One word sums up this 1995 TV series based on the popular Street fighter game by Capcom and the 1994 Street Fighter movie. That word is "inconsistent".
Quality of writing and animation varies greatly between seasons and even between episodes. Season 2 can be easily regarded as immensely superior to season 1(a trend that many 90s animated series seem to follow, like Fantastic four or Iron man)
Season 1 generally follows in the footsteps of the 1994 movie. Cheesy, self contained episodic stories. Some episodes, especially the more character centric episodes are quite good and help a lot with the character development. But some episodes come across as terrible toy advertisements. Sometimes characters are thrown in just to showcase their powers and the scripting at points is terrible with juvenile humor and cheesy dialogue. The animation in season 1 is mediocre. The character designs are nice, more realistic than the designs in the game or the Japanese manga. But choppy animation, simplistic art and static camera angles with little attention to detail lends to a very low budget look for majority of the episodes in season 1.
Season 2 saw a huge improvement in the show. Starting from the episode "The Hammer Strikes", one can tell the the overall tone of the second season is generally a lot more serious than the first. The episodes are still self contained but have an underlying storyline to tie everything up. Character subplots are carried on and developed nicely as the series goes along such as Blanka's conflict with the beast within, Cammy's mysterious past and Guile's wavering confidence in his leadership of the team. Animation in season is also taken up a huge notch. The animation is smoother and more dynamic utilizing a good mix of close-ups, full body pans and kinetic framing of shots to give the show a very strong, almost movie-style look. Some episodes are even on par with the quality in the Japanese Street Fighter anime movie. With the improvement in animation, the art detail takes a jump too. The blacks are heavy and body contours are sharper, all adding to the enjoyment.
A small side note here. The portrayal of the "special powers" like Guile's Sonic Boom or Ryu's hadouken in this series is possibly the most true to the game ever. In the game, a single Hadouken can be fired multiple times and just knocks an opponent down. It does not destroy require great strain on Ryu, nor does a single blast take down a building(as portrayed in other adaptations of Street fighter).
So overall, this series was a noble effort, possibly one of the better animated series based on a game. Shaky at first but finally showed improvement. The characters were easy to relate to, the animation and writing were enjoyable in the end. Personally, i recommend just watching the first episode, then skipping to episode 14 onward.
I give it 7 out of 10 for a good effort, and in keeping true to the spirit of the game it is based on. Not perfect, but not bad either.
