Well, here I am, trying to put off doing some RPG programming and waiting for someone to fight against in Crimson Skies, so I figure It's a good time to write this review!  It has long been my experience that anime derived from fighting games is utter and complete crap on a platter, so when I heard that Street Fighter Alpha was extremely good from a guy who also thought that shows like Trigun and Cowboy Bebop were the man, I decided to give it a shot.

          What we have here is a story that is overused in this type of anime, the bad guy tries to do some crazy shit to become the master of destruction and conquer the world.  The strange thing is that the often used plotline of SFA doesn't seem to be... often used... (having trouble with words)  Let's just say that it doesn't seem like SFA has the same story of most of the other video game to anime ports, even though it does.  This anime takes its time unfolding the plot and you don't REALLY know what's going on until a ways into the film.

          The animation kicked all ass my friends.  It was smooth and most (damnit, this lunatic keep bugging me about wanting to fly against me and take screenshots...) of the time the artwork is quite detailed.  One thing I found odd was that, probably because of the style they used to draw the characters, at times the people’s faces looked really fucked up!  There is also a problem that the characters have with their massive feet, but I still didn't mind, it kind of gave the feeling that the characters were solid and the could kick your ass.

          As with all fighting anime, there are fight scenes and just general fighting.  Unfortunately for previous video game/fighting anime titles, the fighting has usually been crap, just a bunch of 4 second fights ended with everyone shooting a bunch of energy blasts everywhere or throwing dinosaurs at each other.  My personal favorite was in Fatal Fury when a good guy and bad guy punched at each other, hit each others fist and then stood there grunting for about five minutes in a contest of power before the bad guy just decided to give up....  instead of actually having a fight sequence (that review is a good read by the way).  The makers of SFA actually managed to not be stupid and make some fucking awesome fight scenes.  Not only that, but, even though the characters were able to generate energy attacks, most of the time they just beat the shit out of each other with good old hand to hand combat!  And some of the stuff that they did, instead of looking impossible, actually looked like it could be done, like Chun Li's hand-stand helicopter kick thing, which they somehow made look possible.  Bottom line is that they did a fucking great job with the fights and therefore alleviated one of my biggest gripes about this type of anime.

          The characters were also a marvel in that not a single one of them was annoying (in my opinion).  Hell, I must say that I even liked the main character, Ryu, which doesn't seem to happen too often (I usually end up liking the non-main characters more, Milly-Trigun, Piccolo-DBZ, Aisha-Outlaw Star, Fujikuro-Iria, etc.).  Yep. I think I've somewhat forgotten (oops, match time...)

          Well, I lost that match in a horrible way but I did remember what I wanted to say!  The worst part of the whole anime, in my opinion, was the ending.  Compared to the rest of the movie, it was kind of anticlimactic, just like many of the other fighting anime type things.  I also really hated the whole Total Recall thing they did... if you see SFA, you'll know what I'm talkin' about... if you've seen Total Recall that is... (heh heh heh... the radio just told me to prepare myself for a magical new Alley McBeal... they probably have a lot of FUCKING in this episode...)

Genre - action/fighting

Animation - Aside from the artwork of the people looking somewhat odd when they are portrayed from certain angles, the animation was excellent!

Sub vs. Dub - the sub is a bit better

the Good - kick ass fight scenes, energy attacks not over-used, didn't toss in all the characters just for the sake of having them in there, great animation, good story, good characters and great voice acting, no annoying characters, it didn't try and cram everything into just over an hour of movie (2 hours of goodness)

the Bad - the somewhat anticlimactic ending and the Total Recall type thing that went on at the end

Overall - if you're like me and sick of the bullshit fighting anime that is made for the purpose of entertaining the goons who drool over the games like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter, having long arguments about which is better ("MK has blood!"  "SF has more tits!"), then you'll love this movie, it's a very pleasant departure from that crap...