Awesome / Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie

• The film opens with the fateful showdown between Ryu and Sagat, set admist Dramatic Thunder and lightning. This fight shows off all of Ryu's signature specials—including the Shoryuken that forever scarred Sagat. Capcom later used the setting for this fight as the background stage for Sagat's boss battle with Ryu in Street Fighter Alpha 2.
• Ryu's match with Fei Long is short, and Fei gets the worst of it, but damn if it isn't a good scrap. Particularly notable for making Ryu's iconic but normally completely implausible Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku look amazing (and more importantly, convincing) as the finishing move.
• Chun-Li's big fight scene is possibly one of the best animated fighting scenes ever. Chun-Li is unarmed, nearly naked, and alone in her apartment. She doesn't realize that she's being stalked by Vega, who Bison has dispatched to kill her. Despite Vega's obvious advantages in size, ambush, and his claw, she defeats the psychopath not with any kind of luck, but because she's better than him. Even after sustaining multiple serious injuries and starting to weaken due to blood loss, she refuses to give in to the pain and keeps fighting. After he pauses to taunt her, she's so enraged that she lifts her couch over her head, tosses the damn thing at Vega, and nails the bastard right in the face. This knocks him down, setting him up for her Spinning Bird Kick, which she follows by standing on his face and spinning. This REALLY pisses him off.
  Vega: M-my beautiful face is ruined! YOU BITCH! I'LL MAKE YOU SUFFER!
  • Vega gets his own when Chun-Li delivers a sweeping kick, which he dodges effortlessly simply by bending backwards, before lurching right back up directly into her face.
  • The film has a perfect opportunity for a Big Damn Heroes moment in this fight with Guile busting in and saving Chun-Li from Vega at the last moment. Instead, Chun-Li defeats Vega all by herself with her "Hundred Rending Legs", finishing him off by kicking him through the wall of her apartment. Guile only arrives after she wins so he can rush her to the hospital. Even so, it's pretty awesome to watch him rushing to get there because he doesn't know she'll win.
  • Extra-special mention must go to the soundtrack for the English version of the scene—KMFDM's "Ultra", a pulse-pounding industrial piece that screams high-tension and brutal conflict and culminates in the perfect ending to punctuate Chun-Li's victory.
    Fire! You cannot! Hurt! Me!
  • It should be noted how brutal the fight is. You do get the impression that either one could die at any moment. She ends up with bloody scars on her torso and face. As for him, she didn't just hit him in the face, she stepped on him, then did a pirouette with her foot twisting on his exposed cheek. And seeing her lightning kick batter his head around with every hit shows how dangerous the move could be. You can see the wall cracking and crumbling behind Vega from the force of her kicks smashing him back against it before she leaps up to put him right through it with one final double-foot blow.
• The film's final fight features Ryu and Ken teaming up to take on Bison; this one culminates in an awesome double Hadōken finish.
  • Bonus points for the soundtrack, in both the English and Japanese versions, being awesome.
    • Extra bonus points for the Japanese soundtrack for the final fight: it was later included in Street Fighter Alpha's hidden Dramatic Battle mode which recreates the sequence from the film. This in turn was later used in Project X Zone 2 right down to Ryu and Ken using the same actions against Bison as in the film while the same music plays.
• In a generalized sense, the best aspect of the entire film is the utter respect shown to the source material. All of the characters are portrayed as accurately as is possible, all of their signature moves are kept intact (while often being improved to look more plausible while still being awesome- Ryu's tatsumaki senpukyaku against Fei Long is done by alternating both legs rather than by spinning around on one leg like a top), and the story closely follows that of the game's mythology; the only major deviation is that the story doesn't take place during an actual World Warrior tournament.
  • In turn, this film inspired changes in the Street Fighter canon: Bison's more muscular design in games after Street Fighter II (starting with the Alpha series) was inspired by his design from this film; the Ken and Ryu vs. Bison fight was the inspiration for a hidden fight in Alpha (and may have indirectly inspired X-Men vs. Street Fighter); and how Ryu got his red headband in this film is (more or less) considered canon. Only the first live-action Mortal Kombat movie can lay claim to having a bigger impact on the game franchise that spawned it.
• The mostly-FMV tie-in game ends with the upgraded Monitor Cyborg in a one-on-one fight with Ryu in the style of Super Street Fighter II Turbo with a badass new background and theme music. But if you do a Perfect win, the Cyborg recalls various memories of Ryu and Ken while Bison is gloating. The Cyborg then turns on Bison, who barely is able to get in two hits while the Cyborg utterly wrecks him (whereas Ryu and Ken had considerable trouble fighting him together), before killing him with a single Hadouken in the same way he's defeated in the movie.
• Props go to Discotek with the 2016 Blu-Ray release of the film. Not only did it include both English and Japanese soundtracks, but all three English tracks, the ability to watch the film in English with the Japanese soundtrack, no voices altogether, and remastered visuals, with not even a single frame cut. A bonus feature on the disc documents the process that went into remastering the film.
  • Even better: According to Discotek themselves they reached out to the original ADR directors, Les and Mary Claypool to help with the mixes. This was also Les' final work in ADR before retirement.
  • And just to top it all off, the new 4K release from 2023 includes the edited PG-13 versions as bonus features. Save for one rumored-but-never-verified cut that Discotek couldn't find, if a version exists, it's on this disc.

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