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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

Customer Reviews: Total numer of reviews: 72 Average rating: 3.0 "THIS IS A STREET FIGHTER MOVIE????!!!" Cons: -The name: This is called Street Fighter Alpha, correct? Then why does it have almost nothing to do with the game? The only thing even remotly similar to the game is the evil Ryu/ Dark Hadou thing. But the final scenes? ***They have nothing to do with the game! there's some evil scientist who for some reason which is never explained, wants to harness the energy of Street Fighters around the world. This is incredibly stupid and feel incredibly out of place with the rest of the movie. They should have just kept the first half of the movie, and totally skipped the second half.*** -The animation: It is simply unacceptable. It pales in comparison to the first anime, which had a dark look and feel to it. This one ditches that and instead uses bright colors, that oddly enough, look washed out and out of place. -The characters: Where's bison? Where's shadow law? WHERE'S AKUMA???? He only makes a five minute appearance!!! -The plot: Like I said before, the first half isn't that bad, but once it gets half way in, it turns stupid. Again, the second half is incredibly out of place and should not have been included. -The disk: The movie is full screen! Even though this is a strait to video/dvd movie, they should have made it widescreen. And then there's the extras. There's a making of and an interview. While the English track is 5.1, the Japanese is only stereo. Oh yeah and there's no KMFDM. P>Pro: -The characters: While I said before that they left out a lot of seemingly important characters, they did manage to throw in some characters from The SFA universe. Ryu, Ken, Dan, Birdie, Chun Li, Rose, and Sakura all make appearances. Like I said before, Akuma is in it too, but his appearance is so breif that I'd hardly even call it a cameo. -The fight scenes: while they aren't as good as SFII's, the fact that Manga Video even included fight scenes is amazing to me, considering they left every thing else out that made Street Fighter. -That's it. Avoid this movie at all costs, but if you must see it rent it. Do not make the same mistake as me by buying this movie. "I dont like the games, but I like this movie!" Normaly I dislike Street Fighter games, I find them to be .... But when I viewed this DVD with my friend, I was impressed. The animation is good, the action is cool, and the plot isnt dumb. If you are a SF fan, or a fan of the other SF animes, check this out. "Awsome but some bent scens" It was awsome if you keep up on Street Fighter and know the people well you would understand very good. Alough it spits out radom scens that make no cence ( this only happends a few times) the DVD ver is much better than the VHS one because it shows scens in the VHS 1 that almost proves that it was orginally made in Japan but in this 1 you will have no clue on it. ""The true warrior will fight with all his might"" Alpha is much deeper with the story when they introduce Ryu's Brother(who was never introduce in the game) Shun. Shun went all the way from Brazil to see his "Big Brother" and finally meet him and talking storys about their parents. Unknown to Shun both of them have the dark force in them called the "Dark Hado" which involes Akuma. Some of the Characters voices mostly sound the same and makes it funny when Ken is mocking Shun about calling Ryu big brother and Ken repeating questions such as "Why is it that you have to eat with us /sleep in here with us too? Shun would respond "cause I am his little brother". Well some of the alpha characters are in this movie; Chun Li, Sakura, Birdie, Dan, Rose and Akuma. The animation is very strong as well as the plot. But it was sad that Shun died at the end. "Boring, but with great DVD features." First off, the DVD features are awesome. The graphics on the DVD are just plain sweet. Plus, it features interviews from every voice actor, the art director, and the producer. So, what characters from the game can you look forward to seeing in the movie? Ryu, Ken, and Chun-Li have the most major roles, Akuma, Sakura, Rose, Zangief, and Birdie have a fair amount of time on the screen, and Vega, Dhalsim, Dan, Adon, Rolento, Guy, and Sodom, all make brief cameos. As for the movie itself, the character designs are ugly, and Ryu's facial expressions when he's possessed by the Dark Hadou make him look like he's due for the insane asylum. Akuma looks especially menacing. Apparently Manga decided to call everyone by their English name rather than the original Japanese names, even in the subtitles, as Vega is called Balrog in Japan, and Akuma is called Gouki. Besides the name changes, the dubbing is pulled off rather well, and an enhanced audio track is offered on the dub, too. The soundtrack is orchestrated, and pretty memorable after a while. The story itself focuses on Ryu's long lost brother, Shun, who comes to visit him in Japan, and is kidnapped by the Shadowlaw organization during a tournament. Along with a bunch of other Street Fighter characters who have their own reasons, Ryu enters Shadowlaw to get his brother back. At times, Ryu is gripped with a violent, demonic force similar to Akuma's, that he tries to resist from consuming him. There is surprisingly little action in the first half of the movie, but the first fight scene and the long final battle are nice. I was greatly disappointed, however, by the fact that Ryu and Akuma never really fight. I mean, their rivalry is the basis of Street Fighter Alpha. Vega, er, M. Bison doesn't make an appearance in the movie either. Just like Street Fighter 2: The Animated Movie, Street Fighter Alpha suffers from mixing a feature-length movie with an overly simplistic plot. The events in the story just don't flow smoothly enough to be an enjoyable ride. Plus, the "why do we fight?" theme in the movie is so forced and cheap. But, when packed with all sorts of features in a great looking DVD, it's still worth checking out... just not worth buying.