Geese Howard is a wealthy martial artist and crime boss who operates in South Town. He plans a successful ambush to eliminate his martial arts rival Jeff Bogard. Jeffs two sons named Terry and Andy witness the murder along with their master Tung Fu Rue. On Tungs request, the two brothers leave South Town to learn and master their own style of martial arts, because they are no match for Geese due to their ages.
Ten years later, the brothers return to South Town, and they reunite with Tung as promised. He informs them that he will teach only one of them a secret technique that can defeat Geese. The two brothers plan to battle each other in the King of Fighters Tournament which is sponsored by Geese, with the purpose of learning the move to avenge their father.
Previous Movie:
Fatal Fury: Legend of The Hungry Wolf
Fatal Fury 2: The New Battle
Geese Howard survives his encounter with Terry Bogard. He soon goes into hiding with intentions on healing from his wounds. Later, he receives a visit from his half brother Wolfgang Krauser, who seeks to defeat Terry only for entertainment purposes.
Terry encounters Krauser in a dark alley and immediately his skills are tested. After Terry is soundly beaten. He then loses the will to fight again. While witnessing Terry's defeat, a young boy named Tony tries his best to help him regain his confidence to take up Krauser's rematch. But Terry is overcome with fear, and he soon becomes consumed by an alcohol habit.-summary
Directed by Kazuhiro Furuhashi, Fatal Fury 2: The New Battle is based on the SNK game Fatal Fury 2, which is a martial arts fighting game that was released in 1992. The first movie actually developed quite a solid following. Therefore, a sequel was quickly in the making and to the fans delight, FF2 features most of the line up from the video game, with Terry Bogard, Andy Bogard, and Joe Higashi returning from the original film.
Fatal Fury 2 surpasses its predecessor Fatal Fury: Legend of the Hungry Wolf in every way imaginable. But this wasn't a very difficult task to accomplish at all. Since the original was so terribly flawed and was barely watchable for me.
Fatal Fury 2 really isn't that bad of a fighting anime. For one thing, it has nothing to do with tournaments, and it takes a bit of time to actually tell a story. The pacing is very good as the story follows Terry's descent into a washed up fighter. There's quite a bit of background delivered on him through flashbacks, which is meant to play into him regaining his confidence. This at all wouldn't be possible if not for the addition of Tony, who actually serves as a useful character. During this time, several fights are squeezed in but I wouldn't consider any of them breathtaking. Should Fatal Fury 2 be compared to Street Fighter II(SFII), then each of these battles would be barely mediocre at best. In truth, Ryu vs. Fei Long from SFII blows everything away in this without the use of a light show.
Despite being the main character. Terry is actually overshadowed by Wolfgang Krauser to me. Krauser is a pretty good villain, and is the show stealer for sure. Personally, I consider him to be the best of the main villains out of the three movies. Krauser is also given an ample amount of background, which helps keep the movie pretty interesting. The first meeting with Krauser is awesome, and anyone can be fooled into thinking they're about to be watching a great anime.
Now this is where I'm going to straight sink this movie, because this is where it's suppose to excel. The problems for me lies in the poorly animated battles for the most part. The fight scenes have choreography that is barely on an average level, and as if this wasn't bad enough. They either consist of 10 seconds of unseen action, one blow victories, stills, or very little martial arts, with the characters trademark moves being the only attacks used. This is something a fan of the game may find to be very entertaining, but for those searching for a good martial arts anime. This is the definition of mediocrity, and I have to call it like I see it.
Terry's battles with Krauser happens to be the best by far, but when compared to everything else, there really wasn't much competition anyway, and even these battles only manage to get by. The last battle suffered from very inconsistent artwork, sloppy animation, and re-used cels quite a bit. The ending is rather good, but I don't think it makes up for many of the movies flaws.
The artwork has only one thing going for it and that's the character designs. Unfortunately, even here things aren't all that peachy. The characters are pretty faithful to the video game with Krauser being the only exception. This really isn't a bad thing though, because the writers intentions were to portray Krauser as being ten years younger than in the video game. However, the artwork declines in quality, which can be very noticeable even to the untrained eye. Thankfully, the movie has a good soundtrack that mainly works for the battles, and makes a lot of them seem better than what they really are.
Fatal Fury 2: The New Battle could have been worst, but it could have been better as well. The plot was there, but when it comes down to a martial arts anime, then the action must standout. This is an area Street Fighter II shined in. There is very little here screaming "look at me!". FF2 is actually the best of the series to me. Over the years, a majority of Fatal Fury fans have eaten this one up, and has even went so far as to consider it great anime. Well, we all have our opinions, and that's all I can say about that.
I only recommend this to fans of the video game and the very easily pleased. Non fans, casual anime fans, and anime fans who take their stuff serious may find a bit of enjoyment here too, but I just can't recommend it. There are far better fighters out there. FF2 has a 75 minute run time.
Pros:
-Improved animation and fight scenes
-Decent plot and soundtrack
Cons:
-Fight scenes really aren't much due to very poor choreography
-Bad animation
-Mediocre artwork
