I’ve had this piece in the hopper in one form or another for the better part of a year. It has nothing to do with the upcoming Street Fighter film starring Cody Rhodes, Roman Reigns, and universally beloved “comedian” Andrew Schulz. The truth is, I think about 1994’s Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie a lot. I need no reminder. It is always the reason for the season in my neck of the woods.
Anyway, here it is in its entirety!
The American localization of this Group TAC feature is especially interesting, replacing pieces of the original score with American alternative and industrial tracks from Korn, KMFDM, Silverchair, and…
Alice in Chains’ “Them Bones” Needle Drop
There’s a great moment in Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie where Guile is gathering names of targets of M. Bison to recruit them for his cause. Guile’s flat voiceover accompanies a quiet nighttime shot of his operations building. He wonders aloud if they have enough information about Ken Masters and then there’s a perfect smash cut and needle drop to the Pacific Northwest with Alice in Chains’ “Them Bones” blasting.
There is no one cooler on the planet than Ken Masters driving his convertible with his hot girlfriend absolutely shoryukening the best track from 1992’s Dirt into the atmosphere.
Guile, buddy, that’s all the info you need.
Bryan Cranston is Fei Long
Before Bryan Cranston ever appeared on Seinfeld as Jerry’s dentist Tim Whatley, he lent his voice talents to Fei Long, one of the four new characters introduced in Super Street Fighter II featured prominently in The Animated Movie alongside Cammy, Dee Jay, and T. Hawk.
This is also long before Cranston would appear in his most layered, complicated work. Long before his most audacious role. Long before taking on a character that will be remembered far into the future. That’s right, I’m talking about Bryan Cranston’s role as Dean Tainot in Larry Crowne, a blogger who goes completely apeshit for big knockers.
Please leave in the comments below whether you think Fei Long also loves big knockers.
Chun-Li’s Harrowing Fight with Vega
Perhaps the most famous part of Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie is the nearly five minute apartment brawl between Chun-Li and Vega, which is a complicated scene both in execution and surrounding context. The build to the actual fight is full of thoughtful tension, oscillating between Chun-Li’s bedtime routine (complete with uncensored shower scene if you’re watching the original Japanese cut, you pervert) and quiet shots of her apartment.
Guile knows there’s a threat on her life as he rushes to the apartment and he uses his extremely cool car phone to reach her, to no avail. Just as Chun-Li finishes putting her hair in her signature double buns, Vega pounces from the rafters (???) of her apartment and down onto her bed. What ensues is an expertly choreographed, brutal fight that puts the franchise’s most iconic character against the ropes.
You should watch it! She throws a motherfucking couch at Vega before finishing the job once and for all. Guile, of course, is way too late to help at all.
Guile is Completely Useless
Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie ultimately focuses on the lapsed friendship of Ryu and Ken, the latter getting turbo brainwashed by M. Bison so he would turn against his old training partner. Their bond is Bison’s undoing during a climactic two-on-one battle that sees the old friends performing a double hadouken and ending the dictator’s reign. That’s the A storyline.
The B storyline is Guile and Chun-Li working for different government agencies to figure out just what M. Bison is up to. Chun-Li is hyper competent. Guile is not.
He fails to stop any of the bad events in the film from happening and if he had been any slower getting to Chun-Li’s apartment during her fight with Vega, she’d probably be dead. Nowhere is his futility more on display than his fight with M. Bison during the end scenes.
He couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn. He does the biggest Sonic Boom I’ve ever seen and manages to destroy a small house but can’t hit his target. And then Bison just blasts him off a cliff. Maybe the Cody Rhodes casting makes a lot of sense, through this lens.
Street Fighter Alpha’s Origins
One of my favorite aspects of Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie is how it directly inspired parts of Street Fighter Alpha, the spinoff game series showing us everything that happened before we got to know these characters.
In flashbacks, we see Ryu and a long-haired Ken sparring. Things get too intense and Ryu gets a gash on his head, which Ken tends to by giving him his red hair tie to use as a headband. Cute! Ken’s long hair appears in the Alpha series, as does M. Bison’s much beefier silhouette he sports in The Animated Movie.
Even the climax of The Animated Movie, where Ryu and Ken team up to take down Bison, made its way into Alpha, allowing for the first time in a Street Fighter game a two-on-one scenario in an actual match.
We are so, so, so far away from having an established Street Fighter canon people seem to care about, but in the mid-nineties, getting a rich animated film that cared about establishing a game world that couldn’t be expressed to its fullest extent was exhilarating. What a blessing that we got Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie and the also-sublime-but-for-completely-different-reasons Street Fighter in the same year.
