Street Fighter Alpha

Original Title: ストリートファイターZERO -THE ANIMATION-
Romanized: Street Fighter Zero The Animation
Literal:

Plot Synopsis

Ken and Ryu, two street fighters raised as brothers by a martial arts master, have taken different paths: Ken is a practical, fun guy, while Ryu lives for the fight, always attempting to better himself. But with the power of the Hadou, Ryu has also gained a curse; the evil energies of the Dark Hadou hide within, threatening to consume him.

When Ken and Ryu's master dies mysteriously, the two are reunited, and meet the young Shun; he claims to be Ryu's brother, and has the martial arts prowess to prove it. But at the same time, the powers of the Dark Hadou seem to be building within Ryu, and there is something suspicious about Shun... is he who he says he is, and does he harbor demons even greater than Ryu's?

When Shun is then kidnapped, Ken and Ryu are joined by Chun Li, an Interpol agent seeking to avenge her father's death by infiltrating the evil Shadowlaw organization, and the group are sucked into a dangerous journey seeking answers, a journey leading to Dark powers and a confrontation with the evil Akuma...

Review

Rating: 3.5 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2003-07-05

Street Fighter Alpha is almost a really good movie. It definitely does its job on the action front, and comes close to pulling off a decent story. And admittedly, in the aggregate, I basically liked it. But, again and again, I felt like it cast a shadow on its strengths with something entirely unworthy of the characters and the potential of the emotional heart of the story. I am not, admittedly, a big Street Fighter fan, and so may not be appreciating the story as a part of a greater whole, but I'm reviewing it as a stand-alone story anyway.

I'll start right out with what's good: Street Fighter Alpha has looks. All the art is top quality and there are a variety of well-conceived, attractive, richly drawn locations. The character designs, though, stand out the most due to their creativity; there is a wide range of very different looks, from the fairly standard friendly anime guy Ken and cute girl Sakura, to the more rough-hewn Ryu, to Chun Li, who looks outright exotic--extremely exaggerated slanted eyes, very angular features, and an appealing but definitely hard edge.

Even more than its art, action is Alpha's greatest strength. Almost every fight is spectacular, with plenty of hard hitting pummeling, and although there are plenty of not-on-this-planet moves and some magical chi-type stuff, the superhuman strength is rooted in reality. If you ask me, though, the all-too-brief Chun-Li fights flat-out rock--slick animation, creative choreography, skirting the edge of Hong Kong-enhanced reality, and the way she moves has a precision and fluidity to it that I really can't say I've seen matched anywhere else. Wow.

Another thing worth mentioning on the visual front is a collection of particularly creepy locales and corresponding situations; I wasn't expecting anything so creatively unsettling out of a Street Fighter movie, to be sure. In particular, I liked the scene in Akuma's lair, theoretically one of the movie's centerpieces. Taking place in a valley strewn with simple but somehow eerie wooden statues, that scene made use of quick cuts and strange angles to create more tension than any of the physical battles in the movie.

That wraps up the more or less unarguably positive points in this movie--everything else is a mixed bag.

Fundamentally, my issue with the movie is this: it has a solid emotional heart, and (at least by action movie standards) a good balance of butt-kicking and martial-arts philosophy (a lot of Dark/Light energy references very reminiscent of Star Wars), but it seems to be missing some important core that gives meaning to the inner turmoil of the characters and the apparent gravity of their situation. In the end, it feels like a good movie looking for a plot device to build off of, and not finding one. Take the characters, for example.

The main heroes are a relatively well developed lot; they're a likable and eclectic anime-style group with plenty of personality to go around, and they certainly feel like more than mindless thugs who live to fight. More important to the movie's emotional center, there's an appealing brotherly relationship portrayed between Ken, Ryu, and the mysterious Shun, with enough of their relationship demonstrated instead of explained to make it work. Perhaps most surprisingly, this Ken is actually a likable guy--rather than a hot-rodder, he's fun loving but practical; this balances Ryu's heavier, more philosophical personality. For his part, Ryu has plenty of inner demons (albeit rather unexplained demons if you look at this movie alone), bringing more to his live-to-fight personality than just wanting to better himself.

Unfortunately, there is also a villain. A villain who has a secret, scary lab and unlimited resources, which he uses to suck energy out of street fighters and pump them into a cyborg puppet to beat people up, for absolutely no apparent reason whatsoever. Although he technically has a name, he has no dialogue, and essentially just grins evilly at key points. He is, simply put, the most empty and utterly unworthy opponent for a group of honorable and reasonably likable street fighters I could imagine without working very hard. Yes, Akuma shows up briefly and acts uber-creepy, but he has nil to do with the actual plot aside from a vague Darth Vader, Dark Side of the Hadou reference.

Similarly, the super-mysterious Rose (to her credit voiced distinctively in Japanese by Orikasa Ai) shows up a few times to say something vague and then disappear. Why or how is anybody's guess, and she, like Akuma, seems to serve no purpose other than a half-hearted attempt to lend an air of mysticism or deeper meaning to a plot that, when you boil it down to what's pushing it along, is really lame.

All that said, I admit that many, particularly those more invested in the story of the Street Fighter franchise as a whole or more fond of the characters, may not see things as harshly as I did. Perhaps if you read up on the backstory (or play the games, or watch other anime incarnations), and get yourself fired up for what counts in the story, you'll find a lot more depth in it, and won't mind the way it's tied together.

Personally, though, not being the biggest Street Fighter fan, the plot was my biggest problem. There's appealing character development, a modicum of mystery, and if you strip away the unfortunate technicalities of the story, it's based around a solid "martial arts for the purpose of self-improvement, not to hurt people" philosophy... but I just couldn't find where its deeper meaning had any connection to the events in the story, and perhaps as a result the characters seem to stumble around without much focus. The battle at the end is also way too long.

Huh? I'm specifically complaining about too much fighting at the climax of a Street Fighter movie? Yes. Because that fight, taking a full twenty minutes, amounts to a quarter of the movie. (If you really want to savor the drama, skip this paragraph, but I don't think I'm giving anything away that isn't entirely obvious.) The problem is that the big fight consists entirely of one really long, painfully drawn out whupping. Ken, Chun Li, Ryu, and a random guy with a mohawk named Birdy that suddenly becomes the center of empathy take turns getting brutally thrashed by a big, grinning robot. The first five or so minutes are dramatically tragic, but at some point the tension and rambling about the true meaning of the Hadou gets so thick it's somewhere between boring and funny, particularly since it's painfully obvious we're just waiting for Ryu to launch a big ol' Hadouken and get it over with in one fell-swoop.

Wrapping up, there's the acting and music. The acting in Japanese is mostly good, although I thought Kane Kosugi made for a rather stiff Ryu, even though his voice is a bit unusual. The English version isn't bad, though none of the performances stuck in my mind, either. The music is orchestral and rich enough to match the visuals, but if anything is a bit on the sappy (or at least mellow) side in some places.

This isn't exactly germane to the review, but if you're interested, I noticed an interesting parallel between this and Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie (there is no apparent connection between the stories, if you're wondering). Basically they both have exactly the same plot and focus on the same characters (sans Guile, and plus a kid in this one). What's different is that SF II was made like a Hollywood action movie, and Alpha does the same story as an anime movie. The former featured more even characters, a flashy, grimacing bad guy, simple progression of the story, and a very straightforward directing style. This one has a wider variety of characters (Sakura, etc), several notably creepy sequences, a smattering of supernatural influence, and a lot of inner turmoil about the proper control and peaceful use of energy flow and martial arts, and it has the visual flash and creativity of anime. It's fascinating to me how different the feel and message of the two is, despite plots that are nearly identical in essence.

The final word on Street Fighter Alpha: The Movie will depend quite a bit on your taste. If you're all about action, it's a bit skimpy but what's here is great, and Chun-Li's brief Hong Kong-style brawls are easily worth watching the movie for. If you're into Martial Arts philosophy, you might enjoy it even more, but try to ignore the villain's emptiness. And if you're a diehard Street Fighter fan, you can't go wrong. If you prefer more balance in your anime, though, I just can't highly recommend it as a stand-alone movie--it's got too many subtle things going wrong to be worth watching for the good parts.

Related Recommendations

I mentioned above the significant similarities between the stories of this and Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, and despite stylistic differences they also both share quality action. The only other fighting game-based movie really on par in quality is Fatal Fury: The Motion Picture, though the Fatal Fury OAVs and Street Fighter TV series are obviously other similar options. Battle Arena Toshinden also has a similar feel, aside from its shared fighting game pedigree.

US DVD Review

The DVD is loaded with good stuff. It starts out with "remastered" standard-aspect video (not quite sure what's up with the remastering, but in any case, it's mostly quite nice looking), Dolby 5.1 English and stereo Japanese audio, plus a reasonably accurate subtitle track (with the standard name changes). There are also a passel of cool extras: a wide variety of interviews with the original production staff and several of the Japanese voice actors (neat stuff), a short on "The making of Street Fighter Alpha", character bios, an art gallery, and the original Japanese trailer.

Content Guide

Some brutal fighting, but not severe enough to rate over a 13-up.

Violence: 3 - Several brutal and relatively bloody fights, but not overly gory.

Nudity: 1 - Nothing past some revealing costumes.

Sex/Mature Themes: 0 - None.

Language: 1 - Nothing noteworthy

Notes and Trivia

Some notes on the translation: "Hadou" is actually a Japanese word meaning something along the lines of "surge" or "energy wave," although it seems to be ascribed a mystical meaning more along the lines of "Chi" in the translation. Similarly, "Hadouken" means something like "wave fist." The phrase translated as "Dark Hadou" in the dub and subtitles ("Satsui no hadou") actually means "hadou with the intent to kill," a much more blunt explanation of what was going on--Ryu was trying to resist the urge to use his energy to harm.

As in many other fighting games, there are also some name adjustments. In this case, most notable is Akuma (meaning "Devil" in Japanese), whose original name was "Gouki" (it is changed in both the subtitles and dub).

Finally, I'll point out that the games and movies have developed quite a bit of backstory over the years, much of it contradictory, but Capcom has apparently recently tried to develop a more coherent plot from the pieces, much of which is present in this movie.

In an interesting bit of trivia Kane Kosugi (voice of Ryu in Japanese) has been in a number of live-action action movies but doesn't ordinarily do voice work.

Availability

Available in the US from Manga video on bilingual DVD (buy from RightStuf or AnimeNation). Was previously also available on subtitled or dubbed VHS.

Looking to buy? Try these stores: RightStuf (search) | AnimeNation | Akemi's a(nime)Store