Movie Review: Street Fighter Alpha
For once on this site I have decided to do a review of an anime film that does not involve underage high school girls being violated by demons with giant penis-like appendages covering every part of their body. Even though those articles are an excellent excuse to post pictures of anime girls with no clothes on, I feel I should definitely try to get more non-hentai movies on this site. With that said I’m sure as soon as I post this article I will see my entire fan base drop by 90%, as they run underneath their beds, crying and screaming in disbelief.
But just because this movie isn’t a hentai film don’t think it’s going to be some art house anime film that so many newer anime movies seem to embrace. Instead I have picked a movie that does what anime does best, show people fighting and beating the holy shit out of each other, while maintaining a strong storyline that no one will ever be able to understand. The movie we will review today follows that formula perfectly, and that movie is none other than Street Fighter Alpha.
For those of you that do not know what Street Fighter is then you are definitely on the wrong site and should proceed to immediately hit the back button before my site detects you are not a Street Fighter fan and sends you a flesh eating virus through your phone cord and directly down your throat the next time you use the phone. Street Fighter is of course the game that brought on an entire genre of cheap imitation fighting games. I have been playing Street Fighter since the original Street Fighter arcade game, which featured the largest arcade cabinet known to man and I’m pretty sure it is being used by the military as heavy air to ground artillery in present day. You can just imagine the havoc one of those things would cause when it gets dropped out of the sky onto a small third world country. The shockwaves would be felt for miles. What this means is that basically I’ve been here since the beginning and am a big fan of the series, even before it turned into a damn fiasco of marketing.
Once Street Fighter established itself as the king of fighting games and became immensely popular, it started to spawn tons of other products based on the Street Fighter name. Anyone remember those embarrassingly stupid G.I. Joe Street Fighter figures? What was Capcom thinking? Seeing E. Honda with a missile launcher was infinitely more disturbing than he already was in the first place. Though I must admit Chun Li did look damn sexy with a pistol. My personal fetishes aside, Street Fighter spawned so much shit it was hard to keep up with. Now over 10 years and approximately 756 games later, Street Fighter is still going strong and still getting made into other things other than games. One of those being a few animated movies that genuinely do the series justice, and today’s movie is another fine example. Yes, another fine example of how I take Street Fighter way too seriously and should probably seek strong medication because of it. The movie is pretty kick ass too.
The movie is based on the Street Fighter Alpha storyline, which depending on who you ask takes place before or after Street Fighter 2. I can never really decide because it seems to cross the Street Fighter 2 storyline way too much and it all gives me a swollen mouth after the random stranger I’m explaining it to gets tired of me and throws something at my face. For the movie it seems to take place before Street Fighter 2 as most of the characters look younger and can snarl their faces up a lot, which also shows they are very young and virile. Unlike the older anime characters that basically grunt and frown whenever something happens. So without further mindless article filler background, let’s get on with the first part of the movie Street Fighter Alpha.
The movie starts as we see the evil demon fighter Akuma doing various menacing looking karate moves to several air particles around him. This is basically because Akuma is not a very cheerful person and basically lives to kill, beat the hell out of people, and destroy their souls just by staring at them for a prolonged amount of time. He is also someone that doesn’t need to answer to anyone, so if he wants to beat the shit out of an imaginary opponent then so be it. Akuma knows what he’s doing and I am going to guess that we will be seeing him later in the movie doing what he does best: looking really fucking mean. This all could also just be useless filler for the opening credits which are also being displayed.
After the credits roll we see that our main hero, Ryu is having some problems. Seems that since he and Akuma are trained in the same style of martial arts, Ryu is beginning to pick up a few of Akuma’s more unappealing traits, like turning evil and wanting to kill everything. Ryu is desperately trying to fight this urge by gritting his teeth and screaming a lot, which so far seems to be working. That is until we have a small plot development arise involving him meeting his brother.
Thing is, Ryu never knew he had a brother until he shows up sitting on his dojo’s doorstep one day. His newfound brother quickly informs him of how he came to be and shows Ryu a photo of himself with their mom. Ryu acknowledges this the way he acknowledges everything by looking as if he is trying to pass a kidney stone through his nose. I’ve been playing Street Fighter for a long time and I knew Ryu was a pretty serious guy, but in this movie he is literally the most unemotional living being on Earth. I have seen a corpse show more emotion than Ryu does in this movie. To sum up Ryu’s incredible range of emotion I will write down what Ryu does in most scenes of this movie below:
- Look somber
- Look serious
- Look VERY serious
- Look serious while inserting his fist into someone’s brain, then look somber afterwards.
- Stand still and look at the camera as if the animators totally forgot to animate Ryu.
- Grunt occasionally
I guess we can blame it all on the whole Akuma thing but if there was anyone in the whole movie that needed to lighten up more, it’s our friend Ryu. Then again I doubt any of us would be very excited if a demon was starting to take over our souls to turn us into merciless killing machines. Even so, he could at least have held Ken down to the floor and farted on his face a few times.
Speaking of our dapper friend Ken, he’s in town to not only pay homage to his dead master, but also to enter into one of the many random illegal fighting tournaments that seem to be held every other day in Japan. You can also most assuredly bet it will be held in a dark dingy halfway torn-down building of some sort, with several large muscular fighters fighting in it also. Or I could have already seen the entire movie and am trying to foreshadow a little and am failing miserably in doing so. My general faults as a writer aside, it’s obvious we’ve got a starting point for the plot now since everyone is excited about the tournament. Especially Ryu’s brother who is quickly becoming the most annoying animated character of all time. Yes, everyone is excited except for, you guessed it, Ryu. Ryu is not happy about the tournament because he is perfectly content in his abilities as a fighter and a hard ass. He would much rather stand still and look serious rather than throw down on sweaty men which he would assuredly kill before he even had to touch them.
Ryu’s brother and Ken pretty much blow Ryu off and decide they will enter the tournament anyway. Ryu decides to accompany his brother to the tournament anyway while Ken goes off and gets lost somewhere. While on their way to the tournament, walking through a deserted alley no less, Ryu and his brother are jumped by a few drunken alley dwellers. This of course would signify the first real fight scene as Ryu decides to sit back and look serious while his brother goes absolutely insane and just starts beating the holy shit out of everyone. This kid just doesn’t start fighting, he goes fucking mental and turns into a rabid insane killing machine of death, mercilessly kicking the hell out of the gang members. Ryu offers a hand by standing perfectly still and somehow still beating everyone else down. He is also looking serious, which I’m sure we will get used to by the time this movie is over.
The butt kicking continues as Ryu watches his brother continue his parade of destruction. This keeps up until Ryu’s brother corners one and is bearing down on the kill. Ryu stops his brother as any loving brother would by punching him really hard in the stomach. Ryu then actually opens his mouth looking as if he is going to say something, which would be by far the most exciting thing Ryu has done the entire movie so far. He tells his brother that it would be wrong to kill the alley dweller guy because it is not the way of the true warrior. Plus they need the alley dweller for the countless other animes he will appear in, jumping unsuspecting morons in dark alleys and then getting his colon removed by his victim’s foot.
Meanwhile Ken has somehow gotten completely lost and has ended up close to a bar where Sakura has just got done making a complete ass of herself by thinking she is a real martial artist. You see Sakura is absolutely obsessed with Ryu and is trying to emulate him in every way, right down to the sweatband and wrist guards. This would be quite flattering and all if it weren’t for the fact that Sakura is a 16-year-old schoolgirl. Personally I would be very excited to have a 16 year old Japanese schoolgirl obsessed with me, but I don’t and it’s pretty obvious Ryu doesn’t give a shit anyway. This all came about with a scene at the start of the movie I totally *forgot* to write about involving a fight on the docks with Chun Li busting a few criminals. Ryu also got involved with this and started whooping ass quite seriously. Sakura and her friend were also there watching and saw our man Ryu looking like an animated corpse fighting bad guys and decided at that moment she would dedicate her life to being just like Ryu. This coming from a person who just got done claiming she was going to dedicate her entire life to being the hot dog eating world champion. To say Sakura does not have very good priorities would be an understatement.
So anyway back to the real plot. Ken arrives at the bar to save Sakura from getting gang raped and mentions he is going to a fighting tournament and that Ryu is also going to be there, probably looking serious. Sakura then goes absolutely mad and decides she must be at that tournament at all costs just to see Ryu. Ken kindly accepts, probably because he would rather be walking around with a 16-year-old schoolgirl than an annoying kid and a walking corpse who barely moves his eyes let alone provide a stimulating conversation any day of the week. Sakura on the other hand has plenty to say and usually does, not really caring if anyone is around to hear it.
Meanwhile Ryu and his brother have gotten to the tournament, which is in an abandoned building with a bunch of sweaty fighters, all of which are wanting to kick some white boy ass. They immediately get their wish, as Ryu’s brother is in quite possibly the most mis-matched fight of all time. Ryu’s brother will be facing non other than Zangeif himself, who seems to be at least the size of a small military base. To put this in perspective, imagine yourself going up against a semi truck in a match to see who could disable the other person’s internal organs by squeezing them through their nasal cavity first and you would quickly see the position our little friend is in. Meanwhile Ryu is not concerned, and is looking very serious in the process. Let this epic match of champions begin!
Round 1: Zangeif vs. a small boy
Zangeif gets off to a fast start by beating the shit out of Ryu’s brother and winning.
Winner: Zangeif
Our first fight was a slight disappointment, but it is obvious Ryu will not stand for such losing ways in his family. While Zangeif was busy killing Ryu’s brother, Ryu got that old time feeling of burning flesh and demonic ways and decides it would be best if he started killing everyone in the building. Zangeif of course looks pretty surprised when suddenly from out of nowhere he’s nearly vaporized with an energy blast of Dragon Ball Z proportion. Zangeif probably then thinks something like “fuck” and continues to get the shit beat out of him by Ryu until he falls through the floor after Ryu damn near levels the entire building with his crazy cool demon powers.
This however is exactly what the person who is holding this contest wants. He has other intentions other than simply watching a bunch of muscular men fight to the death. He wants that power that Ryu has for himself and the only way to get this power is to watch him fight and gather data. But how does he know of this power and why does he want it? Only he knows that answer for now and decides to set his plan in motion since he has already gotten Ryu pretty damn pissed. To gather his fighting info our evil bad guy sends a robotic fighter out to fight with Ryu and collect much needed data. But this isn’t just your ordinary robot of death, no this guy is here to kick some ass and not even a fighter possessed by the devil himself will stop him! Maybe.
Meanwhile the previous blast has sent everyone else who is currently in the building panicking and running in random directions. Ken and Sakura get caught in the blast and Chun Li (who I have forgotten to mention through this entire review but has a huge part nonetheless) runs to Ryu’s aid by throwing herself at the robot fighter and then getting thrown to the floor repeatedly (this will be happening a lot before the movie is over. Chun Li is utterly worthless in this movie). Sakura on the other hand is hurt and Ken has to carry her around on his back, which he doesn’t seem to mind at all. We all know Ken is a perv anyway so this comes as no big surprise.
The chaos continues as Ryu gets really pissed when his brother gets shot by a laser meant for Ryu’s cranium.
This knocks Ryu’s brother unconscious which in turn causes Ryu to kill the robot by literally blowing him into a thousand small pieces thanks to a super hado-ken straight to the robot’s lower intestines.
Now with the robot gone everything seems settled until a blaze of gunshots from the helicopter above that has come out of nowhere interrupts the quick downtime. The helicopter quickly snatches up Ryu’s brother and flies away with the evil tournament master in it.
He may not have gotten the data he wanted since his robot has turned into tiny atoms but he will have to be content with his prize of Ryu’s brother instead. Everyone is left with blank stares, and Ryu is looks as if he’s dead. Things are happening so fast it’s hard to make out what’s going on at all. Who is this mystery tournament guy? Why does he want Ryu’s powers? Where has he taken Ryu’s brother? Will Ryu ever be able to show any type of emotion at all?
These burning questions and more answered in part 2!
To be continued!
