Story doesn’t suffer nearly as much as I’d have expected in Gisaburo Sugii’s animated retelling of the iconic videogame.
“The honour of a fighter … meaningless. Your enemy is now the whole world.”
Growing up, I never really considered that Street Fighter II, the only way pass time at my local chip shop, had anything resembling a plot. Obviously it must have; fighting games have story modes and clearly the guy with the hat and the cape was the big bad of the whole thing but … well, who cared? Back home I’d interacted with the story modes of Tekken and Mortal Kombat games, but Street Fighter possibly rich lore completely passed me by.
I never saw the 1994 live action film – except for clips of Raoul Julia’s iconic performance, and only half paid attention to the 2008 Legend of Chun Li which looked awful but at least had Neal McDonough hamming it up as Bison, and for a while assumed that was it for the franchise, in terms of films. Turns out there’s a bit more to the franchise than I thought, including a few animated films. Released in the same year the Van Damme one, this version seems to be a more accurate retelling of the story. Oh, and for the record, and for simplicity, I’ll be using the English versions of the names – even if I did watch it in Japanese.
Across the world, street fighters are being monitored by the evil organisation Shadowlaw (or Shadaloo depending on your version), led warlord M Bison. Bison has his sights set on martial arts pro Ryu, but his wandering ways have made him hard to track, forcing Bison to go after Ken – Ryu’s friend and near equal. Meanwhile, Interpol agent Chun-Li is investigating Shadowlaw after brainwashed MI6 agent Cammy assassinates a politician. She teams up – more or less – with US Army Major Guile, facing off against Bison’s most deadly assassins along the way.
I’ll say off the bat that I don’t know enough about the story of the franchise to know how accurate this is to the game. But for a franchise with as many characters as Street Fighter, the film does a surprisingly good job of introducing us to many of them while keeping the story focused on a couple of straightforward plot threads. It does mean that if your favourite character is Dhalsim or Blanka then you’ll probably be a bit miffed that they get one fight, before vanishing forever. It’s the nature of adapting such a source material. As a plot, it’s nothing special, but manages to stay interesting while travelling the world to all the locations seen in the background of the fights. It balances game elements and fanservice with a coherent narrative and ultimately it works pretty well.
Visually, the animation is peak 90s OVA, from the desaturated colours, the sharp shading, the extreme closeups and the music that only sort of fits the scene it’s in. The fights are really good, and almost seem rotoscoped in places (if they are, good job on the animators for hiding it as well as they do). Director Sugii is a legend in the field, and his experience shows. Naturally, they are the highlight of the film, with one notably rough one-on-one between Chun-Li and Vega standing out, with its moody atmosphere and high-stakes, to-the-death feel. The weakest purely in choreography is probably the final one against Bison, who doesn’t have a big variety of physical moves and therefore doesn’t give the animators all that much to do.
That said, it’s visually one of the coolest, with lightning effects all over the place and some great mirror-matching between Ryu and Ken. Ultimately, the animated Street Fighter movie is head and shoulders above the others on offer, and while its main villain might not have the charisma of Mr Julia, it’s a lot more faithful (I think), and bound to be more pleasing to fans, and people looking for an easy to digest bullet point version of the story of the game they’re playing. Honestly, that’s better than 99% of video game films out there.
Verdict: While it never seeks to reinvent the wheel, Street Fighter II manages to do what few other video game adaptations can. It feels like the game, while staying interesting, entertaining and visually striking throughout.
Overall entertainment: 7/10
Violence: 7/10
Sex: This is the one with the Chun-li shower sequence. A solid 3/10
Bison’s plans: Went all the way up to Plan P. Dude’s prepared.
Honda: How the hell did he survive that?
Guile: Major in Japanese, Captain in the English dub
Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie (1994)
Also known as: ストリートファイター II MOVIE
Japanese
Director: Gisaburo Sugii
Writer: Kenichi Imai, Gisaburo Sugii
CAST
Kojiro Shimizu – Ryu
Kenji Haga – Ken
Miki Fujitani – Chun-Li
Masane Tsukayama – Guile
Takeshi Kusaka – M Bison
Masakatsu Funaki – Fei Long
Ginzo Matsuo – Dee Jay
Shozo Iizuka – T Hawk
Yoko Sasaki – Cammy
Daisuke Gori – E. Honda
Yukimasa Kishino – Dhalsim
Unsho Ishizuka – Blanka
Tetsuo Kanao – Zangief
Chikao Ohtsuka – Senoh
Shigezo Sasaoka – Sagat
Kaneto Shiozawa – Vega
Jouji Nakata – Balrog
Hiromi Tsuru – Eliza
The Asian Cinema Critic 