YMMV / Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie

Index:

Games

• Main Page
• Street Fighter
• Street Fighter II
• Street Fighter Alpha
• Street Fighter III
• Street Fighter EX
• Street Fighter IV
• Street Fighter V
• Street Fighter 6

Other Media

• Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie
• Street Fighter Alpha: The Animation
• Street Fighter Alpha: Generations
• Street Fighter II V
• Street Fighter IV: The Ties That Bind
• Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
• Street Fighter: Assassin's Fist

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• Alternative Character Interpretation: Vega tenses up when Bison spies on Chun-Li and comments on her beauty, with some thinking he was jealous and hateful of her because he wanted Bison's attention instead.
• Awesome Music:
  • The original J-pop, orchestral, and jazz soundtrack was completely redone for the English dub with songs from popular Western bands including Korn, Alice in Chains and Silverchair, but the unquestioned crowner is KMFDM's "Ultra" during the brutal fight between Chun-Li and Vega. Could also count as an example of American Kirby Is Hardcore. Tellingly, Manga Entertainment used "Ultra" as something of a Bootstrapped Theme for their VHS trailers for years following this.
  • In the Japanese version, there's "Itoshisa to Setsunasa to Kokoro Tsuyosa to", which plays in the Final Battle between Ryu, Ken, and Bison. The first Street Fighter Alpha used a CPS-2 cover for it's Dramatic Battle mode, itself a recreation of the final fight. It was later remixed in Project X Zone 2 when Ryu fights a Brainwashed and Crazy Ken and when Ryu and Ken finish off Bison in the game as well as being covered by May Nakabayashi for the Japanese trailer for Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers for the Nintendo Switch. A remade version is featured in Street Fighter 6 as its image song.
  • M. Bison's Japanese entrance theme is awe-inspiring and terrifying at the same time, while his English theme is heavy in scope and electric guitars.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: Chun-Li's shower scene became the most talked about scene in the movie, particularly with U.S. audiences, as animated depictions of nudity were relatively new to them at that time. Furthermore, this scene occurred before the rise of Rule 34.
• Complete Monster: M. Bison is the leader of Shadowlaw, a criminal organization which trades weapons and drugs worldwide. In the past, he killed Chun-Li's father and Guile's air force partner, an event he fondly remembers. Seeking strong soldiers, he sends out human-like Monitor Cyborgs to find powerful martial artists, kidnapping them and using his Psycho Powers to brutally brainwash them into obeying him, sending them out to cause crime. After seeing Ryu beat up Sagat, he proceeds to hunt him down to make him his slave, later sending Vega to kill Chun-Li when he finds out she's investigating him. Deciding to make Ken Masters his slave, Bison kidnaps and brainwashes him into obeying him, pitting him against Ryu so that he can take him to be brainwashed as well, ordering Sagat to murder Cammy and Vega for failing him. After beating up Guile till he's barely able to fight, he tosses Ken aside once he regains his memories so he can fight Ryu. When defeated, Bison attempts to run Ryu down with a truck.
• Franchise Original Sin: Chun-Li's Faux Action Girl status in later games and other related media has its roots here, with her being hospitalized by Vega at the movie's halfway point and makes no further contribution to the plot other than to serve as extra motivation for Guile. However, fans are more forgiving of this movie because while Chun-Li does get severely injured by Vega, she gives as good as she got and actually beats him despite being at a severe disadvantage. Later media such as Street Fighter IV: The Ties That Bind and Street Fighter V don't even give her that privilege, with Chun-Li getting curbstomped and hospitalized by Juri in the former, and being mostly Out of Focus in the latter's story mode.
• Growing the Beard: A strange case in that the film itself is fairly bearded from the outset and few will attest its quality. What The Animated Movie did was grow the beard for the franchise it was adapting; Street Fighter had mostly been an Excuse Plot of tournament fights with a couple villains tussling about and each character's endings, but the movie cemented several character motivations more effectively, the Friendly Rivalry between Ryu and Ken, the sheer threat that is M. Bison, and a number of stylistic and storytelling decisions that Capcom would outright canonize going forwards with the Street Fighter Alpha series being directly inspired by this film. Despite being mostly Fanservice for a popular video game series at the time, the movie set the course for the rest of the franchise singlehandedly.
• Harsher in Hindsight: At the start of the climax, when Guile warns Ryu that Ken has being used by Bison to become a terrorist, Ryu replies that Ken is not a terrorist. Come Street Fighter 6, we learn that Ken has been framed for a terrorist attack he didn't commit by the Big Bad.
• Ho Yay: With all the Friendship Moment's via flashbacks they get, and Ken's constant yearning for Ryu to return... yeah, Ken isn't fooling anyone, except for Ryu who wants to walk it off. That said scenes come off as more romantic than any scene with his canon girlfriend Eliza doesn't help either (one of those flashbacks even happen when Ken is driving Eliza back home!). And then there's the entire "I Know You Are in There Somewhere" Fight in the climax, Ken coming to Ryu's rescue, and their team up against Bison all set in the Japanese track to cheesy ballads and Itohisa.
• Just Here for Godzilla: For Japanese audiences, the song "Itoshisa to Setsunasa to Kokoro Tsuyosa to", which went on to become a chart-topping song in its own right. For American audiences, the aforementioned Chun-Li shower scene. And for some who purchased Discotek's 2016 Blu-ray release, they did it for the newly created English mix with the Japanese music (and/or the amount of extras).
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Bison's ass is mine!" ^Explanation In the English dub, Guile says this to Chun-Li when the latter introduces herself.
  • Bison's Big "YES!"! (no, not that "Yes!").
• Older Than They Think: Street Fighter II: The Manga introduced the concept of Bison brainwashing Ken before this movie did.
• One-Scene Wonder: The film's producers tried to fit in all sixteen fighters from Super Street Fighter II into the film somehow, so a few of them had to get the short end of the stick. For example, the aforementioned fight between Blanka and Zangief bears no significance to the plot, and several fan favorites became bit players.^note T. Hawk and fan favorite Cammy are the most notable, as they are two of the few characters to actually have a personal motivation against Bison. Since Capcom announced Super Street Fighter II Turbo shortly after production of the film began, the animators included Akuma as a cameo to avoid shoehorning his presence into the film.
• Padding: Bison's entrance is three full minutes of his plane landing in his secret base and his henchmen walking behind him, for no apparent reason other than to let his theme song play in full.
• Retroactive Recognition: Bryan Cranston, best known for his lead roles in Malcolm in the Middle and Breaking Bad, as Fei Long.
• Signature Scene:
  • Everyone remembers the opening fight between Ryu and Sagat for its climactic atmosphere, Chun-Li's fight with Vega for its violence, and the final battle of Ryu and Ken vs. Bison for its great animation and iconic use of "Itoshisa to Setsunasa to Kokoro Tsuyosa to" as the Theme Music Power-Up.
  • The shower scene, due to the fact that Chun-Li is naked and lacks Barbie Doll Anatomy.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The grunge and Nu Metal-heavy soundtrack chosen for the English dub, featuring bands like Korn and Alice in Chains, firmly dates the movie to the mid-'90s when the genres were at the height of their mainstream popularity.
• Vindicated by History: In a sense. While The Animated Movie was praised when it released, it was mostly seen in its early years as an oddity, something mostly only seen by fighting game fans. In the decades since, it's been praised as one of the most underrated anime films of the 1990s, with special attention paid to the phenomenal animation, creating the characterization of many iconic characters that have lasted to this day, a fantastic Japanese soundtrack and voice cast, being the source of many events made canon in the Alpha series, and overall being one of the best anime adaptations of a video game of all time. And that's coming from a film that had an Excuse Plot to work with.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Much praise has been given to how fluid the animation is, in particular adapting most of the characters' moves quite faithfully, as well making them look believable (i.e., Ryu's Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku having him use both feet, and Chun-Li using her hands on the floor to spin herself for her Spinning Bird Kick). There are plenty of comments on YouTube also making mention of how you can almost feel the weight behind the punches thrown about. The astounding part to all of this is how the movie used three separate animation teams, yet doesn't give that away all that much.
• Woolseyism:
  • Guile and Ken's speech patterns were made more informal in the English dub, along with American colloquialisms to add to their personalities.
  • The use of grunge music in Ken's scenes set in Seattle is very much fitting, as the grunge scene had its start in Seattle, even using Seattle-based band Alice in Chains song "Them Bones". What's more is Street Fighter II, and by extension, the movie, was explicitly set in the early '90s. This further immerses the viewer in the date and time the movie is set in.

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