Video game fans there are a lot of bad video game movies out there and there's bound to be alot more made. However that doesn't mean that there aren't a few decent ones out there it just means that you have to look harder to find them and i've found a movie that I honestly feel is a decent video game movie which comes to us from the land of the raising sun and so here is my review Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie.
The plot of the film is M. Bison and his evil organisation Shadowlaw are hoping to increase their power be enlisting the world's top fighters their main target being Ryu who'll they try to recruit by any means necessary. Yeah I had to get this plot summery of Animenewsnetwork because even after watching the film I still had no idea what the actual story was which I think is due to the fact that the story is so thin that it might as well not even be there.
Now all of the actors in this dub where using fake names however since those names have been decoded i'll be using their real names. So starring in this dub is Skip Stellrecht as Ryu , Eddie Frierson as Ken , Lia Sargent as Chun-Li , Kirk Thornton as Guile , Peter Spellos as Sagat , Richard Cansino as Vega , Joe Romersa as Balrog , Richard Epcar as E. Honda , Debra Rogers as Cammy , Steve Blum and T.Hawk and I kid you not Bryan freaking Cranston as Fei Long.
I just want to say how awesome it is that Walter White himself was in an anime movie even tho he doesn't have a big role it's still awesome as hell. In terms of what I thought about the acting it was honestly pretty wooden I get that for alot of these actors this was their first role but they don't really give any emotion and I have no idea why that's the case since alot of these actors are really good and have proven that time and time again.
The animation for the film was handled by Group TAC but that's oddly enough not the most interesting part about the animation because also working on the film helping with the photography are animation giants Studio Ghibli. Knowing that Ghibli worked on this film is just insane to me but it doesn't change how I feel about the animation tho which while indeed impressive for the time it still look pretty cheap at least when it comes to the dialog scenes when it comes to the action scenes however it leaps of the screen.
Now then given the picture above I think you all know what scene that I have to talk about and yes I did see the unrated cut of this movie. The famous Chun-Li shower scene is every every single fourteen year old boy wants and it's awesome in every single freaking way and if i'm being honest it was the only reason why I wanted to even watch the movie so as you can no doubt tell I am a man of culture.
All jokes aside the fight that happens after the shower scene is shockingly intense like why more intense then the violence in any video game movie ever. I'm honestly glad that the film had intense violent scenes because of the fact that so many video game movie shy away from showing intense scenes where as this one not only shows them but revels in them and that to me is honestly really refreshing.
This film is honestly so freaking boring the film is an hour and forty minuets long but it feels so much longer then that. I think that the reason why it's boring to me is the fact that I couldn't find any hint of a plot and so all I was left with was a ton of talking scenes that go on and on with the occasional action scene which didn't go on long enough plus due to the lack of plot there's no character development at all.
Where all the characters are at the start of the movie is the exact same place they are at at the end of the film. In the game the characters might get some development but in this movie they don't get any what so ever and on top of that the characters just aren't that interesting the film is more focused on telling us why we should care for the characters instead of showing us and that just doesn't work at all you need to show us why we should care for them by making them actually interesting characters instead of telling us to care for them and putting no effort into making them interesting.
Now I do have a bone to pick with this movie and it's over the name if any sane person saw the name Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie chances are they'd think that this is a sequel. However it's not a sequel it's infact the first movie so there for would a better title be Street Fighter: The Animated Movie since that way people would know that this is the first movie in the series by adding the 2 to the title your only going to confuse people.
Now since this is an action movie and yes I do realise that I briefly touched on the action before we do have to talk about the action scenes in the movie. These scenes are so well animated like I said they leap of the screen and while they do boil down to who can hit who the hardest I get the feeling that that was also true for the games (I don't play them never have never will) and so I have to commend the makers for staying true to the game all the while creating exciting action scenes.
Overall this is a fairly decent video game movie but really it's only saving points are decent animation , decent fight scenes and the Chun-Li shower scene for obvious reasons and so the film gets a 5.5 out of 10 from me. I also do have some history with this film as I do recall watching it on VHS in the mid-nineties but I think I only watched it once and I don't even think that I owned it because I never saw it again.