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...

Quick Review

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

Street Fighter Alpha is almost a really good movie. It looks flat-out awesome, has some spectacular fights, unusual but creative character designs, and even manages to build up a reasonable amount of emotional drama around the collection of likable heroes. Unfortunately, it lacks a solid core to hold the different aspects of the plot together, instead mixing a shallow premise with hints of underdeveloped mysticism. The result lacks focus and feels like it's trying too hard to give meaning to the characters' actions.

Action movie fans will, nonetheless, find lots to love, as will fans of martial-arts movies in general, and a diehard Street Fighter fan couldn't ask for much more. Personally, I came close to really liking it, but again and again I felt like it cast a shadow on its strengths with something entirely unworthy of the characters and potential of the emotional heart of the story.

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