Street Fighter: The Animated Series

Okay, so you probably watched this show as a kid and came back to it to realize how much it "sucks," or you managed to see some M. Bison "YES!" videos on YouTube and decided to explore the rest of the show. You then realized that the show wasn't quite what it was cut out to be, huh? I challenge the notion that the show is what's at fault, but rather it's the viewer's perspective that needs enlightening. I'll explain.

Street Fighter: The Animated Series is not only a series that merits watching, it merits rewatching. I've personally seen each episode at least 8 times. You can't just be the passive couch-potato observer, however. This isn't an action flick meant to engage semi-dispassionate viewers dragged into the cinema by their friends, this is a (clearly) low budget cartoon made by some people who only had a cursory understanding of what Street Fighter was really all about. Maybe they watched the 1993 movie and played some Street Fighter II Turbo during the breaks to get some ideas for the characters, but that's really it.

So why is it so great? Why bother even watching past the first episode? When you look past the recycled and poorly done animations, the cheesy action, the continuity and drawing errors, and so forth, it's because this show is outrageously funny. In fact, everything I just listed contributes in some way to this show's value, but it really shines with the characters themselves.

So the way I propose for you to watch this cartoon is like a hawk. Try to find out the badass things Bison says (the best acted character on the show). Seek out all the goofy dialogue. Try to ascertain whether or not the creators of the show were seriously putting in effort, or if they thought the many glitches of the show were actually rather hilarious (especially considering that they had to have known exactly what they were). I cannot walk away from the show without the feeling that Will Meugniot wasn't making a piece of crap, but was rather stringing together a collection of inside jokes for the audience to pry into if they could.

As for the content of the show itself, like I said it really shines with the characters. Bison and Guile diametrically opposed in their struggle of good v. evil. Deejay being as stereotypical as possible ("Yes mahn! Dhe champ is bhaak!"), Honda the ace computer hacker, Cammy the ho, T. Hawk the lovestruck... hawk. The characters are all just completely amusing in their own ways. The second season features (for the second and final time since season one) Col. Sawada (how did he raise in rank from the movie? Watch to find out!) talking at a million words per minute. Have some fun trying to repeat his lines or make up some of your own in a Sawada-esque speed and style. The same can be done for Chun-Li, who in my mind can easily be exaggerated into a manly sounding woman.

So go away if you expect this show to just unravel itself for you. Please do watch this show if you want to try to find all the little nitpicks and to enjoy the cartoon with a critical eye, especially if you love Street Fighter.

In the mid 90s, USA created a Street Fighter series that followed some aspects of the 1994 film and mainly attempted to keep it close to the source material.

In the show, Guile leads a task force of Street Fighters to stop global terrorism, usually, M. Bison's Shadaloo. Some of the changes of the movie (Balrog a good guy and Dee Jay a bad guy) were corrected to the original storyline, special moves were more prominently featured and characters like Akuma and Feilong, who were left out of the movie featured in the show.

Other movie changes/additions like Chunli being a reporter, Zangief aligned with Shadaloo and the existence of movie character, Sawada were kept. This led to a pretty decent vibe to the show.

In addition, characters from other Capcom games were featured most notably the Street Fighter Alpha and Final Fight series.

When I was a teenager I enjoyed this show because of the action-packed nature of the show, which was carried over from the video game it's based on. I give Street Fighter a perfect 10/10.

Street Fighter: The Animated Series had a very rocky start. It was based off of the Street Fighter film, one of the biggest examples of miscasting and plot contriving of the 90's, and part of a trend of increasingly bad video game to movie conversion given to hack directors. Hopes for a show like this were reasonably low. And the first season of this show gave no reason for anyone to think any differently. To be blunt, it was GI Joe with Street Fighter characters shoehorned in, and was indistinguishable from the dozens of other cartoons out at the time. Showing how derivative the American animation scene had become, it tried to take cues from both Joe and the animated X-Men series, failing on both counts. Poorly plotted, animated, the first season was not faithful to the true source material at all.

However, the second season managed to turn things around a good deal. Someone must have seen the incredibly animated Street Fighter 2 anime or watched the II V TV series, because by the time the second season came around, the producers hired a more expensive animation studio for better artwork, went away from stand-alone episodes to create something of an ongoing plot, and most importantly, distanced itself from the live-action film by adding characters from the Street Fighter Alpha and Final Fight games and developing the current roster of characters. True, hardcore Street Fighter fan-boys might have been disappointed by the absence of Sakura from Alpha 2, and certain problems with the first season, such as the tendency to serverly overuse the American characters continued (For instance, in the episode with Akuma, the American born Ken is the one to best him when nearly all other media suggests Ken can't even touch Akuma), but the show did a rather admirable job of introducing the new characters they did use.

So first season bad, second season good. That said, the anime versions of Street Fighter far exceed this effort in almost every way.

I watched street fighter 2 v first and that show was amazing.

Coming in to this I expected the same.

Well... Ai only was able to endure 2 episodes because it was bad and dumb. Ryu and Ken are dumb in this version.

Guile is a boy scout.

Chung Li is cringe.

Its obvious that Americans produced this because it was bad.

Please skip this tv show. Rewatch sf2v 20 times before you even touch this version.

One word sums up this 1995 TV series based on the popular Street fighter game by Capcom and the 1994 Street Fighter movie. That word is "inconsistent".

Quality of writing and animation varies greatly between seasons and even between episodes. Season 2 can be easily regarded as immensely superior to season 1(a trend that many 90s animated series seem to follow, like Fantastic four or Iron man)

Season 1 generally follows in the footsteps of the 1994 movie. Cheesy, self contained episodic stories. Some episodes, especially the more character centric episodes are quite good and help a lot with the character development. But some episodes come across as terrible toy advertisements. Sometimes characters are thrown in just to showcase their powers and the scripting at points is terrible with juvenile humor and cheesy dialogue. The animation in season 1 is mediocre. The character designs are nice, more realistic than the designs in the game or the Japanese manga. But choppy animation, simplistic art and static camera angles with little attention to detail lends to a very low budget look for majority of the episodes in season 1.

Season 2 saw a huge improvement in the show. Starting from the episode "The Hammer Strikes", one can tell the the overall tone of the second season is generally a lot more serious than the first. The episodes are still self contained but have an underlying storyline to tie everything up. Character subplots are carried on and developed nicely as the series goes along such as Blanka's conflict with the beast within, Cammy's mysterious past and Guile's wavering confidence in his leadership of the team. Animation in season is also taken up a huge notch. The animation is smoother and more dynamic utilizing a good mix of close-ups, full body pans and kinetic framing of shots to give the show a very strong, almost movie-style look. Some episodes are even on par with the quality in the Japanese Street Fighter anime movie. With the improvement in animation, the art detail takes a jump too. The blacks are heavy and body contours are sharper, all adding to the enjoyment.

A small side note here. The portrayal of the "special powers" like Guile's Sonic Boom or Ryu's hadouken in this series is possibly the most true to the game ever. In the game, a single Hadouken can be fired multiple times and just knocks an opponent down. It does not destroy require great strain on Ryu, nor does a single blast take down a building(as portrayed in other adaptations of Street fighter).

So overall, this series was a noble effort, possibly one of the better animated series based on a game. Shaky at first but finally showed improvement. The characters were easy to relate to, the animation and writing were enjoyable in the end. Personally, i recommend just watching the first episode, then skipping to episode 14 onward.

I give it 7 out of 10 for a good effort, and in keeping true to the spirit of the game it is based on. Not perfect, but not bad either.