I am inches away from giving this a four star rating with all the underground fury I can muster.
The exposure I have to the Fatal Fury franchise extends to the other two OVA/movies (I watched the motion picture chronologically released after this before because that blu came out before this OVA package) and the brief use of him in the Super Smash games.
I’m not as good as I should be about remembering film release dates, so you can imagine my shock when I see this came out an entire year before Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie. Listen, before I go further, the aforementioned SF anime is in your canon or not. If it’s not, idk what kind of anime fan you are but all my preferences and opinions do not apply. In other words, SF II is one of my anime and the reason that’s important is because this is as good a precursor as anyone could ask for. In almost every facet, Fatal Fury 2: The New Battle scratches the aesthetic niches of the epitomized fighting video game anime.
Among a plethora of reasons to watch this, my personal favourite goes to my introduction to the big bad, Wolfgang Krauser. Both visually and audibly, with a great performance by Hirotaka Suzuoki, you know IMMEDIATELY he is cool, super strong, and definitively bad ass because… that’s right, big shoulders. See, Krauser is bringing a whole ass entity of vibes rivaling M. Bison, Raoh, Yujiro Hanma, and Toguro to mention a few of the greats. These are the guys who reside atop the vintage anime Mount Rushmore of villains, and yes, I am saying Krauser belongs there. 1993? Do not tell me that’s not precedence.
Recalling the sentiment of things like this and *SF being my kind of anime, it’s literally just dudes fighting and using powers. Honestly, it’s beautiful. Anime used to embrace the Socratic embodiment of formula and blasted our eyeballs out of our faces with this axiomatically cool aesthetic. God damn, this is the anime you hope to take a chance on at the old conventions when you had to blind buy everything and spend your whole month’s allowance on one damn dvd.
Another thing that helped here was the previous OVA. Despite that OVA being quite fun, it didn’t quite carry the impact of lasting wowzers. But this film, in part because of its extended runtime, capitalizes on what we already know (like Geese and Terry’s brother) but only spends minimal time. The story is threadbare, but gets the job done in a way that lets everything else shine. The biggest narrative criticism I would leverage is the sadboy era of Terry, but at the same time, we get some great drunken bar fights. I’d also admit the kid, Tony, is not perfect, but far from ruinous. Narratively, it also felt more sad and funny than sensical when Joe shows up at the end to take on Krauser just to show us a new move that doesn’t work lol.
This one definitely left me flying high. It took me back to the bygone days when us anime fiends were scared to come out in the sunlight and our conventions were more DIY than product placement. Damn, like you would have a counter with this and a Ichi the Killer right next to each other. But I digress. If you like Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie*, then this is the movie you didn’t know you were looking for.
I am inches away from giving this a four star rating with all the underground fury I can muster.
The exposure I have to the Fatal Fury franchise extends to the other two OVA/movies (I watched the motion picture chronologically released after this before because that blu came out before this OVA package) and the brief use of him in the Super Smash games.
I’m not as good as I should be about remembering film release dates, so you can imagine my shock when I see this came out an entire year before Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie. Listen, before I go further, the aforementioned SF anime is in your canon or not. If it’s not, idk what kind of anime fan you are but all my preferences and opinions do not apply. In other words, SF II is one of my anime and the reason that’s important is because this is as good a precursor as anyone could ask for. In almost every facet, Fatal Fury 2: The New Battle scratches the aesthetic niches of the epitomized fighting video game anime.
Among a plethora of reasons to watch this, my personal favourite goes to my introduction to the big bad, Wolfgang Krauser. Both visually and audibly, with a great performance by Hirotaka Suzuoki, you know IMMEDIATELY he is cool, super strong, and definitively bad ass because… that’s right, big shoulders. See, Krauser is bringing a whole ass entity of vibes rivaling M. Bison, Raoh, Yujiro Hanma, and Toguro to mention a few of the greats. These are the guys who reside atop the vintage anime Mount Rushmore of villains, and yes, I am saying Krauser belongs there. 1993? Do not tell me that’s not precedence.
Recalling the sentiment of things like this and *SF being my kind of anime, it’s literally just dudes fighting and using powers. Honestly, it’s beautiful. Anime used to embrace the Socratic embodiment of formula and blasted our eyeballs out of our faces with this axiomatically cool aesthetic. God damn, this is the anime you hope to take a chance on at the old conventions when you had to blind buy everything and spend your whole month’s allowance on one damn dvd.
Another thing that helped here was the previous OVA. Despite that OVA being quite fun, it didn’t quite carry the impact of lasting wowzers. But this film, in part because of its extended runtime, capitalizes on what we already know (like Geese and Terry’s brother) but only spends minimal time. The story is threadbare, but gets the job done in a way that lets everything else shine. The biggest narrative criticism I would leverage is the sadboy era of Terry, but at the same time, we get some great drunken bar fights. I’d also admit the kid, Tony, is not perfect, but far from ruinous. Narratively, it also felt more sad and funny than sensical when Joe shows up at the end to take on Krauser just to show us a new move that doesn’t work lol.
This one definitely left me flying high. It took me back to the bygone days when us anime fiends were scared to come out in the sunlight and our conventions were more DIY than product placement. Damn, like you would have a counter with this and a Ichi the Killer right next to each other. But I digress. If you like Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie*, then this is the movie you didn’t know you were looking for.
