Summary
The leader of Shadaloo, M. Bison, is on the hunt for the wandering martial artist Ryu to make him join forces with Shadaloo. At the same time you see Shadaloo hunting down his partner Ken Masters, as well as a team-up of US Airforce Officer Guile and Interpol Agent Chun Li tracking down Bison. It's a pretty basic plot, but considering what this movie is that's fine.
Great Fight Scenes
You get to see a lot of different fights from all sorts of characters from various games. Some a pretty irrelevant to the story as a whole, but welcome all the same. Plenty of entirely irrelevant fights, such as the one with DJ, but even when they add nothing to the story it's still a lot of fun to see. It would have been really easy for the movie to get lazy with their fights, but every character feels unique and true to their representation in the original games and it does a lot to create a very enjoyable film.
A persona favorite is Chun Li and Vega. Now, if you've seen this movie you would probably think the reason I say this is you get to see Chun Li fight in distinctly revealing attire, and... you are mostly wrong about that. Don't get me wrong, I do give the fan service here a solid two-thumbs up, but the fight makes a lot of use of its location in a small apartment. You get the two most agile fighters in the show bouncing around and making use of the furniture even, it's just a fantastic fight scene.
The Plot is Needlessly stretched, and here's why that's fine.
There would be no issue putting the entire story being told into a single episode of an anime if you just trimmed all the fat. Here is a list of fighters that appear and have a fight while doing nothing to add to the plot: Blanka, Zangief, DJ, Dhalsim, E. Honda, Balrog, and arguably even Sagat. At the same time, I don't think the movie would work without stuff like this, and that is when you start to realize what this movie is, and who it is for.
This movie is basically a bit of fan service for fans of the series. You get to see a lot of fighters you loved from the games fully animated and see how they look outside of the confines of what the SNES or arcades were capable of. There isn't a need for a deep or even interesting story here,
English Voice Acting is All Over the Place
Sometimes you have great lines and delivery, I think Bison is spot on. And then you have some awkwardly timed lines. It's a relic of the early days of 90's anime dubbing, in a lot of ways it's clearly not good but it still has this bizarre charm to it. In the case of Street Fighter that charm comes from the timing of responses feeling off. It's hard to put into words, but conversations feel like a sort of uncanny valley where it doesn't quite feel natural, in particular an instance where Ryu says 'Nope' in a weirdly sudden way and just kind of ending the conversation. I kind of love it. Overall Thoughts
This is a treat for any old-school fans of Street Fighter. No, it's not going to blow your mind, but it's going to get a good response out of you. It's fun to see a lot of those game moves fully animated like this, there is a lot of variety in the action, and the cast is enjoyable enough. It could be enjoyable to anyone else just looking for a series of fun 90's anime fights as well, so even people outside of the core audience can find something to enjoy here. Definitely give it a watch.
