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Street Fighter Alpha - The Movie Directors: Shigeyasu Yamauchi, Joe Romersa Number of Items: 1 Picture Format: Pan & Scan Format: Color, Animated, Dolby Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Running Time: 90 minutes Studio: Palm Pictures/Manga Video Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2001-01-30 Buy from Amazon |
 "Not as cool as SF2 but cool nonetheless."Even though I am a bigger fan of the FATAL FURY franchise than I am of Street Fighter I still recommend this to anime and video game fans. The quality of animation in this entry is quite stunning. A lot of time and care has been put into making this look like a work of art and some scenes and shots are definitely way past cool. The sound design is also more sophisticated than most other anime video releases. Stereo seperation and ambience comes through with clarity and more authority than you would imagine. The DVD sound great in 5.1. The story is stonger than I expected but still not up to the standards of SF2. The bad guy just isn't nasty enough or threatening. And the movie kind of suffers as a result. M Bison is barely glimpsed and he looks kind of different. Gile is completly absent. Vega is gone too. I wouldn't really say that this entry takes place in the same universe as SF2, which is a shame because it was so much better than the live action movie. Ken and Ryu's friendship is mostly the same, tho that is where any similarity ends. But there is a whole animated series to back SF Alpha up, so if you dig it...there's much more.  "SFA? Not Really! Key word Alpha"This movie was flawed in many ways. First off, it's not a sequel to SFV, but that's a good thing. SFV is different from The SF series, so a sequel to SFV should have a different title. The problem that arises is that the makers didn't know what to do and I feel they rushed this. SFA should be about what went on after Ryu defeated Sagat and before the next tournament. This movie should have been a prequel to SF: The Movie. If it was marketed that way and actually was that way, people would have flocked to it. But what we have is 80 minutes of confusion and an annoying little brother. There is little mention that Ryu defeated Sagat. There was no Sagat trying to reclaim his crown(like the game) and, while dealing with the Dark Hadou, only little annoying teaser visions of Akuma. The premise of this story is simple: make it in between SF1 and SF2 and have Akuma and the Dark Hadou play a big part in it. (If I wrote my version here someone reading this would rip me off) but anyway the makers of this movie should have known what they were doing before they started this. I'm sure one of us fans could have wrote this movie better. "NO AKUMA?!?!?!?!?!?"Having seen SF: The Animated Movie and the trailer for SF: Alpha, I was expecting a lot from this movie. Alpha, sadly has more negatives than positives. The animation was great in some areas of the movie and horrible in others, the last fight scene for example. After watching the beautifully choreographed fight scenes from SF: The Animated Movie, Alpha's fight scenes look like they were produced from my 10 year old sister and not from an experienced martial artist. The animation wasn't consistant either, it would be great....then drop to [bad]....great....[bad]....you get the idea. The music and voice dubbing were done very well and surprisingly, the english voice over is better than the original Japanese version. The story was okay at first....Ryu trying to overcome the dark side of himself.....but went off the deep end when the biologist science freak was introduced as the main villian....and not AKUMA?!?! That's the worst part of the movie!!! I was looking forward to seeing Ryu battle Akuma....but that never takes place unless you count that teaser scene between Akuma and Ryu at the end of the credits.....seems more like it was just a marketing jig to lure people into buying this movie....another draw back to Alpha was the lack of characters, you see Vega, Zangeif, and some other Alpha characters for only a short while....they're all just cameo appearences.....sad...my recomadation is to buy SF: The Animated Movie, if you haven't already bought it.....and I'd only rent Alpha, if you haven't seen it before....even though Alpha was a let down, Manga seems to be working on a second Alpha movie(check out their website, it has a picture of Sakura and Akuma on their homepage)...I still am Street Fighter fan, so I can't wait to see the next Alpha movie....hopefully it will have Akuma fighting his time around or better yet, Akuma fighting Bison... "Street Fighter Alpha: Definately No SF2!"After seeing street fighter 2 the animated movie, and being entirely engrossed by an interesting and well thought out storyline, executed with the same axcellence, I had very high expectations of Alpha. The one big thing I wished for was contunity...after realising there was none after 10 minutes or so I hoped for at least a good storyline. To be honest the storyline is very very bland, and you wouldnt expect something so cheesy in a feature film of the Street Fighter Calibre. The animation is marvelous, but I definately prefer the "rugged" animation of SF2:Animated Movie...after not getting a good storyline, or continuity with SF2 (or even to an extent the SF series...e.g a MADE up "baddie" and some dissapointingly uninvolved appearances by the likes of Vega, Adon, Birdie etc...) I finally hoped that I would get a glimpse of Chun-Li in the flesh...It didnt happen... :-P "great Anime"This anime has some very nice backgrounds and such - the water training scene in particular has a zen peacefullness to it. The animation during the fight sequences is generally done very well and there are a few moments that are awesome. The drawing style is unique and I really liked it. The story is pretty weak - typical street fighter "with great power comes great responsibility" I guess. Some of the fight scenes are really spectacular - though I found myself waiting a bit too long for them sometimes. I understand that the whole movie cant be fighting, but when you name a movie Street Fighter I just wanted a little more. All in all I would say this is easily as good as every other street fighter movie made and I appreciate the inclusion of Akuma, though it would be nice to see Guile and Dhalsim play larger roles. Down, Down-Forward, Forward+Punch. As far as the extra features go, I dont know, I never watch that crap. If you are really looking for an awesome anime, this is definately one of them, but if you havent seen Ninja Scroll or Vampire Hunter Bloodlust then I would say get those first. |
