Street Fighter Alpha The Animation | Retro Japanese Media Retrospective

Things have been moving and shaking in the world of Street Fighter, and if you're a fan of the Alpha subseries specifically like I am, you're probably a happy camper. Last month, my main man Dan Hibiki finally made his Street Fighter V debut, and between him and Sakura, my two mains are now present in the latest entry (is it time for me to actually try this game now?!). About a week before that, it was announced that Rose would be joining her imitator Menat in the game as well. And finally, much to the chagrin of almost the entire fighting game community, it was announced that Street Fighter would be having a crossover with Fortnite, featuring a creepy smiling Ryu and Chun-Li rocking her Street Fighter Alpha fit. For me, in spite of my indifference towards Fortnite, this is all very exciting because of the place in my heart that the Street Fighter Alpha series has. I played a little bit of Street Fighter II Special Champion Edition on the Genesis as a kid, but my first real entry into the Street Fighter franchise was actually the movie we'll be discussing today. I was walking through my local used games and movie store one weekend in middle school, when I stumbled upon this gem for a cool $9 in pretty good condition. Since I already knew the Street Fighter series because of the aforementioned Genesis port, I grabbed the movie without a second thought. I ended up enjoying it so much that several weeks later I would get myself a copy of the Street Fighter Alpha Anthology collection for the PlayStation 2, from which Street Fighter Alpha 3 remains one of my favorite fighting games of all time. So the fact that this subseries of the legendary fighting game franchise is getting this boost of attention from all the recent hullabaloo is super cool, and I thought now would be as good a time as any to talk about the first anime movie I ever bought, and one of my favorite anime movies of all time, from Director Shigeyasu Yamauchi and Screenwriter Reiko Yoshida, Street Fighter Alpha the Animation.

Street Fighter Alpha the Animation is, I think, one of the really fine examples on how to do a movie for a series that doesn't tie in to that series' main plot. A while back,  I wrote about the Cardcaptor Sakura movies, and how I enjoyed the first "side-story" movie more than I did the second "canon ending" movie, and a large part of why that was has to do with the type of story that both the first Cardcaptor Sakura movie and Street fighter Alpha the Animation are both telling. They take the characters we know and love and re-contextualize them in a new setting with new characters while still feeling totally faithful to the original visions. And of the characters in this movie, this is most exemplary with Ryu.

Getting into the overall plot of the Street Fighter series for a second, I've always found Ryu to be a particularly interesting character, not just in the context of the rest of the Street Fighter canon, but also in the context of the sort of path he set for more or less all fighting game protagonists that followed the popularity of Street Fighter II. Ryu's character is popularly understood as being a stoic, wandering warrior who fights against his inner demons, the lust for power that manifests with the Dark Hadou. And of course, Street Fighter Alpha the Animation takes a good long look at Ryu's character through this lens. But my interpretation is that Ryu, more than any other character in the series, is characterized by his relationships to the people around him. He's Ken's friend, Gouken's disciple, Sakura's inspiration, M. Bison's archenemy, and Akuma's parallel just as much as, if not more, than he is a wandering warrior struggling against the influence of the Dark Hadou. This focus on character relationships and dynamics is something that Street Fighter in  general has always been really good at, and this aspect has carried on to pretty much all other fighting games. Moreover, the main character being defined more by their personal relationships than their personal creed (at least, in comparison to their fellow cast members) is something that Ryu started and passed on. Many people probably don't experience, for example, BlazBlue's hours long visual novel type main story, but everyone who plays will get a gist of the character dynamics and relationships through the games various intros and win quotes. At least, this is how I came to understand and enjoy the worlds and stories of various fighting games, and I'm sure a big part of why I view Ryu's character the way I do is because of this movie. Having a movie's story revolve around a new movie exclusive character and their relationship with the main character is something that many "anime tie-in summer movies" use as a base, but this movie was one of the first that I saw that used this concept, and it sold it brilliantly. Through Shun's character, we come to understand more of the core of Ryu's character, which is something that easily gets lost in the tangled web of plot threads and character arcs in the main series. Ironically though, I'm not really a huge fan of Shun himself. As a plot device that props up my "Ryu's character archetype is based around his relationships" interpretation of Street Fighter he's perfect, but as an actual character unto himself, he's just OK. Your fairly standard little brother trope character is a movie that Sakura is already in.

…Somewhere in there, there's something about comparing fighting games and multimedia project's made for otaku, I feel it... Something about how they both rely on introducing a bunch of characters with simple, easy to parse creeds at once, and having the bulk of the story be more about interpersonal connections between those characters rather than an overarching narrative. Does Love Live take cues from Street Fighter?! Maybe another time.

Of course, I assume most people don't remember Street Fighter Alpha the Animation for Shun or his plot-line, they remember it for its incredible music and dynamic action. Like its much more well known and beloved older brother, Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, this movie is beautifully animated, with the overall action choreography going for dynamic, hard hitting action rather than something something more fast and flashy. I really liked the character redesigns as well. Character designer Umakoshi Yoshihiko definitely took some liberties, but everything made sense in the context of the character's depiction of the rest of the series. Like yeah, Akuma looks like a hulking gorilla now, but that interpretation of him makes sense when you consider the classic Street Fighter Alpha 2 artwork of Akuma jeering down at Ryu. The music, orchestrated by Matsuo Hayato, is absolutely beautiful and sets a somber tone for the movie. There's definitely a distinct lack of any Street Fighter II or Street Fighter Alpha tracks in the movie, and that's honestly OK with me. The movie's tone shows a different angle of the series emotionally, and I think the original score really helped to sell that in a way that would have been harder with the games' music. The incredible "Tension Air of Ryu" will always be the first song I think of when I think of the Street Fighter Alpha series, in spite of it appearing solely in this movie.

Street Fighter Alpha the Animation is just an incredibly solid movie. Even though it'll probably always get overshadowed by Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, I think it stands tall right along next to it. If you haven't seen it, I definitely would recommend giving it a watch, especially if you're a Street Fighter fan. But that's pretty much all of my thoughts on the movie. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you all in the next article.

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[Editor's Corner] This one took waaaaay too long to finish. The first draft was actually finished the week that Dan dropped in SFV. I kept feeling like I needed to re-write the damn thing over and over, but no draft ever felt as "right" as the first one did. Long time readers will notice that the long and cluttered staff breakdowns that I usually include is not present here. I decided to try going without it, just to see how it would feel, which is probably a big reason why the post still doesn't feel quite complete to me. More than anything it showed me how poor the flow of my writing is. That'll be something to focus on improving from here on out. But for now, I'm gonna go ahead and put this one on the books, before the opening becomes even more outdated than it already is. Until next time.  [Editing pass finished at 9:03AM, 3/16/21]