The latest Street Fighter movie is hurricane-kicking its way into theaters on October 16 — but did you know there was a critically acclaimed animated film that came out decades before it?
Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie came out in 1994, the same year that the so-bad-it's-good live-action film with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Raul Julia was released. And while the highly-quotable (“For me, it was Tuesday”) live-action flick is a larger part of the public consciousness, most Street Fighter fans will agree that the animated movie blows it out of the water.
The animated movie doesn’t follow the World Warrior tournament seen in the game; instead, it focuses on Bison tracking down strong warriors using an army of cyborgs in an attempt to capture them for his own nefarious purposes. It’s not an official part of the official Street Fighter lore (which, admittedly, is quite confusing and convoluted), but it features some fantastic fights and, of course, the debut of Violent Ken (an evil version of the character corrupted by M. Bison's Psycho Power).
You’ve likely seen some GIFs from this movie floating around the internet over the years, and that’s no coincidence. The animation in this flick is simply fantastic, especially where fight scenes are concerned. One of the first ones we see takes place between Ryu and Sagat as a little backstory (which actually is canon); other iconic action sequences include Cammy’s assassination of a government official, Ryu and Ken’s final fight against M. Bison, and of course, Chun-Li’s iconic brawl with Vega.
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