Its hard to believe that Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie was released 30 years ago. The Street Fighter series in general has been around since the late 80’s and the early 90’s was when the franchise was starting to grow in popularity. Following the success of the original Street Fighter II game in ’91 we got to see multiple versions of the game between ’92-’94. Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie came out the same year as Super Street Fighter II: Turbo in ’94. When the SFII animated movie was released it exceeded many people’s expectations in terms of quality. Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie was far better than that horrible cartoon that appeared on the USA Network in 1995. The SFII: Animated movie was also better than the Street Fighter II V anime that from ’95 which was a loose adaptation of the actual story from the game. The SFII: Animated movie had amazing character designs top-notch voice acting along great pacing and exciting action scenes.

The Street Fighter II: Animated Movie featured so many iconic scenes including the fight between Chun-Li and Vega which was borderline mature for a movie that appealed to teenagers. The main story involved the main protagonists Ryu, Ken Masters, Chun-Li and Guile trying to take down Shadaloo for their heinous crimes with the main antagonist being M. Bison. The fights in the SFII: Animated series featured the likes of Ryu vs Fel-Long, E-Honda vs Dhalsim, Ryu & Ken vs Bison, etc. The fights in the movie did not go on unreasonably long and kept viewers on the edge of their seats. Some would probably rank the Street Fighter II: Animated Movie above the Alpha film from 2000 in terms of plot and animation because it was a faithful adaptation from one of the video games.

The SFII: Animated film was something that helped the popularity of the Street Fighter series and made fans eager to check out the first Alpha game which was released in 1995. Its crazy to think that the Street Fighter II: Animated Movie had a budget of $6 million. While the SFII: Animated Movie was a box office success in Japan it seemed like it appealed to a more niche audience in America. Three decades later the Street Fighter II: Animated Movie is still very fun to watch and stands the test of time in 2024. Some would probably argue that the Street Fighter II movie was one of the best animated films of the 90’s decade. The Street Fighter II animated film from the mid 90’s was almost as good as the Night Warriors: DarkStalkers Revenge OVA from 1997.