Five stars! A must see! Wonderful! Blah blah....... Well, Street Fighter Alpha is certainly not a must see. I was severely disappointed with this film, just very very disappointed.

The story is actually very good for a fighting game anime. Ryu's little brother, Shun, shows up after Ken and Ryu's master has died. Ryu has increasing dark spirit or chi growing within him, making him fight with a murderous and evil intent. The power of the dark hadou, is what has made Akuma so evil and now Ryu is being consumed with it too, as is Shun. Unfortunately, Shun is kidnapped by shadowlaw and out hero team of Ryu, Chun-Li and Ken must save him. But, as Ryu's dark powers grow more and more sinister, will he be able to control his powers and save his little brother?

Where, oh where do I start. I expected this movie to be amazing, considering all the critical applause it has received, so I bought it, thinking it would be better than Street Fighter II The Movie. And in some ways it is, but in many ways it isn't.

First of all, the battle scenes are very poor. While Chun-Li pulls off about one or two cool moves in the whole 90 minutes of the movie, everyone else just performs lackluster moves. While, they aren't badly drawn, it might just be the camera angle or something like that, but I certainly wasn't excited during the battle scenes. They were not heart pounding and they just weren't good. Some of the better characters from Street Fighter Alpha barely fight! Rose performs one move and it's really lame, plus, it's not even a fight. Sakura, barely pulls off anything and we see a few second snippets from other characters pulling off moves in a tournament. It's too bad the characters are underused, but the movie could've been saved if the three main characters, Ken, Ryu and Chun-Li, pulled off some good moves or had some good fights, but sadly, no. As I said, Chun-Li, who has the coolest and neatest looking moves, barely does any, which is too bad, cause I think she throws one fireball in the whole movie and does like one acrobatic kick. Ken does just about nothing and the rest is Ryu, who basically does some lame ass kicks and punches and throws a fireball or two. The main problem is, that the whole movie, basically turns into a Ken and Chun-Li beatdown. The main bad guy, who isn't even a street fighter character, basically slams Chun-Li and Ken for about 20 minutes at the end of the movie. It's so bad. I don't think Chun-Li or Ken even get in a good hit. Even the much-awaited fight between Ryu and Akuma doesn't even happen. It's a shame that I can't remember any of the fight scenes, because they weren't memorable.

The bad guys are horrible. I can't remember any of them. They were just lame. Akuma is very much underused, and some lame characters who aren't even from Street Fighter become the bad guys. They are very annoying and the muscleman/Frankenstein has got to be the most unexciting bad guy ever. ::takes a hit, doesn't feel it, and throws Chun-Li across the room::

The music, is non-existent. It's too bad, because some good music could've saved some of the monotony and boredom of the fights. On the other hand, the Japanese voice acting is excellent, although, Ryu's voice was a bit too deep. Everyone else's voice fit nicely. I also like how on the DVD they have an interview with every Japanese cast member. It's really cool, to see, who voiced each character in the movie. The art and animation was very nice. The moves are drawn well, but it's too bad they are so boring. The character designs remain faithful to street fighter alpha and no longer does Chun-Li wear that ugly blue dress. I should also mention that the characters look much sharper and mature, than Street Fighter II The Movie, which is a definite plus. Each character just seems more streamlined.

This movie could've been good. It had a great storyline and a lot of conflicts, but because of the storyline, the fight scenes suffered. I know you can't just throw in a fight with a random character for no reason without weakening the storyline, and I understand that, but this is a fighting game movie after all. There should be good fight scenes! And I wouldn't have minded if the fight scenes were reduced in favor of storyline but hey should make the fight scenes left, exciting.