Wonderful Movie

So much average

Just perfect...

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Street Fighter game franchise, Group TAC released "Street Fighter Alpha: The Animation" five years after the highly fan acclaimed "Street Fighter II: The Animated movie". Many reviews have criticized this movie based on what the reviewer thought SHOULD be in the movie. Some wanted a direct adaptation of the Street fighter Alpha game storyline, other reviewers dissed the show just because some characters were not featured. This will be a true review of the movie itself, not of what i expected to be in the movie.True to its title, Street Fighter Alpha borrows the characters, setting and the "look" of the SF Alpha series while crafting a new story separate from the games.The focus is squarely on Ryu, a martial artists haunted by the death of his master and the presence of a dark power lurking within him. As the story begins, Ryu meets up with Ken to pay respects to their deceased master, but Ryu is having trouble controlling this dark power called the "Dark Hadou" and keeps having strange visions. They encounter a boy called Shun who claims to be Ryu's long lost brother. At first skeptical, Ryu soon embraces Shun as family and trains together with the boy, who also displays formidable fighting skills. Word of a new Street fighter Tournament reaches Ryu and Ken and they intend to sign up. But little do they know that the tournament is a front for an evil scheme concocted by Dr Sadler, a top scientist for the Shadowlaw organization.Kudos to Group TAC for trying to make a more coherent narrative with a proper emotional center. While the previous Street Fighter II The Animated movie was a stylish gritty martial arts movie, SF Alpha plays out more like a character Drama about Ryu. While we do get some insight into Ryu's inner emotional turmoil, it really is nothing original. Ryu struggling with control over the dark hadou seems ripped straight from Star Wars' Luke Skywalker and his struggle with the Dark side of the force. Also, thanks to the strict focus on Ryu, the other iconic characters are at best reduced to mere stock characters with little to no development, or just cameo appearances that add nothing to the plot. Little side stories about Sakura's obsessive tailing of Ryu and Chun Li's Shadowlaw investigation are more an easter egg treat for long time fans than newcomers.The biggest fault of Street fighter alpha: The Animation, is the animation itself which is merely on par with a typical anime TV series of that time. If one were to expect the gritty brutality and fluid choreography of Street fighter II: The Animated movie, one would be sorely disappointed. Street Fighter Alpha's fight scenes play out like something worse than Dragonball. Fighters flying and hovering through the air constantly was probably a way to cut costs by not animating the characters running, but for some reason all the fights seem to be done in slow motion. If it was intentional, it is a poor directing choice as it quite honestly makes every single bout a total bore. If not intentional, then it was a result of cutting corners again in the animation.Artwork is also a hit and miss. While the art does a great job of replicating the designs used in the game, the characters go off-model quite often. The best example is Chun Li's eyes which keeps changing size and even shape in different scenes. The art constantly shifts from a dark and highly detailed style to a bright flat cartoony look, sometimes in stark contrast to the scene being presented, giving the entire production a very inconsistent feel.It is a huge pity Street fighter Alpha: The Animation turned out the way it did. There were a couple of great ideas and a lot of room for a deeper story. Too bad all that potential got totally wasted on typical anime story clichés including an uber-powered robot and landscape-destroying fireballs. Like Akuma said, "a true warrior enters the arena with ALL his powers at the ready". Street Fighter Alpha: The Animation not only fails to bring all that its got to bear, but it figuratively pulls its punches and ends up with a mediocre final product. More effort seemed to be spent trying to cut corners in everything rather than going all out to deliver an experience as awesome as its predecessor or the games that inspired it.

This movie is based on the series Street Fighter Alpha (or Zero)! It is placed in an other setting than Streetfighter the animated movie! This movie is all about Ryu who is accompanied by Ken and Chun Li. I recognized Rose,Zanghief and Birdie! There weren't any other characters used from the video game (that i could discover)! The fighting scenes were OK but nothing really spectacular! And there were not many of them! To me this is odd! Isn't Streetfighter about fighting! Streetfighter the animated movie (1994) is far superior to this movie. It tries to be more than it really is! The use of the "Hada Power" and other supernatural elemnents have nothing to do with skills the characters have in the video game! And in this case that is a bad thing! The story is so boring that you don't really care what is happening! The action is toned down considerably! Why? And what happened to the other characters from the video game! Surely they are more interesting than the villain in this story! The main attraction of the video game are the characters with their own special skills! In this movie it is all about Ryu! That is why this anime fails!

Ok. Being an semi-anime fan for a few years, I once fell upon street fighter 2, as an animated movie it was pretty good. The drawing was top notch, and the plot made sense. Not to mention most of the fights were pretty well done. In this, street fighter zero(alpha?) I found it sucked. The drawing was nowhere near as good as SF2. The plot was crap, I mean, the kid shows up and this amazing hardcore die hard fighter dude just believes he's his little brother? What's with that? The whole dark ha-do(sorry, don't know how to spell) thing is kinda cool, but if this had been pursued as more of a sequal to SF2 using some continuity between them, not to mention better drawing in general, I would be more pleased. I can't say the movie didn't entertain me at all, I still like whatching people get beat up, but I think it lacks some of the more apealing features of most plain old let's kick some tail movies.

I think this film is even better than Street Fighter II The Animated Movie. The fighters are well drawn and animate smoothly. The fight scenes are cool too, and the new characters would be cool to see in the game. I give it a 10.