LXXXVII: "Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie"

I mentioned this title before when I covered the TAC-made Street Fighter II V. Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie was made by the same group, before the anime series. It is more connected to the games character-wise than the anime series, and just about everyone from the original Street Fighter II to Super Street Fighter II Turbo is in it (excluding Akuma)

From first aspect, the movie begins as homage to the end of the first game Street Fighter (called Fighting Street for some odd reason), when Ryu defeats and scars Muay Thai fighter Sagat with the Shoryuken following a Hadouken. Of course, he is left undisclosed about an android tailing him, who was at the match. Fast forward to years later, following the assassination of Albert Sellers by "Killer Bee" Cammy White, Chun-Li of Interpol finds out what Shadowlaw was up to, and tries to partner up with Guile of the US Military. Meanwhile, Ken is also targeted during his match against Thunder Hawk, and from there, Shadowlaw and its dictator mastermind, M. Bison, moves with their plans.

The title has everyone aside from Akuma amassed from those five SFII games, and it uses real music for some of the scenes/fights, such as 'Them Bones' by Alice in Chains. It has Japanese and English audio, though three different versions were made for the US alone. While the audio is more or less the same in all of them, there were 2 versions of the 1995 release, and one in 2006, a year after the game Street Fighter Anniversary Collection released, which had this title in the game. In 1995, there was a VHS version aimed for the Pg-13 audience, more specifically censoring the shower scene with Chun-Li before Vega's attack. There was also a Laserdisc version with that scene and those containing excessive blood removed. Edited slightly from the VHS version, this title was bundled in the SF Anniversary Collection game as part of the gallery for Hyper Street Fighter II. In addition, in 2006, an 'Uncut, Uncensored, and Unleashed' DVD version was released. This version stayed true to the original uncensored Japanese version, and it gave viewers options. The double-sided DVD has the dubbed Western version on one side, and the original Japanese on the other, with optional subtitles. Even with that, the word 'fuck' was still omitted from the film on two occasions.

The animation was nothing less than expected from Group TAC, saying that it had good visuals. Not to spoil, but the ending had a cliffhanger to it, which isn't something I minded. As a fan, I look at it now and wonder if TAC continued to create any SF-related media, if they did conceive something related to the recent Street Fighter 4 (hypothetically speaking), they could perhaps draw a bridge from that ending, perhaps? But seeing as how Studio 4°C released one already called Street Fighter IV: The Ties That Bind (next on the list), that's unlikely, though it's early to say. Capcom does plan on having more animated works.

Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie looked good for its time, remaining a classic after the elease of the film based on SFIV. At this point, I'm surprised that, even with the cutscenes featuring 2 characters from Street Fighter III, I haven't seen any animations for this game as of yet. SF II: The Animated Movie gets an 8.3 of 10, and I can only wait for what animation Capcom plans to do next.