Samurai supirittsu: Haten gôma no shô

I loved the SS video game. So when I went anime shopping and saw that there was an anime of the game, I thought, "Sweet! Put this in the cart!" It was terrible. Absolutely terrible. The animation is disgraceful, the story is extremely lacking and slow-paced, and there is absolutely NO character development. They're all just sort of... there. The only reason this doesn't get a 1 is because there is some good action, but you'll be lucky to be awake or not vomiting due to the other crap that goes on. Do not get this movie unless you're a HUGE fan of the video game.

I have played SNK video games ever since Crystalis on the NES, and I have always been a fan on the fighting games on the Neo Geo system. Of all the games, Samurai Spirits/Samurai Shodown has always been one of my favorites of all time (just behind King of Fighters and Tekken). Besides stellar gameplay, wonderful atmosphere, and some of the best animation and art... The CHARACTERS were paramount! SNK's games all have such detailed characters, all with distinct personalities that make the game. The problem with this is, if a new artist doesn't understand the character the way the creator had intended, it's easy to mess things up. In Samurai Spirits, the anime, it's as if the writers hadn't even played the games. It's as if they saw drawing of the characters, and set out to reinvent the characters. Unfortunately this is about the same in another SNK series that became an animation, Art of Fighting. Because the characters weren't true, it just didn't work (though poor overall production didn't help). It wasn't subtle differences, but complete fabrications. Characters stories were completely re-written, and not for the better. The Samurai Spirits game series has a VERY deep and detailed plotline, well portrayed in the RPG on Sega Saturn or the official Manga, but this new plotline was fairly cookie cutter, and a bit odd. Not particularly bad, but just not true to the character. If you aren't a fanatic of the game, you shouldn't be bothered. It's not nearly as good as Ninja Scroll, Ninja Resurrection, or Dagger of Kamui but not a bad bargain movie. If you want a good video game-to-anime conversion, Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, Street Fighter II V (series), Vampire/Darkstalkers, Sakura Wars, Sonic Anime (NOT the US cartoon), and Fatal Fury are all pretty good. Animations that doesn't do the game justice include: Battle Arena Toshinden, Art of Fighting, Samurai Shodown, and Panzer Dragoon (the game is a fabulous work of art, but the anime is fair at best).

With any genre of film, you always have to wade through a lot of garbage before finding any gems. Samurai Showdown is this garbage. Anyone expecting a movie along the lines of Ninja Scroll will be very disappointed. The animation is the weakest "Amerime" (I guess they didn't want to make it too sophisticated for us Yankees), it looks like your typical Saturday morning fare. The characters are not developed, the plot is nonexistent, and the lead protagonist Hamaru is a jerk that no one could relate to or empathize with. Not to mention there is no explanation as to how different warriors from South America, France, San Francisco and China all managed to convene in Japan at exactly the same time after maybe two cuts. What is a sword wielding warrior doing in San Francisco during the time of feudal Japan? San Francisco had not even been reached by the Spaniards during the time of feudal Japan, so what is a Caucasian doing there?! Plot holes aplenty. The only interesting character is the big villain Earthquake, the rest are just props. By the way, what kind of man names his pet husky "Puppy"?

Considering the facts that the character designer for this film was also heavily involved in Ninja Scroll and that the game itself, while perhaps not as balanced or polished as the Street Fighter series, had a far better sense of plot and the characters more established personalities, I assumed, when I saw this video on sale for a comparatively mere $20 (compared to $50 for an Evangelion) that there had been some sort of mistake. In hindsight, of course, I realise that the store was offloading it as fast as they could. Gone is the game's plot and the individual character backgrounds; the characters have been lumped together haphazardly in 'teams' (Haohmaru, Charlotte, Tam-Tam, Nakoruru and Wan-Fu are the 'good', Earthquake, Gen-an and Amakusa, who is inexplicably female, are the 'bad' and Hanzo and Jubei are basically neutrally good) and their backgrounds completely forgotten (an Ainu fighting alongside the Japanese and Chinese? A native American and a French woman tagging along? WTF?). If, for some reason, you can't guess that the good guys triumph in the end, feel free to email me and request my copy; I'll be happy to get rid of it. Then again, you could repeatedly drag a cheesegrater across your forehead and have a better time for a fraction of the cost.

I admit to knowing little to nothing about the "Samurai Shodown" franchise. I don't think that really matters because if a movie is truly good, it should be able to stand out as being good in its own right. I can say that this was very bad, among the worst anime films I've ever seen. I guess it's no surprise seeing as how bad video game movies are, but anime versions are usually better. I was amazed at how cliché the story was. It featured a bunch of people working together to defeat an evil force that was away for a hundred years or something. The animation doesn't hold up at all.

I found the characters to be so annoying. Haohmaru is particularly obnoxious. When he's not acting like a doofus, he's just insulting the other characters all of whom have very little depth to them. We get this stuff about how his mother was killed and the villain is tempting him and it's all things we've seen countless times before. The short length really works against it, because we have no time to flesh out these characters. I believe fans hate this movie as well, so I'll agree it isn't faithful to the games. The "Fatal Fury" movie was way better. *1/2