singer).
As a fan service film, you can’t stray from the source material, particularly when it comes to characters. This gets weird when seeing them in their signature costumes. I mean, why is Cammy wearing a green swimsuit that gives her a wedgie when assassinating a politician? Doesn’t make sense, but if you want to stick to the games…
There are a few things I found too dumb, even for what this anime is. For example, one fight takes place on the wings of a jet in flight with no adherence to physics. Then there’s Bison’s cyborg. It travels around the world observing fighters and scanning their power levels for his grand plan. Somehow, this obviously half-machine can walk around allied HQ without anyone noticing. In fact, nobody notices this thing anywhere.
It’s funny I should mention the live action movie earlier, since while writing this review, I realised I would rather watch that version over this animated one. Not because it’s better – the anime is leaps and bounds above – but because of how silly that movie is. I can laugh at how bad and inaccurate it is. There’s a big disconnect between a fan service movie like Street Fighter II and me. Simply, I am not a Street Fighter fan (I was into Soul Calibur). I have nothing against it, but without a connection via the games, I feel nothing for this anime unless they had gone the 10 extra miles to develop some complex story. I suspect most non-fans will feel the same.
I will give it credit: this is the best of the fighting-game-to-anime adaptations (unless there is one I haven’t head of), though it isn’t a high bar to beat. Street Fighter II knows what it is, knows what the fans want, and it focuses on this, as indicated by allocating 90% of the animation budget on the fights. And for what it wants to be, Street Fighter II The Movie is fine.
Art – Medium
The budget went into the fights, which look good, while scenes in between are static with minimal and often repeating animations. The cel drawn look adds nice grit to the action tone.
Sound – Medium
The dub is a watchable average. Good soundtrack of rock and electronic to pump up the action.
Story – Medium
A group of fighters work against a super villain’s plan for domination through mind control. It’s a straightforward story to facilitate the fan service.
Overall Quality – Medium
Recommendation: For Street Fighter fans only. The other potential audience outside of SF fans I can think of would be people who like to watch battle anime just for the 1-on-1 fights.
(Request reviews here. Find out more about the rating system here.)
Awards: (hover over each award to see descriptions; click award for more recipients)
Positive: None
Negative: None
Nefarious Reviews 