Videogame Cinema: The Fatal Fury Anime

Ok, it’s been a while since the last Videogame Cinema. My apologies, I never intended to wait this long to do another one of these. I intended to return to this back in November, but you know what it’s like with the holidays, and I had a lot of things going on in real life, so it was one of those things that just got put on the back burner.

Or it could have been the last movie was so catastrophically bad I didn’t want to do another one for a while. Yeah, that might be it. Mortal Kombat Annihilation was awful, like worst movie I’ve ever seen in my life levels of awful, and I’ve seen Master of Disguise and Son of the Mask. Ok it wasn’t as bad as either of those, but it’s close.

I need a palette cleanser after that shit. So you know what, fuck these Hollywood adaptations. Let’s look at something a little different and talk about an animated adaptation. Specifically, an Anime adaptation. Yup, we’re going to Japan for this one.

After all, Japan does have a fair amount of videogame adaptations of its own. Are they better than Hollywood adaptations? That’s not important, what is important is that there are plenty to pick from. And since I’m in a fighting game kick at the moment I decided to look at the Fatal Fury anime.

If you are a fan of the fighting game genre, you’ve probably heard the name SNK. They were one of the biggest fighting game publishers in the 90’s and despite struggling through multiple bankruptcies and acquisitions, including the most recent by the Saudi Arabian prince, true story look it up, they’re still going strong today.

They’re mainly known for the King of Fighters and Samurai Shodown series, but before those there was Fatal Fury. This was the first fighting game series SNK made. It went on to be a fairly popular for its memorable cast of characters, unique gameplay that involved multiple fighting lanes, and a surprisingly deep story and lore for a fighting game.

Ok it wasn’t on the same level as Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, but it still carved its own little niche in the grand swathes of fighting games out there. Especially in Latin America countries where SNK is a household name. Mexicans love SNK, it’s huge over there.

There’s a lot of history of these games. If you want more detail, I recommend looking up the retrospectives done by Matt Mcmuscles and Thorgi’s Arcade on YouTube. Both are excellent watches that give a good rundown of the entire series.

All you need to know for now is it was a well-liked series and would create some of SNK’s most iconic characters. Many of the most popular characters in King of Fighters debuted in Fatal Fury. I mean that game did start as a crossover between Fatal Fury and its sister series Art of Fighting after all.

Some of you are probably familiar with these characters from their appearances in other games. Geese Howard, the series main villain, was a guest character in Tekken 7, and series poster boy Terry Bogard appeared in Super Smash Bros Ultimate. And if you’ve made it into Smash Bros, you know you’re goated.

The series was prevalent in the 90’s but sadly fell away due to SNK’s financial turmoils in the 2000’s. Recently though SNK has been on a massive come back tour, and there’s even a new Fatal Fury game coming out after 25 years.

So what better time than to look at the anime adaptations. There were three of these, two tv specials and a feature film, and we’re going to look at all three of them today.

There’s not a lot of behind-the-scenes information on these, but there is one name attached to them that deserves attention, Masami Obari. An anime director who got his start as a character designer for a lot of mecha anime

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The best way to describe Obari is he is the Michael Bay of anime, and I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way. He’s the kind of anime director who likes thing big. Big action, big robots, big tracts of land. He doesn’t make high art, in fact some of his stuff can be outright crap, but he can be pretty entertaining if you watch his stuff with your brain turned off.

He worked as a character designer for the first two Fatal Fury anime and would direct the movie. His work on these movies seemed to have impressed SNK because not only did it go on to influence the games, I’ll show how later, but he was also asked to do a short animation for King of Fighters 15.

There’s got to be something good in these right. God, I hope so. Well, let’s not waste any more time and find out if Japan can make a good videogame movie.

Fatal Fury: The Legend of the Hungry Wolves

We are not off to a good start. Ok, Legend of the Hungry Wolves isn’t that bad. It’s got a certain 90’s anime cheesiness that lends it a certain charm. But that charm only does so much.

This special is based on the first game in the series, and to its credit it does follow the plot of the game very closely. Well, what little plot there was anyway. I know I said the series was known for having a strong story for a fighting game, but that was because of the story told across multiple games.

The first game was simply about Terry Bogard trying to get revenge on Geese Howard, a notorious crime lord that’s taken over the city of Southtown, for murdering Terry’s father Jeff Bogard. Terry attempts to do this by entering Geese’s fighting tournament, The King of Fighters which is and isn’t the one from the King of Fighters game series. It’s complicated but we don’t have to get into that now.

Terry is joined by his brother Andy who was trained in ninjutsu, and Joe Higashi a Muay Thai fighter who is just there to help out because he’s a bro like that. That’s the plot of the game and also the plot of the anime.

There aren’t too many deviations from the storyline. They even show events that were only ever hinted at in the games like how Terry met Joe and the murder of Jeff Bogard. Which was done by having a bunch of kids hug him down so he could get stabbed once and then Geese just finishes him off with an energy blast. Interesting assassination method.

I actually love that scene because it’s the kind of over-the-top silliness that make these old anime fun to watch. Sadly, it never reaches the same level of goofiness again. In fact, it’s actually very dull.

Not much happens in Legend of the Hungry Wolf. I know the special is only 45 minutes long, but that’s no excuse. There’s not even that much action in this. All the fights are comically short and end after a single special move. So, you have a fighting game anime with barely any fighting in it. They didn’t just miss the point; they were turned in the opposite direction of the point.

Speaking of special moves, I always found it weird that anime always treated fighting game special moves as these massive attacks that would end the fight right away. I guess that makes sense, throwing fireballs out of your hands isn’t exactly a normal occurrence, but in the games you would be throwing those out all the time. It was treated as a regular thing the characters could do.

But in anime it would always be this big flashy thing like they were firing Goku’s Kamehameha. Speaking of which, I guess it’s sort of like how in Dragon Ball games you can throw out Kamehamehas and Final Flashes like it’s no big deal when those are the ultimate finishers in the show. Videogames are weird like that.

At least the anime has the special moves. They aren’t always done right, I have no idea what Geese does for his Reppuken, but at least it has them. I just wish there was actual fighting to go along with them.

Instead, most of the special is spent on Terry’s relationship with Lily. Who the fuck is Lily? She’s not from any of the games as far as I know, she’s a completely original character set up as Terry’s love interest. Throughout the special Terry keeps saying he’s going to “free her from her cage”, whatever that means.

Was revenge not enough. I mean wanting to avenge your fathers death is a pretty understandable motivation, it’s why there are so many stories around it. Why have this completely unnecessary love interest when they add nothing to the plot other than to die and serve the same motivating action as another.

Oh yeah she dies. I don’t think I’m giving too much by saying that. You can tell from the minute you see her thar she’s doomed. The way she dies is dumb too. Lily starts as Geese’s underling, she was one of the kids that helped kill Jeff, but when she betrays him to help Terry Geese decides to Reppuken her ass out a window.

That’s not the funny part. The funny part is she gets knocked out of a ten-story window, lands headfirst on solid concrete, and there’s not even a scratch on her. In fact, she’s able to hold on long enough to have final words with Terry. She should be a blood stain on the sidewalk after the fall she had, what is this bitch made from. 

Her relationship with Terry isn’t developed all that much. They only have three scenes together and they just fall for each other immediately. It makes the tragedy of her death comical when you realise, they only really knew each other for less than a day.

Maybe if they had more time it could have been interesting, but they didn’t. This is why you don’t add worthless side plots to a story if you don’t have the time to develop it properly.

They clearly added Lily to add drama to the story, but why the hell would I want that. It’s a fighting game anime; all I want is to see the characters from the games fighting it out. We do get that, for about a second, but aside from fights being ludicrously short most of the characters from the games wind up being blink and you’ll miss them cameos.

I won’t lie and say the cast from the first Fatal Fury were all that memorable, I mean who remembers Michael Max, but they had a lot of unique fighting styles and personalities that could have led to some fun fight. I mean look at this guy.

You’re telling me you could anything with him. Look at him, he looks ridiculous in the best way possible. He’s like if the 90’s ate the 80’s.

There’s a lot of missed opportunities here. Joe in the games has a rivalry with another Muay Thai fighter called Hwa Jai. It’s not a major rivalry but it is something that gets brought up in the games a few times. Guess what, Joe doesn’t fight or interact with him, Andy does. You could have easily swapped their opponents but no, and now you’re left with a wasted opportunity.

Even Terry doesn’t get many major fights. He has one bar brawl, which is entertaining admittedly, he fights Richard Meyer in the tournament and then the final fight with Geese. That’s it. What the hell, he’s the main character for God’s sake you couldn’t give him more to do.

Speaking of the final fight with Geese, they really screwed this one up. One of the most famous scenes in Fatal Fury is the ending where Geese gets knocked from the top floor of his tower. It’s one of the most famous endings in a fighting game; it even became a bit of a running joke.

So how do they handle it in the anime. Terry fights Geese on ground level, uses the super-secret special awesome technique his dead master taught him, which is literally just a Tasmanian Devil spin, and knocks Geese into a coy pond.

No tower, no fall, not even a satisfying final defeat, he just gets knocked into some coy. What the fuck! How do you not have the most iconic scene from the game in the anime. Hell, it’s Geese himself who knocks someone out of a building. That’s the opposite of what should happen.

So while the anime follows the basic plot of the game fine enough, it also lacks a lot of the more iconic elements from it. It has the special moves, but the characters are barely there. Pao Pao Café appears briefly, but it’s the only location from the game here. Even the final confrontation is wrong. It may follow Fatal Fury’s narrative, but it’s missing a lot of what made it cool.

I will say that the characterization is done well. I did like all the main characters, and their personalities seemed accurate to their in-game depictions. Granted this was early in the series where they hadn’t homed in on what those characters were yet, but what little they did do is here in the anime at least.

The one weird thing with this is that they try to portray Terry as this calm collected fighter. They say Andy is like a wild animal who uses his emotions while Terry is like a tree and is more collected. That’s not a bad way of doing it, and in context it makes sense, but Terry’s nickname is the legendary hungry wolf.

That’s where the name of the anime comes from. It’s where the original Japanese name comes from, Garou Densetsu. So shouldn’t he also be like an animal. Feels like they got it mixed up.

Ok so the story isn’t cutting it. It’s not all that interesting and it wastes time on a romantic sub plot that doesn’t go anywhere, and there isn’t even enough action to counterbalance this. As an action anime it’s boring, and as a game adaptation it’s serviceable at best and woefully lacking at worst.

Is the animation good at least? Yes, kind of, in places. It’s very inconsistent. Sometimes it looks great, for tv standards at least, other times it looks weird and not even like it was drawn by the same people.

It cuts the detail on the characters for the fight scenes, what few there are, and while it looks ok in some instances, other times the characters look so off model they look like they’re from a different anime altogether.

Again, it’s very inconsistent. it does look good most of the time, but there are places where the quality does drop significantly. Some of the faces wind up looking creepy and uncanny, there’s one shot of Lily that’s infamous for how bad it looks.

Also, I hope you love anime action lines because this special has a lot of them. You know that anime trope where they run up at each other screaming with speed lines for backgrounds. Every fight scene starts with one. You could make a drinking game out of it that’s how often it happens. I guarantee you’ll be plastered by the end of it.

One last thing about the animation, and I don’t know if this is controversial or not, but I’m not the biggest fan of the Obari’s character designs. At least not in this. They aren’t bad designs at all. They look like the characters from the games, although Andy has blue hair for some reason, and while Lily is pointless her design does fit with the rest of the cast at least.

But Obari’s designs make the main male characters look a little, effeminate? I’m not sure if that’s the right term but it’s the closest I could think of. They aren’t girly by any means, they are still clearly men, but the characters in the games always had a more macho, rugged design.

I mean these guys are built like absolute units. The term “built like a brick shit house” comes to mind when describing them. But in Legend of The Hungry Wolf, they’re a lot slenderer. They’re muscular yes, but also very svelte at the same time.

It’s not a body type I associate with these characters. Except for Andy maybe. This is a preference thing, I realise that, but the art style didn’t fully gel with me because of it. I’ll get more into Obari’s designs when we get to the movie since that’s when he’s allowed to go all out, but for now I’ll say I’m not a huge fan, but they aren’t bad.

I will say the music is good. It’s very jazzy and upbeat which fits the tone and style of the special, even if it sometimes sounds a bit too much like a cheesy sitcom theme. It’s still good music though; it’s the only part of the special I don’t have any major problems with.

As for the voice acting, I watched this dubbed rather than the original Japanese. I know some consider that blasphemy, but A, I don’t speak Japanese so I can’t properly judge the acting there, and B, I have a soft spot for these 90’s anime dub. And Fatal Fury has a decent dub for the time.

Most of the actors are people I haven’t heard of, they’re all Canadian who have mostly done bit roles in other projects, the only major names I know are David Kaye as Jeff Bogard and Paul Dobson as Billy Kane. Funny enough those two play bit parts in this.

But everyone here does a good job. No one feels like they’re phoning it in, but nobody is giving it their all either. They do what is asked of them and everyone is at least doing a professional job. Which is good but also means there’s no standout bad performances either, which are always the most entertaining parts in these old dubs.

There is the occasional weird line read, and some of the voices are weird fits. I don’t know why Billy Kane sounds Australian when he’s supposed to be British but, eh. I guess it’s close enough. Aside from these brief moments though, it isn’t bad. For a 90’s dub it holds up pretty well.

Legend of the Hungry Wolf was not a great special. It’s far from the worst videogame adaptation I’ve seen, but it’s still a mediocre product that doesn’t give fans of the game what they want to see. Fortunately, we have two more anime to look at, so let’s see if things improve.

Fatal Fury 2: The New Battle

Ok, this is more like. Fatal Fury 2: The New Battle is a lot closer to what I was expecting, dumb 90’s anime cheese that’s just fun to watch. It’s not perfect, but I enjoyed watching it which is more than I can say for a lot of the movies I’ve reviewed so far.

This special is based on, well, Fatal Fury 2 and much like the last special it follows the plot of the game well enough. This time it follows Terry and company as they deal with Wolfgang Krauser, a German crime boss known as the Earl of Darkness who is also the half-brother of Geese.

After finding out Terry defeated Geese, he sets out to defeat him to prove his superiority. Which he does. He kicks Terry’s ass so badly he turns Terry into a drunk, so his friends set out to avenge Terry and get him out of his funk.

That’s the one part I didn’t like. Terry spends half the special moping around as a drunken bum, and I’m sorry but that’s not Terry. Terry is one of the optimistic fighting game characters ever. He always meets his opponents with a smile even when he loses. He wouldn’t just give up like this.

I get it’s meant to give him an arc. It’s like in Rocky 3 where Rocky is beaten and loses his edge, so he has to learn to get it back. It’s not a bad idea, I love Rocky 3 as much as the next guy, but it spends so long on Terry being down that it actually gets depressing. I hate seeing him like that man, he used to be cool.

Another thing I don’t like, Terry’s kid side kick. Yeah, they added another original character, only instead of a pointless love interest it’s an annoying kid character, and he’s about as obnoxious as you think you would think he would.

He’s not the worst of these kinds of characters, they at least try to give him a backstory and he does contribute something to the plot, but he’s still irritating. Every time he was on screen I just wanted to punch him in the face, which does happen a lot in this special so at least I have that.

Aside from those issues though, I really liked this special. It feels like it took everything from the first special and improved on it. For one, we have actual fights now.

We finally get to some action in this series, and most of the fights are pretty good. They have a lot of energy and show off each characters fighting styles and special moves in cool ways. Even the locations are more interesting. One of the fights takes place in an ancient ruin and they use the location as part of the choreography. It was a cool fight.

The animation is better too. There’s a lot more detail in the art, which is also much more consistent, and the movements are a lot more fluid. It’s still not perfect, there’s some mistakes here and there and it still lowers the detail during the fights, and the bloom in certain shots is so bright it could cause blindness, but it’s a marked improvement over the first special.

Even the character designs seemed better this time around. They still aren’t quite my thing, but I do think they are better. There are two that I don’t get though. The first is Krauser not having his moustache from the games. That’s his most defining feature and he just looks weird without it.

He also wears this bulky armour for most of the special which makes him look like a Fist of the North Star villain. I mean it’s kind of cool, but it combined with the lack of facial hair makes him look like a completely different character. I know he wore the armour in the game, but that was only in cutscenes and in most promo material he doesn’t have it, so it’s still weird to see him wear it.

The other design I don’t like is the kid sidekick. Yeah I’m still ragging on him big whoop want to fight about it. He just looks overdesigned and doesn’t mesh well with the other characters. Which is a problem with Obari’s art, but I’ll get more into that in the next anime.

Also, he wears jeans with only one leg. Which just looks dumb. I know this is a fashion thing, a lot of Japanese media have these kinds of designs like Tidus from Final Fantasy, but it always looked stupid to me. If you wear pants like that you are a tool I’m just saying.

Aside from those, I don’t really have an issue with any of the designs. They all look like they did in the games only with Obari’s art style, which is especially noticeable with Mai.

Mai Shiranui is a very popular character due to her revealing attire, and when you combine that with Obari’s penchant for drawing his women as scantily clad as possible, well I think you can put two and two together.

In fact, I would argue that Obari’s design of Mai may have actually influenced her design in future games. Don’t believe me, let’s talk a look. This is Mai in the game Fatal Fury 2.

Ok it’s a very sexy design. Somewhat skimpy but nothing too bad. Here’s Mai in the anime.

That’s significantly skimpier. Like Jesus Christ how does she keep that on. What double sided tape does she use for that? You can see the difference right, well here’s Mai in King of Fighters 94, which only came out a year after The New Battle.

Can you see it? It’s hard not to notice isn’t it. You can clearly tell the developers took a lot of inspiration from Obari’s design here. Granted Mai’s design does fluctuate in its lewdness from game to game. Sometimes it’s not too bad, other times it leaves less than nothing to the imagination. But I would still say the image of Mai most think of started with Obari’s design.

That isn’t the only influence the anime had on the games. The Fatal Fury 2 anime ends with Terry defeating Krauser only for Wolfgang to commit suicide out of shame of being defeated. This was a creation of the anime, but it would later be added into the story of the games as Krauser’s ultimate fate.

So these anime projects actually had an impact on the Fatal Fury story and lore. The only other instance of this I can think of was Kano in the Mortal Kombat games taking cues from his movie appearances. This is what I love about going through these old game adaptations, seeing the different ways they impacted the source material. It’s rare, but like a rare diamond it’s valuable when you find it.

I haven’t talked about the story much, and that’s because there really isn’t much to talk about. It’s a fighting game anime and you don’t watch those for the plot. You watch them to see cool fight scenes and to see the characters we like from the games interact a bit more.

We already know The New Battle does the former well, but what about the latter. Well aside from Terry spending half the special being a Debbie Downer, the other character interactions are a lot of fun.

I already liked the characters in the last special, but they’re a bit livelier here. Except Terry but I already went over that. There’s a lot more humour and the character dynamics are a lot more entertaining to watch. Mai and Andy in particular have very funny relationship moments between them. It’s tropey, but it’s fun.

The special includes most of the cast of the game. Some are missing, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. One issue with fighting game adaptations is they throw in so many characters that some end up feeling like blatant cameos.

But here they try to make every character contribute something to the overall story. It doesn't always work; some characters do still feel like cameos, but nobody feels worthless. They do have a role in this story even if it’s very minor.

[Quick edit here, while I was gathering images I did find images of the other characters. There was a scene depicting them, but it was cut from the TV broadcast and added back in for the Japanese video release. It was also cut from the western VHS release, added as a bonus easter egg in the first DVD printing, then added back in to the Discotec DVD release later on.

Since I was watching this via the high seas I did not see this. Which is a shame considering it was the only win Joe seemed to get. The scene is not important to the plot, I certainly didn't notice it missing, but I thought I'd mention it.]

Speaking of cast, the voice actors from the first special return for this one. The dub is about the same quality as the one for the first special. It’s a little better I’d say, you can tell the actors were a bit more comfortable with the roles and the awkward line deliveries are fewer and farther between. It isn’t dramatically better or anything, but it is an improvement I’d say.

The music though, that’s a bit of a step down. It’s by no means bad, it’s still upbeat and catchy and it even integrates some classical music for Rugal, which is something taken directly from the games so kudos there. It just isn’t as good as the music from the first special, which is the only thing the first special has over this. you got one Legend of the Hungry Wolf, you got one.

Ok that’s all the boring technical stuff out of the way. Let’s get into the fun stuff. Because despite its flaws, The New Battle is just a ton of fun. It’s dripping with the kind of 90’s anime cheese I love and goes so far into being ridiculous at times it laps back around to being awesome again.

I mean look at Krauser for instance. Dude is built like an absolute unit, dresses like a Fist of the North Star villain, lives in a big ass castle and he plays a giant fuck off pipe organ that’s bigger than my house. Dude is just one space laser away from being a Bond villain, I love it.

This is not a special that is taking itself seriously. It’s just having fun with this world and these characters. Unlike the first special which tries to have dramatic stakes and character moments and fails at both, this is just trying to be a fun light-hearted martial arts story with cool heroes and deliciously over the top villains.

Even Terry being depressed is so over the top it’s hard to take it seriously. It even does the classic walking down a dark street while neon lights fade into the foreground shot. That is such a cliché it’s almost adorable at this point. 

It does try to continue the story from the previous special. Lily makes a brief appearance as a force ghost, which is very strange and comes out of nowhere, but you can jump into this if you haven’t seen the first special and follow along just fine.

It helps if you’re already a fan of Fatal Fury, and if you are this special is well worth a watch. It is a little slow in the middle with the constant Terry moping scenes, but the fights are entertaining, the characters are fun, and the animation is nice to look at.

Even if you’re not a Fatal Fury fan it’s not a bad watch. If you go in expecting a fun cheesy martial arts anime it’s a good time. It’s not high art, but it’s a videogame anime, if you were expecting high art from that I’d think you were insane.

That said it does help to be somewhat familiar with the games. I haven’t played them, but I know enough about them to understand the characters and catch all the references. If you weren’t all that familiar with them the anime does enough to bring you up to speed, but not enough to get you super invested either.

It’s still a fun time even if you haven’t played the games. It’s a nice breezy watch at only 75 minutes so if you’re looking for something to watch and just want something nice and simple it is worth checking out.

We’ve only got one more anime left, so let’s finish it up with the third and final Fatal Fury anime.

Fatal Fury: The Motion Picture

Fatal Fury: The Motion Picture is fucking awesome. I am not burying the lead on this one, I loved this thing. This is exactly what I’m not looking for in a videogame movie, nothing complicated or thematically deep, just a fun movie featuring the stuff from the games we know and love.

Fatal Fury the movie, I’m just going to call it that because The Motion Picture is a bit too prestige sounding for it, is exactly that. Sort of. This movie is weird. It’s one of those films where the plot is simultaneously too simple and too complicated at the same time.

The movie doesn’t follow the events of any of the games. It couldn’t because there weren’t any other games to adapt. It came out in 1994, and Fatal Fury 3 didn’t release until 1995, so there wasn’t any more story to adapt.

Because of this, Fatal Fury the movie is a completely original story with a completely new set of villains not from any of the games. In short, it’s essentially Masami Obari’s own personal Fatal Fury fan fiction.

And you know what, I’m all for that. If you were going to make a movie based on a game with no other games to adapt, I’d rather you just go all out with it make something unique with it. Have fun with the IP. Which is what this movie does, even if the final product doesn’t really feel like Fatal Fury.

The story this time sees Terry and company travelling the world to find the pieces of armour of someone named Gaudemus, an ancient warrior who was feared by Alexander the Great, was killed by him, and his death caused him to become Mars the roman god of war. I feel like I’m writing a Black Dynamite bit.

Anyway, he’s on this journey on request from a woman named Sulia. She wants the armour pieces to prevent her brother Laocorn from getting them, because he wants them so he can reassemble the armour to become God and take over the world. Bit of a leap from fighting a crime boss isn’t it.

When you break the story down it’s basically a McGuffin hunt. It’s just Terry and friends travelling the world to prevent some asshole from attaining ultimate power. It’s not hard to understand what’s going on, but there’s so much backstory, lore and detail added that muddle what should be a simple story.

It’s the kind of movie that will stop dead ass in its tracks to give massive chunks of exposition that make it hard to digest what the fuck is going on. You’re honestly better off not thinking about things too much, which I’m fine with considering it’s a Fatal Fury movie. I’m not exactly looking for a deep story here.

I’ll give the movie credit for at least trying to give some depth to the characters. They do at least give everyone an arc, except Joe who ends up being useless, which is on brand for him but still, and gives the villain an actual backstory.

Granted he and his minions still end up being generic. I mean his minion have the powers of fire, wind and water for god’s sake, the powers you give anime villains when you can’t think of anything interesting to give them, but there was an attempt to give Laocorn some kind of a motivation other than just being evil.

His backstory is that his father was killed after uncovering one of the armour pieces by some asshole who wanted all the glory. Laocorn wanted revenge but the other guy had a gun, and you don’t win a fist fight when the other guy has a gun. So he put the armour piece on and proceeded to kill him, but now the armour is corrupting him and slowly turning him evil.

Basically, the armour is possessed by Mars who is using Laocorn as a puppet. It’s not the most original backstory, but at least it’s something. If you think about it, Laocorn is set up as a dark reflection of Terry, both lost their fathers and set out for revenge, both sought to get stronger to achieve that revenge, but one is a humble guy who didn’t let the power go to his head while the other was twisted by it.

Maybe there’s more depth than I gave it credit for. It doesn’t explore this part much, but still does more than most video game movies do, and there’s still plenty of moments of the characters interacting between fight scenes.

Sadly, the character moments end up being the weakest parts of the film. Or to be more precise, Terry’s end up being the weakest parts of the film. Which is sadly a recurring theme for these. Why is Terry’s story the weakest part? He’s one of the coolest fighting game characters of all time, he deserves better.

His story is that he’s falling in love with Sulia and he’s still not over Lily, and he doesn’t want to fall in love again because he’s worried about losing someone again and ugh… why are we still on this?

Why do this anime keep focusing on the lost loves of Terry Bogard. It isn’t interesting nor does it fit the character. Terry is not the guy to focus on romance, any attempt to focus on that is just going to end up feeling out of place. I don’t hate either Sulia or Lily, but their storylines are the biggest wet blanket of these things.

I find it funny that a year after this movie came out, Fatal Fury 3 would introduce Blue Mary who would be Terry’s actual love interest. Maybe SNK also didn’t like what the anime did and wanted to cut them off. Except years later there was a King of Fighter CG series that did this again, God damn it why do people never learn.

Look, there’s a time and a place for romance and I don’t think Fatal Fury is it. Even the one big relationship it has, Andy and Mai, is treated as a joke most of the time. It’s just not that kind series. The times when the movie focuses on this it flat out sucks, when it doesn’t is when I start to enjoy it.

While the story is a bit too complicated at times, I do like these kinds of adventure stories. I like seeing the characters explore exotic locations and finding clues on where to go next. Is Fatal Fury the best of this type of story? Oh hell no, but it is a lot of fun.

The problem is it doesn’t feel like Fatal Fury. Fatal Fury was always meant to be a more grounded street level kind of fighting game. It wasn’t about world warriors in a massive globe spanning tournament or mystic forces converging to take over earth, it was about two brothers trying to protect their hometown from a crime lord.

This kind of globetrotting adventure to stop a vengeful god just doesn’t seem like it should be in the same universe you know. And I know the third did have mystical scrolls as part of its story, but it still took place in one town; it wasn’t a global treasure hunt, and the mystic elements were kept to a minimum. It didn’t end with Terry fighting God, that’s what King of Fighters is for.

It’s a bit out there, but maybe that was the idea. This was Fatal Fury the movie after all. Maybe they wanted it to feel like a grander adventure to fit the scale of a feature film. In that regard it does make a lot of sense to do something a bit more epic.

Going from a tv special to a movie you want it to feel bigger right. So what better way to do it than to up the stakes. It’s what the last special did, why not do it again for the movie.

I can’t say I hate the direction here. It’s weird, but I understand why they took it. The story itself isn’t great, but it is a fun romp. It has a lot of funny moments between the characters, who are still very likable, it has a ton of action and while it is cliché I do like a lot of these clichés.

If you’re a fan of 90’s anime, then you’ll get a kick out of this. It’s got nearly every trope from anime of the era. Take the villains for example, the three villainous lackeys consist of a stoic giant of few words, a handsome fighter obsessed with beauty, and a girl who may or may not be in love with the main villain. That is ultimate trifecta of anime goons right there.

Now you could argue that this makes the movie derogative and unoriginal, but I would argue it makes it a time capsule. A perfect example of what anime was like in the 90’s, right down to the gratuitous fan service.

Yup, Mai is back and just as lewd as ever. Hell, since this is a movie, she’s even more lewd in this. Not only is her main outfit skimpier, which I didn’t know was possible, but even her casual outfits are. I’m pretty sure she wears a thong 80% of the time given how many times you can see her ass.

And of course, OF COURSE, there’s a shower scene. Because it wouldn’t be a 90’s fighting game anime without a shower scene. Is it gratuitous? Most definitely. Is it completely pointless? Oh absolutely, but if you cut it out of this movie, I’ll gut you like a fish. You do not remove art of this calibre and expect to walk away unscathed.

Speaking of art, the animation is easily the best of these anime. Which isn’t surprising considering this is a movie, so they’re obviously working with a higher budget. The backgrounds a lot nicer with some really beautiful backdrops and settings, and the character animation is a lot smoother and more expressive.

You can tell they wanted to make this feel like a movie and not just an extended version of the tv specials. The better lighting and more dynamic shots give it a cinematic quality the specials didn’t have.

The fight scenes are even flashier with special moves looking even more devastating. These are some of the most insane special moves I’ve seen in a fighting game anime. Granted I haven’t seen all of them, but of the ones I have, Fatal Fury is definitely at the top when it comes to depicting special moves.

Some fights are once again a little too short, but for the most part I found the fights to be highly enjoyable. They have the same energy as Fatal Fury 2, but they use a lot of different combinations to keep things interesting. Even Kim Kapwhan gets to fight one of the bad guys and he isn’t a main character.

There are still moments where the characters do look off model during the fight scenes. Like in the other anime they lower the detail and use anime action lines to have smoother movements during action sequences. Which can be distracting in some scenes.

Despite that, Fatal Fury the movie looks great. It doesn’t have the same kind of animation quality as Street Fighter 2 the animation, which I will have to get to someday, but it is still good animation. It’s got some nice backgrounds, the fights look cool, and I have to admit I have a huge soft spot for old 90’s cel animation.

The one sticking point with it is, once again, the character designs, and I’m not talking about the main cast this time. Those are honestly fine at this point, I think after three of these they did grow on me, no I’m talking about the new characters.

These are just straight Obari’s OCs, and they do not look like they belong here. Ok, Sulia isn’t that bad; she’s honestly fine, but the rest stand out like a skinhead at a synagogue. These designs are pure Obari, and that’s the problem with them.

The thing with Obari’s designs is I find that they’re overdesigned and under designed at the exact same time. There’s too much detail in them while also not having much to them at all. Obari is divisive as a character designer, and after watching this it’s not hard to see why.

I said earlier that Obari started as a mecha designer, and I don’t think he ever got out of that mentality. A lot of his designs feel very mecha-oriented, like they were designed as robots first and then he redesigned them as humans.

I don’t think Obari’s mecha designs are bad, they’re a little busy but I still like them, but designing human characters requires a different tact and I don’t think he ever got that.

All that said, I don’t personally hate his designs. I find they do have a certain charm to them, and at least you can tell they’re distinctly Obari’s designs. They aren’t so blad that anyone could have made them. Only Obari could design them the way he did, for better or worse.

One thing you have to give Obari though, he definitely likes his women. That should be obvious with Mai but even the background women have, ahem, well-endowed physiques let’s just say. Did I mention Obari has done porn, feels like I should have mentioned that by now but are you really surprised. No I’m not telling you what they’re called you fucking degenerate.

The film does look good overall. The new character designs are strange, but the old ones still look fine and at least the characters are animated well. The best part is the special moves though. I mean they’re blowing up buildings, wasting forests, knocking people around like rag dolls, it’s pretty awesome stuff.

The movie is at its best during the fight scenes. Which is down to one thing, and one thing alone. This movie is fucking dumb. And I mean that is nicest way possible. This movie runs on the kind of insane dumb logic I love.

The first fight scene has a moment where the bad guy catches a bullet then fires it back with his fingers to shoot a guy in the head. That makes no sense and borders on Looney Tunes logic, and yet it’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.

The movie has tons of ridiculous moments like this. You know that cliché where a character removes their clothes to reveal their battle outfit underneath? This movie does it three times, and it makes less and less sense every time it happens.

But you know what I love it. It defies all logic, but it looks so cool that I don’t care. That’s this movie in a nutshell, nothing in it makes that much sense, but it’s just so awesome you don’t care if it does. The creators didn’t care whether it made sense they just wanted it to be cool. There’s an earnestness to its stupidity.

It knows exactly what it wants to be, a silly little fighting anime for fans of the Fatal Fury series and it doesn’t pretend to be anything else. And if you are a fan of Fatal Fury, you’ll love this. It’s got all the moves, characters, and even some of the locations from the games. And by locations, I mean Pao Pao Café. Because it isn’t Fatal Fury without Pao Pao Café.

Sadly, a lot of the characters that appear wind up being little more than cameos. Which does make it a step down from Fatal Fury 2 which tried to give each character some kind of role in the story. Even Joe, who didn’t do that much, played a role in getting Terry out of his drunken stupor, which is more than he does here.

I will say they are handled better than Legend of the Hungry Wolf. There the characters didn’t even get a line of dialogue and were on screen for a second at most, they at least get to say something in the movie.

So, it’s somewhere in the middle. I prefer the way 2 handles it, but I do think the movie’s cameos work just fine for it. Maybe there isn’t one golden method to this issue and it’s all down to how individual productions handle it.

As for the voice acting, it’s the best dub of the lot. All the actors from the earlier dubs return and they do just as good a job here, if not better. It’s very clear the actors are just having fun with these roles but are professional enough to make a lot of the dialogue work even when it’s super cheesy.

I especially like Matt Hill as Laocorn. Laocorn is not a complex villain, so Hill just goes all in on making him as over the top and camp as possible. He’s great. Also, Hill is the voice of Ed from Ed, Edd n’ Eddy and knowing that made it even funnier. I want to see a montage of Laocorn’s scenes with Ed’s sound clips now.

The music is good too. It’s catchy and upbeat as expected but also a bit more atmospheric too. It’s got more of a movie sound to it, if that makes sense.

None of it really stands out too much, except for one song. I have to point out the final song in the movie, because it is the perfect encapsulation of just how cheesy 90’s anime can get.

Someone break out the wine and crackers because that is some primo cheese. Honestly, that ending sums up this entire anime trilogy. It’s completely over the top, it’s ridiculously camp, and I love everything about them.

Ok, not everything, but most things. These anime have their flaws, the attempt at drama fall flat, the animation can be inconsistent, and if I’m being honest if you aren’t a fan of the games or 90’s anime this isn’t going to do anything for you. They are a bit too cliché for its own good.

But if you are a fan of either, or preferably both, these are well worth a watch. They’re just the right amount of anime goofiness. They aren’t deep but they are fun, and sometimes that’s all you need something to be.

Of the three I’d say Legend of the Hungry Wolf is the only one I didn’t like. It’s not awful, just dull. The other two, those come recommended. I like Motion Picture a bit more, but they’re both an enjoyable watch and while there is continuity between the three, they do a good enough job of bringing newcomers up to speed so you can still enjoy them as standalone works.

These anime, well the last two at least, are the best videogame movies I’ve looked at so far. Or at least they’re up there alongside Mortal Kombat. And I think the reason is because of the reason Mortal Kombat worked, it’s made by people who respected the source material.

These Fatal Fury anime feels like they were made by fans of Fatal Fury. You can tell the creatives behind it liked the world and its characters and wanted to do right by them. It knew its audience were the fans of the games and wanted to make a product the fans could enjoy.

It doesn’t fully work, maybe it never could, but that earnest attempt to please the fans does shine through. I’ll always appreciate an adaptation that just gives the audience what they want to see and not try to twist it into something it isn’t to try and appeal to some boardroom executive or focus group. Trust me, they’ll be a lot more of those in the future.

This was exactly what I needed. These anime were a breath of fresh air compared to what I’ve looked at so far. There are plenty of videogame anime we could look at in the future, but I think I’ll hold off on those for now.

No, I’ve cleansed my palette and now it’s time to get back into the shit. We’re going back to Hollywood next time and I think we need to look at a franchise that’s a little more well known. Anyone up for some tomb raiding?