Street Fighter IV: The Ties that Bind

The peace brought about by the fall of Shadaloo quickly disappears when several powerful fighters from around the world begin to vanish without a trace.  Chun Li, Guile and Cammy’s search for answers leads them to an inevitable conclusion: Ryu is the primary target of this series of abductions.  A new evil is rising to take Shadaloo’s place and Ryu’s dark powers are the key to their success.  Once more, Ryu, Ken and their allies step into the ring to test their strength against this threat.  But this is only the beginning.

Street Fighter IV: The Ties that Bind is a special bonus feature that came with Special Editions of the SFIV Video Game at launch and is meant to be an animated prequel to the games main story.  Why these couldn’t have just been integrated into the game as Anime cutscenes, I don’t know.  At the same time though, even though I haven’t played a lot of SFIV, I’m glad these aren’t in the game.  The Ties that Bind is an absolutely boring, tedious and lackluster primer for a game that just lets you get to the nitty, gritty, right away like any proper fighting game should.  Seriously, if you never got a copy of the game with this with it, you’re not missing much.
 
The OVA presents a decent enough mystery to start bringing the fan favorite Street Fighters back together.  However, much of the first half is all about regurgitating the same information over and over and over again, just from different locations and coming out of the mouths of different characters.  It’s like there was never really any kind of actual story to build on or the writers could be mistaken for having the same span of attention they think regular players of the Street Fighter franchise probably possess.  People either know too little or too much and just act super coy and arrogant about it (looking at you C. Viper and not just because you are a very hot addition to the cast).  Rag on the ’94 movie for being unfaithful to the source but at least the dialogue was quotable as hell.
 
Don’t expect the action to save the day either.  After begging for the talking to just stop, the action suffers just as bad from a lack of energy and enthusiasm.  Even C. Viper’s one sided beatdown of Cammy is more about showing off Viper’s arrogance than being entertaining.  Said fight is one of only two one on one battles in the entire OVA, the second being saved for the finale where Ryu fights a guy who looks like his character design was used for Dragon Ball Supers Jiren.  Even then, it’s mostly just more talking and pontificating.  Can you imagine playing a match in a Street Fighter game where you land like five punches and then listen to your opponent monologue for five minutes about the meaning of strength?  Cause that’s what it feels like watching The Ties that Bind.
 
Animation wise, idk.  I wanna say this at least looks better than the Street Fighter Alpha movie, which I hated.  But then again, looks wise everything feels wonky.  The female characters do look good in their signature looks but something about the male character designs feels kind of goofy.  Considering the Street Fighter game franchise is known for some of the most amazing looking graphics that only improve with each successive game, you’d think some of that talent would translate to Anime pretty well (and it can).  The Ties that Bind instead looks and feels more like a rushed Direct to DVD project meant to capitalize or build hype on SFIV’s release when really, it’s Street Fighter IV, we waited long enough for it.
 
It is not impossible to do a Street Fighter Anime.  We have Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie and Street Fighter II V to back that up.  Whereas those two had great worldbuilding and crazy action going in their favor, Street Fighter IV: The Ties that Bind seems content to spin its wheels endlessly with the same boring mystery dialogue, a dull build up to an unimpressive villain, and action that feels way below the hyper fast and pulse pounding fighters the games are infamous for.  Is this the worst Street Fighter anything I’ve ever seen?  Even The Legend of Chun Li had a minor redeeming factor in Michael Clarke Duncan (and can never go wrong with the alluring Moon Bloodgood).  Well until I see the Street Fighter Alpha Generations movie, I think it’s safe to say that yes, this is the worst Street Fighter anything I’ve ever seen, worthy of a very swift SHORYUKEN knock out it aint getting back up from.
 
0/10
 
Next Week, it’s time.  October’s been building to this and it’s finally time to share my thoughts on the new Street Fighter movie.  Ngl, I’ve been hyped for almost a year for this one, here’s hoping it pulls off a win, or is at least incredibly fun overall.  Street Fighter (2026) steps into the ring Next Monday right here a the Gundam Anime Corner.