Still from the STREET FIGHTER cartoon.
© Capcom
Street Fighter: Anime and Other Distractions
By: Nadia OxfordDate: Thursday, December 13, 2007
At 20 years old, Street Fighter is a pretty ancient game franchise by modern standards; few series can claim the same longevity. As such, Street Fighter's characters and story have been spun into a lot of anime, manga, comics and cartoons. As far as comparing American animation to Japanese animation goes, Street Fighter is an excellent specimen.
After Capcom of Japan released Super Street Fighter II Turbo, an anime about the subject matter was produced. This anime (simply referred to as Street Fighter: The Animated Movie in America) inspired a lot of design choices for Street Fighter Alpha, a prequel series released by Capcom as a follow-up to Street Fighter II (Street Fighter III wouldn't come until years later).
The anime is functional, albeit a little bizarre. Most, if not all of the cast of Super Street Fighter II Turbo makes at least a cameo. Guile's role is of particular note, as the soldier has the word "JESUS" stitched on the back of his coat. Maybe its presence is supposed to be an interesting commentary on how the Japanese believe Americans perceive themselves, though Japan never needs much of a reason to play with Biblical names and references the way a cat would bat at a mouse. The Street Fighter anime is also famous for a Chun-Li shower scene and an epic battle between her and the masked madman, Vega, following said shower.
Interestingly, Street Fighter: The Animated Movie only very recently received an uncensored re-release in America. Prior, the nudity was cut from Chun-Li's fifteen minutes of showery fame, and the original Japanese soundtrack was replaced with a lot of heavy rock by Silverchair, Saliva and similar minstrels. If you're a Street Fighter fan and you haven't seen The Animated Movie (gasp!), do yourself a favour and watch it. The other Street Fighter titles are really hit and miss, but there's something classic and fun about the original. Oh, and make sure to stick around after the credits, because…well, what happens afterwards is hard to describe.
Street Fighter: The Movie
Okay, by this point everyone knows that the live-action Street Fighter movie with Jean Claude Van Damme was poison. It even killed Raul Julia, a fantastic veteran actor who somehow did a very competent job of playing the evil overlord of Shadaloo, M Bison. I salute your sacrifice, Mr Julia. Sniff.
What was wrong with the movie? Too many things to count, but most of them centered around the rape of the characters. Ryu and Ken, usually disciplined martial artists, are cast as arms dealers. Dhalsim is an evil scientist. The All-American Guile struggles to speak English. The Street Fighter Movie, overall, is just an embarrassment.
But believe it or not, one tiny pinprick of brightness came out of this otherwise horrible endeavor.
Street Fighter: The Movie: The Cartoon
An animated Street Fighter series budded from the movie. Thankfully, it didn't carry the above title (though the game series based on the movie actually did). Street Fighter fans actually revile the American animated cartoon, which was incidentally not a very far cry from GI Joe in terms of design and plot. But when you sit down and watch the Street Fighter series from end to end (you won't die, I promise), you can really see that the writers tried hard to produce something close to the games.
Of course, it was nearly impossible for them to succeed 100%. Children's cartoons were tricky in the early 90s; the censors probably weren't crazy over the idea of a cartoon based on a martial arts tournament (at least the Ninja Turtles fought evil, not each other), so Guile and his buddies only used their projectile-powers while fighting the terrorist organisation, Shadaloo. Isn't it a little ironic how martial arts is okay in today's cartoons, but now heroes aren't allowed to fight terrorism anymore?
For the most part, the Street Fighter cartoons series was episodic. M Bison did something bad and the Street Fighters had to stop him. There were running themes throughout the series, though. Blanka (whose origin was unchanged from the movie's) had to endure being made a monster through Dhalsim's scientific experimentations back in Bison's lair. Cammy, a Street Fighter with a mysterious past in the games, had that past looked at extensively in the cartoon. Even Guile's troubled marriage, referred to in the games, received some exploration in the cartoon.
It would have been nice for Street Fighter to go all-out and employ an ongoing storyline, but alas, that's not the way things were done back then. It's also hard not to admit that the cartoon's writers went a little crazy from time to time. A prime example is the episode based on the Final Fight game series.
Final Fight is the spiritual predecessor to Street Fighter II; it actually was Street Fighter II until Capcom renamed the game and came up with something else for SF II. As such, the characters work in close proximity with each other in both America and Japan. The American Street Fighter cartoon did feature Final Fight's heroes, Cody and Guy, in one episode. Cody, a street-smart thug with a heart of gold (until he winds up in jail in the Street Fighter Alpha timeline) was portrayed as a blithering idiot in his feature episode, which revolved around his kidnapped girlfriend, Jessica. He literally sounded like a hillbilly, not to mention the fact his mind worked on a single track. The rest of the cast spoke to him like he was simple, whether intentionally or unintentionally ("Now Cody, let Ken and Ryu find Jessica. And don't eat those cookies before dinner.").
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