Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie - Serious fans of the game will think it's great. Others.....

Shadowlaw is a brazen terrorist organization that seeks world domination. Their leader Bison captures or recruits the world's greatest street fighters to further his plans for world terror. The fighters are given two choices: join Shadowlaw or die. He also uses a form of brain washing on them to carry out assassinations. Two martial artist by the names of Ken Masters and Ryu are on Bison's hit list. Meanwhile, an Interpol task force led by Chun-Li are plotting Shadowlaw's destruction.-summary


Street Fighter II:The Animated Movie is a 1994 martial arts anime directed by Gisaburo Sugii (Lupin the 3rd:The Secret of Twilight Gemini),and is based on the popular video game of the same name by Capcom. The film contains each of the characters up until Super Street Fighter II. Therefore, fans of particular characters will at least get the opportunity to see their favorite do something. Albeit, in some cases, they won't get to see very much.

For those who may not know by now. I hate video game to anime films. Mainly because in terms of quality anime, almost none of them have cracked the ceiling of mediocrity. Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie somewhat fits into the category. Fortunately, for a video game to anime translation; the film isn't too bad because it gives something to the fans, and it's many notches above awful titles such as Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury: Legend of the Hungry Wolf, and Devil May Cry. Street Fighter delivers well animated choreographed fights between some of the most popular characters in the SF universe.

SFII contains some of the best hand to hand action scenes in fighting anime. The animation is very fluid during the action scenes. The characters battle with real martial art moves for the most part, and I enjoy the attention to detail. Some of the characters actually perform the regular moves from the game, and most of them are very cool to see.

The artwork is great also, with the characters perfectly resembling their video game counterparts. The art style fits perfectly for this type of anime. I also enjoyed the soundtrack, with standout songs being Them Bones by Alice in Chains and Blind by Korn. However, several times I can remember, the BGM was quite boring, and has caused me to come quite close to dosing off. In other cases, it brought out the best during some fight scenes. The voice actors and seiyuu are pretty good to me. I don't have any complaints except the dialogue can be very cheesy at times. Plus, there's a bit of profanity thrown out there, which can be a bother for some.

I have to give credit to the production team for bringing SF to the TV screen for fans. Now, speaking from a fans point of view. I really did enjoy seeing some of my favorite characters going at it. But that's where the major problem begins. As in all video game to anime I have seen. Non fans of the game will come away feeling as if they wasted their time. Outside of the main characters, it is highly unlikely a non fan will learn anything about the remaining cast. Character development is very low to non existent, because so many characters were just squeezed in. Characters appear only to deliver a couple of moves, and disappear as quick as they came.

The plot is very boring, and I was rarely sucked into the story. Thankfully, the pacing makes the movie less painful. The fights are well dispersed, and most of them make the wait well worth it. In truth, the fights are the only reasons to bother with this.

Street Fighter II is something that I can only recommend to fans of the franchise. However, if you're not a fan of the franchise, but love action anime in any form. Then this may be for you as well. It's definitely better than all of the fighting game to anime I have seen, and better than its so called sequels or side stories, but it's not a great anime by any stretch of the imagination. Non fans of the franchise and action films should skip it without hesitation. The film is 102 minutes.

Pros:
-Very good fight scenes
-Very good animation and artwork,
-Pacing, good for fans....

Cons:
-...bad for non fans
-Boring plot
-Too many character appearances