Hiya!

Can you believe it’s been more than 30 whole years since Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie came out? More importantly, can you believe I haven’t seen it yet? I have seen clips of it here and there. That’s why I’m familiar with Cammy‘s twisting neckbreaker Super Art 2 in Street Fighter 6. Even so, I have never seen the movie in its entirety.

Well, I hadn’t until very recently anyway. I know the YouTube algorythm works in mysterious ways, giving me things I didn’t know I wanted. I’m still surprised how it, just out of the blue, decided to recommend the entire Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie to me! Not the sanitized version, mind you. The uncensored version with the original Japanese voice acting! Yeah, the one where you see Chun-Li… you know. Yeah, that version!

As I didn’t really have anything to do, I went to my television (as I didn’t want to watch it on my phone), queued it up, made myself a bag of microwave popcorn (yes, I really do that) and hunkered down to watch what a lot of fans are saying is the best movie adaptation of Capcom‘s famous fighting franchise. After 102 minutes have passed, while I can say Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie is indeed the best movie adaptation of the game, that’s really not saying much when you really look at the competition. What’s more important is if it’s actually a good movie and to that I say a resounding… kinda.

The basic plot of Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie focuses on M. Bison, the leader of the Shadaloo international crime syndicate, brainwashing fighters from all over the world and turning them into unstoppable assassins under his control. This leads him to Ryu as an analysis of Ryu‘s fight with Sagat reveals his high fighting potential. While this is happening, Chun-Li and Guile joined forces in an attempt to take down M. Bison and Shadaloo.

Before anything else, I have to say, despite it being more than 30 years old, Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie’s animation is still gorgeous! I’m not a videophile or anything and I know they did some form of upscaling to make it more palatable to viewers who have gotten used to HD. Even with that, I can still tell the people who did the animation really put a lot of effort into this! There are some times, mostly when people are talking, when I can still see some reusing some animations. Those are the exceptions to the rules rather than the norm.

The really fluid animation really get to shine during the fight and action scenes. There are a lot of them and, oddly enough, that’s both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s good because the animation in all of them is fantastic. It’s bad because several of them are incredibly short! A good example of this is the match between Blanka and Zangief. You see the two of them get introduced and they fight for a bit before… cutting away before we get to see who wins. This makes them just glorified cameos!

To be fair, they do make up for these brief bouts with the much longer fight scenes. There are probably 4 to 5 standout fights, depending on whether or not you count the climax as either one singular big fight or a couple of them done back-to-back. These fights are long and drawn out and, most importantly, satisfying.

Probably my favorite fight in Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie has to be the one between Chun-Li and Vega. Although the climax with M. Bison taking on both Ryu and Ken is still really good, the battle between Chun-Li and Vega is just more visceral. It feels more dangerous because Chun-Li wasn’t expecting a fight after she got out of the shower! Vega also comes off more unhinged than what I expected as he’s much more homicidal here than narcissistic. It’s more of a battle for survival for Chun-Li more than anything. So, it feels much more satisfying when she finally takes down the killer matador ninja by kicking him through the wall.

Although the really good fight scenes are really good, Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie has a severe pacing problem. Remember how I mentioned that some of the fight scenes are very short? Well, that’s because they had to animate a whole lot of establishing scenes and people just doing nothing! There’s that one scene whereM. Bison flies to his secret Shadaloo fortress, which takes almost 3 minutes. Okay, it’s a good introduction for the evil bad guys. It’s kind of needed. I don’t think we needed a 1-1/2 minute scene of Ryu just walking the street of Calcutta. I guess this is to show the Shadaloo cyborgs are hot on his trail. Still, it’s just boring to watch him wandering! I would’ve been so much happier if they devoted more time to the fighting instead of those scenes where nothing is happening!

Finally, I do have to talk about the music in the movie. Is it too much to ask for them to put any of the tunes from the games in the movie? I really don’t understand this as Capcom produced it. So, why didn’t they just license the music and plug them in here? It wouldn’t be so bad if most of the music didn’t come off like generic rock songs. The only exception would be the song playing during the big fight with Ryu and Ken teaming up against M. Bison. It’s pretty J-pop but inspiring, making it stand out. I’m still deciding if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, though.

All-in-all, I am happy I got to finally see Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie in its entirety. It does feel like it is something special but, at the same time, it’s hard for me to recommend to anyone who’s not interested in Street Fighter. It’s the overall pacing which really hurts it as the slow moments do feel like they drag on for too long. Honestly, in retrospect, maybe watching the clips might have been the best way to enjoy it.

Byee!

Have you seen Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie? What did you think of it? Let me know in the comments section below!