Anime Meta-Review
Fatal Fury 2: The Motion Picture
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Title Info
- type: movie
- grade: flawed
- genre: magic_war
- Other elements of this title:
- This title has been commercially released in Australia.
- made: 1994
- Review created: A while ago, i'll revise it eventually.
- mod: none
From memory Fatal Fury was always the poor brother of fighting video games compared to Streetfighter II, and I am pleased to see that the anime's have the same relationship. The story concerns a guy, and his pet martial arts freaks, who is hunting for 6 pieces of `magical power up' armor. Meanwhile his sister is searching for a gang of her own martial arts freaks to stop him. Sound simple? it certainly is, and the characterisation is little better. The characters in this one are a bunch of largely generic tough guys with any attempt at personality stifled by the poor dialogue and any attempt at `power' identification (eg. unique moves) hampered by dodgy action. This ignores the use of the `good' female, Mai Shiranui, who is more or less a breast carrying vehicle in some of the most outrageously obvious fan service yet seen in a fighting game.
Still, these shows are primarily a vehicle for martial arts mayhem, so as long as that is good a lot of flaws can be overlooked. Sadly the animation itself is strange, with some weird character design, visual artifacts and lots of `wobble' in the animation. In addition once things start moving fast it reduces to either sketchy animation, endless `energy blasts' or still frames (and in some cases all three). It certainly isn't capable of doing exciting martial arts, or indeed anything else. "Martial arts never looked this good" it says on the box cover, but don't believe a word of it. The worst part of it is that when they are most attempting to be `epic' in the scale of the special effects, especially with mindless energy blasts, it is at its least interesting and least believable. And if you must have your character yell the name of his special attack then call it something more exciting than `burning knuckles'.
The conclusion is also pretty poor. The dub is not painfully bad, albeit a bit over the top, but this is one case where you suspect that the lines are the limiting factor, not the delivery. There are perhaps a handful of moments where you begin to hope that the anime will rise above its failings, but in the 1 hour 40 minutes they are too few and far between to make this a worthwhile experience for even the most tolerant. Amused by the box copy though, the `hungary wolf'?
Well, an unexpected review from Akemi's AnimeWorld knocks me flat by calling this, "A well made movie, plain and simple" and giving it 4 stars. The Anime Critic is somewhere in the middle, calling it "below average" in this review and mentioning the irritating use of Mai. Be sure to check the link in the notes for more (humorous) info on that aspect. THEM give a perceptive review, as usual, and an average grade. Maybe I'll have to watch it and find out why it annoyed me so much...perhaps not, I'll think i'll let you make your own mind up.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:18 WST 2009