BATTLE FIGHTERS GAROU DENSETSU 2

DESCRIPTION

CAST

SPECIAL ActionBattle Fighters Garou Densetsu
MOVIE ActionGarou Densetsu: THE MOTION PICTURE

REVIEWS

• 

  MegaTheRealOne

  70/100
  Better In Many Ways, Still Lacking In Others

  (Originally reviewed on Letterboxd)

  Glad to see that Terry triumphed over evil, while Joe and Andy did NOTHING. Those lazy fuckers, I swear...

  While I wouldn't say that it was flat-out terrible, the original TV special for Fatal Fury wasn't really all that good whatsoever. Amongst its problems in terms of its terrible voice acting, its sometimes botched animation, and its one-dimensional characters, it was primarily dragged down by its very short runtime, leaving little to no time to fully devote enough time to any of these aspects to develop them further, or make them any better. However, despite this, this wouldn't be the only time that we would hear Fatal Fury in this style. After all, if SNK were confident enough to consistently keep pumping out these titles year after year, then the same thing could be done with the TV specials as well, right? Well, you wouldn't think so, but surprisingly, they managed to pull it off with Fatal Fury 2: The New Battle.

  Like with the original, I had never seen this special before, and I wasn't looking forward to it too much, due to the quality of the original, but upon researching it at first, there were some things that gave me hope. While the title may be pretty lazy, the runtime was thankfully increased by 30 minutes, which definitely helped it out, and since this was based on Fatal Fury 2, the better of the two original games, then I imagined there would be plenty more familiar faces as well. Thankfully, I was right on both of those assumptions, as I would say this is a pretty good special, and a great improvement over what the original gave us. Sadly, some of the same problems that the original had still carry over to this one, but overall, it is a step up from what we had previously, and definitely the superior of the two.

  The story is, once again, about the same as the original game, although without any kind of tournament, and with some... interesting choices here and there, the returning characters are about the same as they were in the original film, so nothing to complain about there, and as for the new characters, they were alright, with no real terrible ones out of the bunch, even if I do prefer some of them over others, the voice acting is, unfortunately, still pretty bad, and while there is one or two good performances in there, there is just as many terrible ones, both returning and new ones, the animation is on par with the original short, but it is done much better here, with minimal bits of laziness to be seen, and with me actually being able to tell what is going on during the fights, and speaking of which, the fights are also a slight improvement from the original, even if there are some instances where the fights can be pretty lazily presented.

  Thankfully, the runtime does make things much better overall, allowing for plenty of time to show off all the characters, what they are doing, and how they prepare to take on the main villain, so that is nice to see. Unfortunately, of course, the special still isn't perfect, with issues like the voice acting still plaguing it, and in the case of this particular special, Terry Bogard sucks. Sure, there are moments where he is the same ass-kicking fighter that we all know him for, but for half of the special, he turns into an absolutely pathetic drunk after losing just one match against the main bad guy. Yeah, I know this is a trope when it comes to stories like this, but honestly, I don't really like this trope at all, as there are so many holes to be seen in it. Sure, there are examples out there of this trope done right, but trust me, this is not one of them. Aside from all that though, as well as some instances of "those jokes" that anime just loves so much, I didn't find too much to dislike here.

  Overall, despite the horrible voice acting still being a thing, as well as Terry being pathetic for a good chunk of it, I would say that this is a pretty good special all in all, and one that is sure to please both fans of the original game, as well as newcomers. I would recommend it for fans of Fatal Fury, as well as those who liked what they got out of the original special, because there is plenty for both of those crowds to get out of this. Let's just hope that they improve upon things further in the next animated product from this series. Maybe get rid of Tony. Tony sucks.

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