I was walking around in my local purveyor of anime when I saw this DVD up on the shelves. I decided to give it a look, seeing as how the Street Fighter II anime wasn't half bad, and this one looked like it had better art, and Sakura was in it.

About 5 minutes in, this movie looks like it might have promise. Chun-Li's kicking some criminal butt, Sakura's discovering Ryu, and the fighting is done pretty good.

And then stuff starts falling apart very, very rapidly. First thing to go are the subtitles. The translations turn, way, way bad. The name of the CHARACTERS aren't even right! How cheap do you have to be to get a translator who doesn't know the story, and then not edit the damn thing?!

You'll be treated to lines like, "Wordy!" (My Japanese friends say this was supposed to be "Shut up!"), the characters being told to "cheer up!" after getting pummeled, and the best line, "Such bast*rd". I was SO waiting for "This is suck." or "You are sucks." to end up in there somewhere.

The story goes something like this. Ryu, (voiced by Kane Kosugi, of Japan's "Muscle Ranking" fame.) is disturbed because he keeps getting the urge to throw the killer fireball. This happens like, every 2 minutes. He'll just go outside and blow up a bunch of trees, or the side of a building, or something.

Then he discovers he has a brother, who gets kidnapped after getting majorly whupped on by Zangief, and this robot in this battle that makes no sense. Anyway, Ryu goes off to find him.

Along for the ride come Ken, Chun-Li, Birdie, Rolento, Sodom, Guy, Dan, Dhalsim, Adon, and some others who appear for like 2-3 seconds. I think Guy has like one line. You see Rolento for like 1/2 a second.

After Dan gets the tar beaten out of him by Birdie, Birdie gets called into a special room, and this machine starts sucking the essence out of him.

Then another robot comes out and Chun-Li and Ken and Birdie all fight him to no avail. Then Ryu fights and kills it, using his killer hadoken, and some guy makes this new ultra-powerful body after sucking up all of their powers. You know...like they do in the Tekken anime.

The plot makes no sense...it goes nowhere, and in the end it resolves nothing, but kills off Ryu's mystery brother. The animation is nice, but it's a complete waste because 75% of the movie is comprised of the characters powering up and just glowing.

About 10% of the rest of the movie is gratuitous crotch and butt shots. We figured it'd make a really good drinking game. One person would drink for every butt shot, and another would have to drink for every crotch shot. Within 30 minutes, I bet they're both passed out.

I don't know WHO thought this was a good idea. I man, the animators and writers had to know this sucked when they were working on it. I don't see any way they couldn't have known that.

Bad, bad, bad. The Japanese title for this anime is "Street Fighter Zero"...and it more than lives up to its name. Don't buy, don't rent, and if you get it for a present, you have to forget you ever knew that person. Game over.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD