More reviews coming up and we return to Street Fighter.
I said in my Street Fighter Alpha Movie review that there was a great movie hidden inside the franchise and while it still hasn't materialized yet I do remember that this series, Street Fighter II Victory had a good go at really making a good series.
It starts off with Ryu and Ken reuniting in America after so many years as the two were training partners under the same master, but after a bar brawl which ends in both characters being defeated brutally by Guile, the two realize that their training hasn't fully prepared them for the world so they take a journey around the world to fight the world's best fighters which eventually leads to them crossing fists with Shadoloo.
A few things differ drastically from other films and shows such as the designs of the characters not being accurate to the game, but while some redesigns are great like Chun Li who is less muscle woman and more cute fighter girl while others like Sagat who looks like a completely different character altogether.
Also the action can be a little bit hit and miss, some fights are really brutal while others kind of hold back a bit too much leading to some moments when clashes are defined by flashing lights so this series isn't for people with epilepsy.
The dub was so messed up that they ended up with two different dubs and one of them had to replace actors half way so I'd stick with the Japanese.
And finally the pacing is dismally slow, the moments when the characters have to endure painfully long dialogue or go through shopping montages or showing scenes of endless travelling before every fight scene can be off putting.
Not all the characters are used either, of the 17 characters at the time, E.Honda, Blanka, T.Hawk and Deejay aren't used while Akuma is reduced to cameos.
But I do forgive a lot of it's short comings because this is the perfect way to tell Street Fighter's story. The story understands that Ryu and Ken are Martial Artists before they are anything else and the only way to achieve a path of strength and resolve is to travel and seek other fighters who are like them and should only cross Shadoloo by chance rather than be forced to get involved by the villain abducting everyone, and while that does happen, it happens near the end and doesn't disrupt the story too much and were not subjected to too much of the fighting genres horrid pitfalls and cliches either.
Final Verdict: While it suffers with poor pacing, questionable art choices, horrid dubbing and giving people epilepsy it does come up with a good story that suits the Street Fighter universe better than it's other animated shows, live action movies and even some of the games.
Next on the list is Disgaea, this might be a doozy.
Two years ago, the angel apprentice Flonne was sent to the Netherworld to assassinate King Krichevskoy, however she appears to have been beaten to it as the castle is on fire and the King appears to already be dead, instead she finds Laharl inside of the King's coffin who is also the King's son. Flonne gets dragged into Laharl's mission to reclaim the Kingdom along with his subordinate Etna and an army of Prinnies who are demonic penguins controlled by the souls of sinful humans. Along the way they run into a space captain and his motley crew of sci-fi homages as well as Flonne's employer and a charismatic demon dubbed Mid boss. All the while Etna is plotting a takeover of the Kingdom and Flonne tries to teach love to Laharl.
Now I'd never played Disgaea before this but this isn't how I envisioned it in anime form, now I heard there were lots of drastic changes before production but what we had was not good. The characters are annoying, the dialogue is annoying along with the dub, the story is bland and doesn't really go anywhere and it feels like a kids show, I just really didn't like it and even though I do own the DS remake of the first Disgaea game I feel reluctant to play it because of this anime.
Not a good advert to get people to play the games.
Final Verdict: It behaves like a 4Kids show and has the cheesiness to match, I really hope this isn't what the game is like otherwise I may never play it.
Lots of reviews to come as I've been clearing up some old DVDs starting things off with Street Fighter Alpha the Movie.
No relation to the other Street Fighter movie Street Fighter Alpha the movie sets off with Sakura chasing Ryu, Chun Li stopping Shadoloo and Ryu mourning the death of his master while contemplating the effects of the Dark Hadou, the same power that consumed Akuma, then a vision from Rose brings more questions about the Dark Hadou, followed by the appearances of Shun and Ken. Shun is a kid who believes he's Ryu's brother and was sent to Ryu from his dying mother and already has some potential as a fighter if a little sadistic, while with Ken the two friends spar but Ryu starts succumbing to the Dark Hadou only for Ken to stop him. Later on Ken and Shun decide to enter an underground fighting tournament but things go wrong quickly as Shun is beaten by Zangief, Ryu then nearly kills Zangief in a rage and after a few exchanges with Shadoloo in which Ryu kills one of the Shadoloo fighters, Shun gets abducted.
After a brief exchange with Akuma, Ryu along with Chun Li, Ken and a multitude of other fighters travel to the Shadoloo HQ to take down it's leader Sadler, although some fighters are just here for a tournament. After several exchanges between fighters including the big muscle guy from the underground arena, Ryu is pushed into using the Dark Hadou but with Shun being used as a human battery to power the big muscle guy he ends up taking the damage, this then gives Sadler enough power to try and kill Ryu who used the tournament to steal fighting potential from the other fighters but Ryu manages to overcome his darkness to kill Sadler; afterwards Shun dies from his injuries admitting that he lied about being Ryu's brother and was sent by Shadoloo to lure Ryu into Shadoloo's clutches in exchange for his mother's health but she died anyway. The epilogue shows the fighters returning to normal with Ryu fighting Akuma off screen.
This film is a mess, I don't think the film makers actually played or even attempted to research what Street Fighter Alpha was, so much of the cast is under used or not used at all despite all of them having much more compelling backstories than we had with Shun who we are supposed to care about yet I really wanted to see him die because he was just a sadistic little freak, his lie was so obvious that no intelligent person watching would fall for it, and the villains, oh god, at least Bison had charisma Sadler is just dull in comparison and his henchman while looking awesome in design, really should have more to him than just being a grinning metal doll. The fights were okay but I didn't feel invested in them, dubbing was okay at least and the art style repairs some of the damage but not all of it.
I feel there is a great movie in the Street Fighter Franchise but time and time again the story is done so poorly that we are constantly left with mediocrity, the closest to being good was the Animated Street Fighter II movie which while having it's issues got a lot more right than all it's other films and tv shows.
Final Verdict: It looks good in action and in art style but I don't feel invested because were stuck with bland characters that have no business being in the Street Fighter Franchise.
Now we look at another reboot, this time it's Bugs Bunny.
I've already mentioned last year how great a character Bugs Bunny is, so I don't need to repeat myself in that regard, however like every character of a certain age and genre, his original content was the stuff of cartoon legends but now finds himself a victim of changing fortunes and Wabbit is just another chapter in this character's story.
Don't get me wrong, this is Bugs Bunny in his own territory, not sharing with other Looney Tunes in a big city but doing what he does best in giving a little payback to the people that annoy him.
It would be a very unfair comparison to say that this is bad because it's not the original, the original was of it's own era and had it's own charm and cannot really do well in a modern era even if much of it's content is timeless,it wasn't perfect, towards the end of it's run, Bugs Bunny ran out of content and had a hard time continuing beyond 1964 when censorship was a major thing for cartoons mainly due to the advent of Children's TV. I can honestly say Wabbit is actually fairly good, while not all the jokes hit the mark and the animation style is questionable, but for what they managed to work with, they did a pretty good job.
Warner Bros under Sam Register has this strange form of luck, it's not just Bugs Bunny, it's Scooby Doo, Tom & Jerry, the DC Universe and Teen Titans. They seem to create this notorious popularity for taking away the charm of these franchises but amongst the chaos there exists some of the best cartoon writing in the modern era so it comes down to personal taste and not letting your nostalgic views cloud your judgement when looking at these reboots.
Wabbit for me started shaky and there are plenty of characters it can do without along with some jokes that need some work done, however it's still very much a work in progress that's getting better as it goes along and season 1 is no where near finished yet, but again it still comes down to taste as to whether or not you consider Wabbit a good cartoon.
Remember "One person's vision is someone else's nightmare" but also remember that it's actually impossible to recreate an old show from it's original state with the most obvious reasons ranging from the original production crew, writers and actors being dead or very much retired, one of the last things that Mel Blanc left to the world was a number of successors to continue his characters voices and Bugs Bunny still sounds just as good now as before, so all this hate that these shows get is unjustified because on their own merits they can still entertain the world and as I grow up I may one day show my kids and grandkids about Bugs Bunny as my father showed me and I'll look on the TV and he'll still be there 50 years from now and that to me is worth more than how good or how bad his shows are.
I've been into Dreamworks lately so lets begin with Megamind.
The typical superhero setup is established as two intergalactic beings are sent to Earth, one following the path of good as Metro Man while the movie focusses on the blue skinned, big headed menace known as Megamind.
One day after the uptenth time of going through the battle between good and evil routine, Megamind actually wins the battle, destroying Metro Man in the process, giving him full control of Metro City.
But losing his sense of thrill in fighting a worthy opponent and falling for TV Reporter Roxanne, Megamind decides to create a new hero using Roxanne's cameraman Hal, while at the same time dating Roxanne in disguise but Hal's lack of heroics and failing to get Roxanne to love him turns him into an evil villain, leaving Megamind to try and save the day as the some how alive Metro Man refuses to do so.
The psychology in this film is clever, in Megamind we have a goal that's been achieved but nothing else to aim for leaving a feeling of emptiness, in Metro Man we have someone who feels he's been put into this position by virtue of his powers but isn't allowed to have a choice of being normal, in Minion he feels that he is losing his boss by the fact that he's being influenced by his own self loathing to make poor decisions, Roxanne doesn't know who to trust anymore as everyone from her cameraman to Metro Man to Megamind himself show sides to them that she wasn't expecting and Hal is a jerk who feels that he can get anything he wants because of superpowers because his own life sucks and somehow makes it worth it.
That's quite a lot to cover and in a Dreamworks picture that really doesn't get a lot of appreciation; its got a very strong set of characters and while the story can be a little bit weak in places, I never felt that it went for cliches or try to end on a "Business as usual" ending which could've ruined the whole film if it did.
Dreamworks is a worthy rival of Disney and films like this show that it can compete on equal footing.
