Street Fighter Alpha: The Movie

The Dark Hadou-a dark energy that threatens to consume all fighters, turning them into blood lusting killers.  Street Fighter Ryu is one who possesses the potential to unleash this force and it has haunted him for years.  The sudden death of his Master, Gouken, reunites Ryu with his best friend, Ken Masters, and also sparks the sudden arrival of a boy named Shun, who claims to be Ryu’s younger brother.  As a new Street Fighter Tournament begins, Shun enters and displays the same Dark Hadou energy as Ryu.  Both soon find themselves the targets of the illusive Shadaloo organization.  Can Ryu protect Shun from these vicious fighters and keep the darkness in himself at bay? 

To me, Street Fighter will always be one of the most definitive fighting game franchises of all time, tied up there with it’s eternal rival Mortal Kombat.  The characters are infamous, their special moves are legendary.  Street Fighter is a fun experience no matter which game youre tackling from the arcade classics to the 3D smash em ups.  The Street Fighter Anime I’ve seen up until now haven’t been bad either.  We’ve checked out the impressive TV Series, Street Fighter II V, and Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, which proved to be one of the better Video Game Movie adaptations out there.  Street Fighter Alpha: The Movie is an OVA meant to celebrate the 10^th Anniversary of Street Fighter II, aka when the franchise really entered the history books.  So, does this celebratory title do a good job at highlighting everything that makes Street Fighter fun and awesome?  The answer is No, just No.
 
Despite what some advertisements might have you believe, Street Fighter Alpha: The Movie is a stand alone project with no connections to the aforementioned two Anime I talked about.  The character models match their Alpha era counterparts to a T…but why not just do a follow up to Street Fighter II V instead of adapting a game that, if memory serves, was a prequel to II and started a sub franchise all its own?  But that’s just the first of many questionable decisions that have been made in bringing this unfocused, unbalanced and just terribly dull experience to life.  All of the elements to make a good Street Fighter movie are here including the most popular characters (Ryu, Ken and Chun Li), a very imposing threat in Akuma, and the promise of some kick ass action.  So why cant SFA: The Movie do anything right with any of those ingredients?

The inclusion of Shun is an immediate red flag.  Even if the movie wasn’t half assing things, it’s attempts to make the viewers believe he is Ryu’s long lost brother are bad.  You know this kid isn’t who he says he is and, to be honest, the big reveal of who Shun really is fails to make an impact either.  Shun didn’t need to be in this movie.  Same goes for the hyper annoying Sakura, who’s just around to show off the roster and oogle over Ryu at the worst times; and Wallace, Chun Li’s partner who’s…well just there.  Then there’s the plot of some random, crazed Shadaloo scientist who’s hellbent on making himself the ultimate warrior by collecting data from dozens of Street Fighters and is very excited to get Ryu’s Dark Hadou influenced fighting capabilities added to his roster.  Street Fighter isn’t lacking for good villains, again the aforementioned Akuma.  But if you’re bringing Shadaloo into the mix, the obvious choice is to go with SF’s best villain, M. Bison.  I don’t care if he’s been the big bad in SFIIV and SFII: The Animated Movie, Bison is the most remembered antagonist in Street Fighter for a reason and he’s way better than some creepy science guy with no depth, much like the rest of this movie.
 
As usual, Ryu is front and center, this time in more ways than one.  SFA: The Movie suffers from an extreme lack of complete thought.  By this I mean you might be watching a fight unfold but then suddenly you cut to Ryu being angsty or striking an overdramatic pose and missing out on a possible good fight or “important” plot detail (it’s not important, none of it is).  The movie does this quick cutting to random facial expressions or Ryu powering up so much that the pacing and action suffer for it.  But can the action save this movie?  Nope, even when it’s trying to do its best, SFA: The Movie doesn’t hold a candle to the hard hitting slugfests of the high bar setting SFII: The Animated Movie.  The animation overall is pretty bad with fights lacking any true energy or faithfulness to the game and characters looking incredible silly during super serious moments.  Compare any fight in this movie to Chun Li vs Vega in SFII: The Animated Movie and it’s no contest which one looks better.  Which sucks because there IS potential in this project.  Forget the crazy scientist and Shun and make the focus on Akuma being the baddy and trying to corrupt Ryu while Ken and Chun Li battle some randos from the franchise like Vega and Zangief.  It’s simple but you can make it deeper and prettier than the movie we got instead.
 
Street Fighter Alpha: The Movie feels less like a celebration and more like a quickly put together project that the studio thought it could get away with.  You have to have more than just the Street Fighter name to make a good Street Fighter Anime.  You need good animation, not a super deep story but a competent one, and you need solid action that looks like the animators studied the games pretty thoroughly to recreate how characters move, feel and behave in combat.  SFA checks off none of those boxes and I will not lie, I lost interest well before the halfway mark and nothing for the rest of the two hours this movie went on sucked me in or made me care about Ryu’s inner crisis.  There are amazing Street Fighter Anime out there…this isn’t one of them, in fact it’s not even a good Anime period.
 
2/10