Things aren’t going so smoothly in the attempted rescue
of Ryu, Ken and Chun Li. After
discovering their powerful hidden talents, Bison had added a mind controlled
Ryu and Chun Li to his arsenal of cyber controlled warriors. All is not lost. Guile and Nash have arrived to rescue the
trio and Fei Long has been recruited to protect his hospitalized mentor from a
vengeful Cammy. Also, Ken may be captive
but he isn’t out of the fight yet. Even
better, Ken’s recent ordeals have awakened his hidden Ki potentials. If he can master his Hadou Shoruyken, Ken
could turn the tide of the battle…if he can successfully defeat his best
friend, Ryu, first.
Oh…my…f’ing…GOD!!! I’ll say this at least, this review
will be a short one. This is partially
because next weeks finale, The Fight to the Finish Arc, basically encompasses
the last five episodes. So I wanted to
do those in one go. That left me with a
short batch of episodes to cover and dear mother of God, the finale had better
be worth all this infuriating boredom. I
recall last week complaining about such a huge chunk of time being wasted that
it failed to justify Street Fighter II V’s 29 episode run time. Well these three episodes could have been
folded into at least one decent one to set the stage for the series finale…but
as they are now, they are the weakest set of episodes so far. And that’s right before the end.
As much as im aware he’ll have to eventually use the
Hadouken attack on Bison in his inevitable fight, if I have to look at Ryu
spending five minutes doing the same reused animation handmotions again, im
going to snap. I’ll just say that if you
are watching this series, you can skip all of Episode 22 and the first half of
Episode 23 and just go from there. All
that happens is Ken lies on a table and learns his Hadou Shoryuken technique
while AGAIN flashing back to Chun Li getting defeated by Bison. And after a whole episode of that, we start
the following episode with a ten minute recap of everything that’s happened
since Ryu and Ken arrived in Barcelona…LIKE THE SHOW WASN’T DOING THAT ENOUGH
ALREADY WITH ALL THE FREAKING FLASHBACKS!!!
What’s more, once things did start progressing for everyone, we paused
again to watch Ryu and Ken spend minutes on end charging their new attacks to
break down the same wall (though neither knew the other was on the other
side). I feel like things have taken a
noticeable nosedive in narrative progression since Shadowlaw came in and
kidnapped the core trio and this set of episodes solidified that theory.
It’s kind of hard to imagine, after a rant like that,
that there’s anything salvageable about this set of episodes. Well, like I said, progression was made when
the studio wasn’t trying to save money for what I hope is the most kick ass
finale in all of Anime at this point.
Guile and Nash made it to Shadowlaw island. Fei Long has been tapped to be Dorai’s
protector while he’s in the hospital.
And Cammy is finally getting it through her head that she’s been led on
by Balrog (who has literally been sweating bullets everytime he’s around Cammy
so it’s easy to tell he’s lying through his teeth). What’s more, Ryu and Chun Li both got Cyber
Warrior-ized by Shadowlaw. This comes
complete with new demonic red eyes and for Chun Li a grey version of her
classic video game costume (with a much shorter skirt). Seeing Chun Li’s dark side unleashed shows
promise and im hoping Evil Ryu facing Ken meets the same potential. Point is, everyone is in place for a big
fight…and im actually not sure which one im more excited for.
In fact, that’s probably the only sure thing I know of
closing out this short set: I’m ready for the finale to deliver and I really
hope it does. Despite the flaws of the
last couple of weeks, I have enjoyed Street Fighter II V, though at this point
I think the Grand Tour first half is the strongest half. But we’ve trudged our way through a lot of
wasted time to get this far. I’ve said
it before, ill say it again (hey if the show can do that ten times in several
episodes, so can I), the Fight to the Finish had better blow me the frak
away. See ya next week for the
(hopefully) epic series finale of Street Fighter II V.
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