Well, after GSM told me about the Fatal Fury OVAs, I decided to track them down on Kazaa and see what they were like, as well as a few other series I’d been told about, and here’s what I thought;
Ah yes, ‘classic’ anime, when men had huge muscles and women had huge breasts, which old men groped whenever possible… And that’s generally the formulas these series and films all follow.
Fatal Fury; Legend of the Hungry Wolf and Fatal Fury 2; The New Battle (1 episode OVAs)
1: Eww. Terry Bogart swears to avenge father. Beats up people in fight scenes whose animaion is almost all speed lines and cheesy ‘ultimate-attack fire NOW!’ dialogue. The film runs into the wall that is unemotional voice acting and never gets up again. Not so much an OVA as an extra fifteen minutes tacked onto something cheap. Think the DBZ movies, except they had cooler fights. And SSJ Vegeta. ;;>_>
2: Far, far better. The animation takes a step up to ‘good’, as do the VAs. The plot I won’t spoil, except to say it involves Krausner (sp?) wanting to find a worthy opponent (and he has a pretty good German accent as well). The fight scenes are still short as hell, but okay for all that. Worth a look because of Joe’s dialogue and Krausner’s awesomeness. Also has Mai’s breasts in various stages of ‘hey-how-close-can-we-get-before-the-rating-goes-up’ situations. It gets extra points for having a camp 80’s ending theme as well. ^^
Verdict; 1 gets no cookies. 2 gets three cookies.
Street Fighter and Street Fighter Alpha (films)
SF: Pretty good. Ignore the fairly-nonsensical plot and watch the fighting, 'cause pretty much everyone from the original lineup of SF and SF2 gets a decent fight to their name. The animation is good, even if the voice-acting stumbles a bit. Generally exactly what you’d expect from a series that revolved around beating the shit out of people.
SFA: Evil Scientist tries to do something vague by gathering the fighting data of a lot of streetfighters and draining them of it (wtf?) to increase his own powers. Ryu also has a kid brother, who goes all Mutant-Tetsuo-like at the end of the film, and Akuma is in it! 
The animation and VAs are a ton better, and some of the scenes Ryu’s Dark Hado especially have the ‘whoa’ factor. Pierson likes this film.
Verdict; SF gets three cookies, SFA gets four cookies.
Fist of the North Star (film)
I can’t help it. I hated this film to death. The VAs are the worst ever, and the animation isn’t much better (witness the entire background turning into speed lines when characters are merely shouting at each other). A couple of scenes had redeemable value, but they’re crushed by the shitiness of the rest of the film.
Verdict; No cookies. Also I killed it’s family and burnt it’s house down.
Darkstalkers (4-ep OVA)
I admit, I loved this series. That’s probably because I’m a massive Darkstalkers fan, but since I’m a massive SF and FF fan also (well, at least I was before I saw that terrible first OVA) it’s less of an excuse.
This is arguable the best-made series of the bunch. The animation is above-average and fluid during the fights, the VAs are actually pretty good (except Raptor’s British acent). The plot has actually been thought about instead of tacked on as an excuse for fighting, involving Dmitri coming back from exile from the Demon World to reclaim his place as King, the human’s objection to the Darkstalker’s dominion over them, and Phobos/Huitzil’s own agendas, and Hsein-Ko and Ling-Lings (go you Chinese Vampire girls! :D) search for their mother, and meeting with Donovan and Anita (the freaky girl following him around). And the fighting. Oh the fighting.
If you’ve ever played DS and seen the moves, you’ll recognise nearly all of them. Morrigan’s morphing wings, Donovan’s beads and hyooj sword, Hsein-Ko’s extortionate amount of heavy metal objects, Dmitri’s vampire-abilities. All of them are used without slowing down the awesome fights or making them seem stupid (the final battle between Hsein-Ko and Ling-Ling vs Pyron, then Pyron vs Donovan is amazing, as is nearly all of episode four. Felicia, Raptor, everyone gets at least one scene to themselves (Felicia getting the most out of the minor characters).
About the only complaints are that many of the characters deemed less important or silly are just shoved aside, and only get one or two extras. Also since the game is set Pre-Vampire Saviour, characters like Lilith and Jedah are nowhere in sight. Apart from that it’s all good. it’s camp 80’s ending theme also beats Fatal Fury 2’s camp 80’s ending theme.
Verdict; EDIT: Screw it. It gets five cookies because I went back and watched it again, and DOnovan and Hsein-Ko are awesome characters.
So, there’s my thoughts, for no particular reason. Anyone else ever seen any decent OOT-fighting anime or manga they liked?
