Fatal Fury 2: The New Battle

Terry Bogard’s travels across the world are halted when he encounters Wolfgang Krauser, half brother of Geese Howard.  Krauser easily decimates Terry, leaving the fighters spirit diminished.  Enraged by this, Terry’s brother Andy, Joe Higashi and ninja girl Mai Shiranui vow to avenge Terry.  But it is Terry who must battle through his own despair and darkness and rise to a new level of powers if he is to regain his honor and take down the most powerful opponent he has ever faced.

While it might never stand on the same worldwide pedestal as its spiritual cousin, Street Fighter, Fatal Fury: King of Fighters is still a franchise near and dear to the hearts of fighting game fans around the world.  It’s a shame that’s its debut Anime feature, Legend of the Hungry Wolf, never showed off any of that love with a basic barebones story with decent animation but terrible fight scenes.  Thankfully, Fatal Fury 2: The New Battle seems to have looked carefully at the notes of its predecssors failings and put in the extra effort to improve on pretty much every aspect.  I do think the title could have been better.  I mean “The New Battle”?  That’s so boring.  Even Legend of the Hungry Wolf has a more epic ring to it. 
 
The most important thing Fatal Fury 2 needed to improve on was the action scenes and any and all fears are easily laid to rest in the first five minutes.  The first showdown between Terry and Kim immediately nets this Anime a decent score for not relying on short cut still frames to tell the battle but rather let the animators animate proper movement.  It’s stylish, fluid and rapidly paced, everything a video game Anime action scene should be and the action only gets better from there.  There are a few new characters brought in from the Fatal Fury universe and all of them get a moment to shine in the Animes many set pieces since there’s triple the amount of them compared to the last feature.  While the Terry vs. Kim battle sets the bar high and might be my favorite, Terrys fights against Krauser are well executed as well.  Finally, Terry has to work his way up to facing an opponent with ferocious power that actually lives up to his threat, as opposed to Geese (who by the way is in this feature for like five minutes to show he survived the end of the first special but he doesn’t do anything and that tease at the end that he might be back as a villain goes nowhere since he isn’t even in Fatal Fury: The Motion Picture).
 
While I do think Legend of the Hungry Wolf was a decent looking Anime, Fatal Fury 2 looks soooo much better by comparison.  There’s zero drops in animation quality and everything looks sharper and more polished.  Honestly I’m surprised this wasn’t the Fatal Fury title to be called “The Motion Picture”.  Terry, Andy and Joe all look better than ever and the aforementioned Krauser has a much more intimidating and memorable design as the big bad.  Then of course there’s Fatal Fury’s poster girl, the lady who’s as infamous in the gaming world as Chun Li: Mai Shiranui.  The loveable and bouncy Ninja Girl may seem like added in fan service…and she is…but she’s fun fan service and at least gets more to do here than just be the damsel in distress in The Motion Picture.  If Mai has any flaw it’s her interest in the boring as hell Andy.  Andy continues to be the weak link in the cast, just dull as dirt and being all talk and little show (even if he does get in a solid couple of fights of his own).  Actually poor Joe gets the least amount of stuff to do in the sequel which is a shame cause he’s still the MVP of the cast.  I’m glad Terry’s plotline was handled well though.  I was worried about them giving him a young protegee but Tony isn’t annoying and actually helps inspire Terry to get back on his feet and rediscover his will to fight.
 
After a less than subpar first outing, Fatal Fury 2: The New Battle comes out a decisive victory for the franchise.  The action, animation, characters and story are all massive improvements and you’ve got better villains and even some harmless fan service with Mai.  It’s a shame The Motion Picture dropped the ball so hard after this one because Fatal Fury 2 is proof that an exciting, fun and competent Fatal Fury Anime can be made and be just as good as Street Fighter or Tekken.  If nothing else, this is easily the strongest of the Fatal Fury Trilogy by a mile and a nice little hidden gem to discover for fans of fighting games and video game Anime…will admit though, Terry throwing is hat into the wind at the end of The Motion Picture while “Oh Angel” plays is still so epic…why wasn’t that song in this Anime?
 
8.5/10