Wow that was bad

There are some things I never thought I’d say about an anime movie, but holy crap that was bad.

If you’ve read any of the other reviews, then you might already have an idea as to what I’m going to say. But before I go on my rant, here are a few details for ya.

The idea is this. Ryu, our main man, is having issues. He’s starting to get possessed by something called the Dark Hadou. Maybe I missed it, but I never really ever caught a clear cut picture of just what this Dark Hadou is, other than something powerful and evil. Why is it trying to possess Ryu? Unless I missed this too (it was past 2am and the movie was grinding on my nerves), it never gets explained either. Either way, it’s a problem for Ryu – he doesn’t want any of this creepy power.

Then he gets a surprise while his friend Ken visits – Ryu apparently has a little brother and good times are had. And, well, the majority of the movie? Fighting and Ryu having his personal Hadou issues. So where’s the rest of the plot. Apparently a mad scientist has been plucking up all the skilled fighters he can and taking them to his little secret hideout where he does experiments on them. And you’re thinking, “Is that it?” Um, yeah, it pretty much is. No, I’m serious, that really is it. Sounds magical huh?

I started this movie around 2-something am because I wanted something to watch and realized I hadn’t seen this yet. After exactly an hour I turned it off. I admit, I was tired, but mostly because the movie just dragged, as well as containing a really stupid and jumpy plot. I just couldn’t take it any more. And let me tell you that I’ve never done that before. It’s not a normal thing for me to just shut off a movie right smack dab in the middle of it. That should tell you something right there.

There are major problems with the plot. Aside from the fact that it’s lame, there are just things that are never explained. We learn that Ryu’s dad knew the whole Dark Hadou “technique” (I guess I could call it), but not how or why. People who have played the game would be able to pick out the majority of characters, including a weird goddess-sort of woman named Rose who shows up and chats with Ryu about his evil little problem. But I haven’t ever played the game, and I think even if I had, I wouldn’t hesitate to say it was really random and pointless. Then there’s a little girl who has about 10-15 minutes of screen time, but she has no real purpose so what that was all about was beyond me. There was a lot of pondering about “why does Ryu fight? What is it to be strong?” philosophical junk like that was just not working for this movie. Chun-Li mentions that she’s looking for her father…buuuut we never find out where he is (yet another loose end left untied). I could go on, but I’ll stop – you should get the picture by now.

As for animation, there aren’t any problems there. Chun-Li and her little hair ribbons were cute, Ken is always more fun than Ryu, and the fight scenes were decent with a reasonable amount of blood (not too much, not too little).

Dubbing? Hmm. I caught Ken’s voice after a while (Spike from Cowboy Bebop) and he’s always been a good voice actor and the rest were pretty good as well. But as I only had the dubbed version, seriously, is that was they were saying in Japanese too? Or were the translators just having major issues? It was just that some of the dialog was lame or random or something else. I really wish I had the Japanese version to compare.

So sadly, two stars because the only thing that didn’t suck horribly was the animation and voices attributed to the characters. And this is the only the second thing I’ve ever given two stars to – and I’m usually pretty lenient.

NT

Recommended:
No