Cheap Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie (DVD) (Gisaburo Sugii) Price

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Customer Reviews of Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie

Excellent Animated Martial Arts Action!
If you are a fan of Japanese animation and Hong Kong kung fu movies, this movie will be a pleasure to watch. It stays true to the original video game, it shows the awesome skills of Ryu as he teams up with his long lost fellow student Ken Masters, who almost is the equal to Ryu, to fight the evil Bison with his collection of fighters. The animation is very well done and the movie has a cool soundtrack, if you like rock and alternative. I'm a big Bruce Lee fan, so I wanted Fei Long, the mirror image of Lee, to have had a bigger part in the movie. The fight between Ryu and Fei Long had to be one of the best, it's one of my favorite scenes in the movie. I hope, if it's not out already, they will have a sequel to this anime. So if you haven't seen it yet and you like the video games that it is based on, I would highly recommend it.

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Only for less-picky Street Fighter Fans
There are three reasons to view this anime (and possibly own it): 1) you are an avid fan of the Street Fighter videogames and want to see some well-animated anime versions of the fighting 2) you enjoy only anime that has lots of action but is limp in story, plot, and everything else that should be expected of a good feature 3) you unfortunately feel the need to see Chun Li in her oft-exposed animated underwear

I bought this movie because I'm a bit of a Street Fighter fan (keeping and often playing the Dreamcast Street Fighter Alpha 3 and Street Fighter 3 series in my videogame collection; played then-new Street Fighter II arcade when in college); but I must fairly criticize it because I'm not a prejudiced fan.

This American version DVD is like a big old American muscle car, a simply silly, nonsensical machine by current standards but one which packs a serious punch when the loud pedal is pressed. This movie has a disorganized, sub-amateur storyline; excessively forced and lengthy dramatic character exposition; and even in some areas subpar animation. But it does excel when the fighting happens (unfortunately between stretches of awful, token character development).

Highlights are few but notable, such as Ryu v. Sagat, Chun-Li v. Vega, Fei Long v. Ryu. It is for occassional views of these sequences that I keep this movie on hand. But when I look at my DVD collection (Bugsy, LA Confidential, Perfect Blue, Ghost in the Shell, errr Street Fighter II), this one is always close to a trade.

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Not too bad at all
Being a big fan of the Street Fighter video game series, I naturally had to check out this anime that was released way back in 1995. The story revolves around M.Bison, leader of Shadaloo (along with his henchmen: Sagat, Vega, and Balrog), and his search for the ultimate warrior: Ryu. Unfortunately, Ryu is a hard man to find, so Bison kidnaps Ryu's childhood friend Ken Masters in an attempt to lure Ryu over to the dark side. Other Street Fighter favorites like Guile, Chun-Li, and E.Honda have some big roles to play, while we get to see cameos from Zangief, Blanka, Cammy, T-Hawk, Fei Long, Dhalsim, and Dee Jay. The animation itself is very nicely done (action and fighting scenes are great), and the voice acting is surprisingly well done as well. All in all, while Street Fighter 2: The Animated Movie isn't the best anime I've seen, it is pretty good, and fans of the video game should be pleased. And by the way, it is a lot, LOT, better than the live action Jean-Claude Van Damme debacle.