I was not expecting much when I first heard about Street Fighter II V, as I couldn’t picture what the series would be about. I was not too thrilled when I saw that Ryu and Ken were only seventeen years old in the series and did not know some of their best attacks. But as the series went on, I started to like it much more. Even though the series doesn’t follow the video game storyline as much as I would have liked, Street Fighter II V is a solid anime and worthy of the Street Fighter name.

Action
Street Fighter II V is all about fighting and the desire to be stronger. Ryu and Ken get into all sorts of fights with various people and the action is always intense. Some fights are better than others though, and some take way too long to finish, but that’s mostly because they re-use a lot of footage. An example would be the Ryu and Ken fight near the end of the series, they must have shown the same succession of punches and kicks three times. Now this may not seem like a big deal, but consider that there are three separate fights going on in the episode, so new animation per segment should be quite easy to do. That is probably where the action loses most of its marks. The other marks that are lost are from the quick fight finishes. After a fight that seems to be progressing slowly, it will end in the blink of an eye, with barely any climax. Luckily, there is not too much of that in the anime, and when it’s not like that the action is very good.

Story
Let’s face it, there is really much storyline in the Street Fighter II video games. So one would think that adapting the story from the game into an anime would not be a wise choice. Luckily, SFV has done a good job at making the story interesting, while still being true to the Street Fighter name. Apart from the age differences in the anime, fans of the series will recognize many ties with the games. The anime does a good job at giving reasons for Ken and Ryu to travel to different countries, other than just to meet stronger opponents. It also throws some twists and turns into the mix to make things interesting. Unfortunately, parts of the story develop too fast, while some are drawn out and take 3x longer than they should. The last two or three episodes could easily have been done in less time, or at least without all the talking so that there’d be more time for the fighting scenes.

Personal Opinion
What can I say, I love Street Fighter. The fact that there was even a series made me jump for joy. There are also a few things that I really liked about the anime. Firstly, the music is actually very good, but some tracks are used too often. My favorite music has to be the one that plays when Ken does his Shoryu Ken against Vega in episode 17. It is also played a lot when Ken does his Hadou Shoryu Ken towards the end of the series. I still hear the tunes in my head, and can picture the exact times that it occurs. Lastly, the voice acting in the series is also really good, in both English and Japanese, which is rare in an anime. This is one of the few anime that I would prefer to watch in English than in Jap, which says a lot about the voices. All of them seem appropriate for the characters and are a pleasure to watch, when compared to some of the poor dubbing in anime such as DBZ.

Conclusion
Street Fighter II V is a good anime, it has its ups and downs like any anime. But all things considered I think most people would be satisfied with this anime. Of note, I couldn’t help but notice that the episode titles were really long, I had a heck of a time writing them down and constantly had to pause the DVDs. What were they thinking when they made these? Anyway, SFV is bound to please the Street Fighter or anime lover.