F-Zero: Falcon Densetsu

If your not very sure what F-Zero is let me fill you in since the synopsis doesn't really explain much. F-Zero is one of the first futuristic racing games produced by Nintendo EAD and is a good seller amongst their franchises. You may have heard of the franchises main character Capt. Falcon appearing more popularly in the Super Smash Brothers Series with his signature Falcon Punch. Its funny because the Falcon Punch wasn't really a thing until this anime came out and was then spread by the Smash Bros Series. This was a damn good anime for its time and I am surprised barely anyone ... has actually seen it.

Story 9/10
The story is really deep and really focuses on explaining the F-Zero Universe. Most of the early episodes are somewhat filler as it usually follows a line of introduce one of the games racers and stimulate a plot based around that character. While most people don't enjoy filler episodes like this I actually found them to be quite enjoyable and learned quite a bit about the series in general. The episodes later on start really developing the story around the Mobile Task Force and Dark Million which had lots of tension. Not sure if any of it replicates any of the games storyline since its been a while since I played but damn is it good at providing a core plot and sticking to it and you can just see its evolution and its quite fascinating. I also found it quite interesting when they made references to like Capcom and Star Fox. They really have their way with pleasing Nintendo Fans.

Art 8/10
For an anime that released in 2003 it had really great animation and style and quite enjoyed the F-Zero machines and designs. It really makes them more recognizable now however I felt the anime's art may have been a tad to dark at some points. I felt like I could really see what was actually going on but other than that it was great.

Sound 10/10
What I really enjoyed was the fact they included big themes from the game into the anime like Big Blue Theme and Mute City. I really felt a rush of nostalgia hearing them in this anime. Also the OP and ED were fantastic additions well. They are pretty recognizable and fit well into this animes style.

Character 10/10
They did an excellent job of portraying characters from the games series. Not only was our main character development amazing I really enjoyed the supporting/minor characters that made appearances in the anime. It helps the show really explain F-Zero as a whole. They even took another measure and evaluated the one character you came to see and thats Capt. Falcon. Most people expected the most baddest character from him just Falcon Punching everything in sight. Well, instead they made him mysterious. For the first few episodes they make sure you wanna keep watching just to see Capt. Falcon more and more. I really do believe he had the strongest role even though he had less appearance than most of the Mobile Task Force. Truthfully its worth watching just for Capt. Falcon and his story.

Overall 9/10
Putting it on to terms, this anime was probably meant for those F-Zero and Nintendo Fans out there wanting to view more about Capt. Falcon. Yeah, half of it is filler of the actual games it still can be good to watch and expand your horizon on the games. If you don't really care for F-Zero at all you will probably not enjoy this at all because it moves rather slow in the beginning. However, if you were just looking for something intense to watch don't overlook this for something newer/well known. It still poses a great act for story and action in general and you won't be displeased with it all.

Many video games have been lauded for their brilliant plots. The minimalist storytelling, yet heavy symbolism of Shadow of the Colossus, which says so little in dialogue, yet evokes so much emotion. The knee slapping satire of the first Bioshock against Randian Objectivism. The astounding amount of lore, world building, and background that went into the Elder Scrolls games, or Mass Effect. The lovable characters, excellent action, and vibrant imagination of the Final Fantasy games (well some of them). Then there is F-Zero. It was a decent racing game on the SNES. Why did it get an anime? Who the fuck knows?!

Of all the oldschool ... video games to receive anime adaptations, I perhaps find this one the most baffling of all. Captain Falcon is a blast to play in Smash bros, but he isn't a character worth actually writing about, let alone watching. He isn't likeable in any way. He isn't interesting. He doesn't have a single character trait that makes me give a shit about watching something with him in it. This anime is also brought to us by 4kids Entertainment, so you can just guess what kind of QUALITY voice acting and brilliant Westernization you can look forward to.

Here is the question you are probably asking: "Why did I rate this as high as a 3?" The reason is that after 51 boring, tedious, horrible fucking episodes this anime goes out with one of the most delicious crescendos in the history of animation. In classical music you have examples like the final segment of Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture, The fourth movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, the beginning of Act 3 of Wagner's opera Die Walkure. In anime, you have Captain Falcon leaping out of a car traveling at light speed, screaming FARUKAN PANCHU, and punching a cheesy looking villain so fucking hard that it destroys a large portion of the God damned GALAXY! Absolutely brilliant. A single tear of pure joy slid down my cheek while taking in such a magnanimous segment of animated glory!

F-Zero GP Legends known from its awesome game franchise on the various Nintendo platforms and also fairly known for the Falcon Punch by Captain Falcon!

This anime series sure took me by surprise and on first looks it might not give you any wow effect when you just start the anime but the real action and story starts to develop right in the middle of the story which already starts to buildup development towards the last episode.

The story takes such a turn in quality from start till end that this anime certainly is worth a try even if you have to search wide and for ... for subs or even watch the raws but I can tell you it is totally worth it! Heck this anime even made me play the old games again!

The story itself is fairly decent, a slow but quite decent build up together with various different ways like: racing, action and even slight romance development.

What I personally also enjoyed is that there weren't that much side stories and only one recap episode near the ending of the series so it's a fairly amount of good story and character development combined with futuristic racing!

The art is a bit old but for the time it was created in combination with the CGI it is still pretty decent. The combination of the 3D models and 2D art of their vehicles is pretty well done! It's a bit getting used to in the beginning but when you're enjoying the racers it will only get better later on!

The quality of the sound is a bit on the lower side as the dub wasn't always the best quality nor were the sound effects, although the casting for the Japanese dub was actually quite good especially for Black Shadow which was voiced by Wakamoto Norio

The Characters were quite unique and do follow the games character concepts quite good. The best characters in this are of course Captain Falcon, Ryu and Black Shadow as they're mainly the lead characters and more or less determine the whole story!

I quite enjoyed watching this anime especially the last couple episodes where the quality really increased with really interesting story development and pacing! So all in all a pretty good anime which I'll give a solid 8/10

Let me be clear, I am a hardcore F-Zero fan. This anime is loosely based on the CHARACTERS of F-Zero instead of the story of F-Zero. Why? Because F-Zero never really had a plot. It took the series 13 years to give the characters back story. And what a back story they got. From superheros to supervillians, bounty hunters to intergalactic fed-ex employees to a disgruntled ex taxi driver using his cab as a racer. given these new intensive backstories, combined with the hardcore action and raw speed of the games, an F-Zero anime sounded like a great ... idea.

Where F-Zero GP Legend falls flat the most is story and the characters in the anime. Ryu/Rick seems to have a pretty bad case of the Gary Stu syndrome early on, until you realize that he is useless. In fact, most of the characters are useless except for Captain Falcon. Jack Levin, a pop idol and member of a secret police force dedicated to shutting down the activities of several supervillians at all costs, gets his car jacked by some nobody that repaints it pink with flowers and enters the F-Zero race RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE SECRET POLICE FORCE, WHO KNOW THAT THE CAR IS LEVIN'S. What do they do? They confront her before the race, she doesn't care, races, loses the race, gets cornered, and escapes, leaving the car behind. Most if not all the non-human racers form the games are reduced to petty goons regardless of backstory. all the characters seem about as deep as a puddle 3 sunny days after a storm.

This anime should have had a strong point in action and animation due to the natural sense of speed the games offered, but the mediocre animation never allows the pace anything faster than a brisk walk. Once, Ryu/Rick completely screws the pooch, and rolls his craft at MACH 2. Instead of the fiery crash I was expecting, the Dragon Bird sort of bounced upside down for a little bit and slid to a stop after cutting several times to an interior shot of a constipated looking Ryu/Rick. The sum total of the damage was a scratch that may or may not have been there.

I enjoyed this anime up until episode 17 or so, when the hilariously Engrish fansub I was watching suddenly became entirely incomprehensible so I switched to an English dub. This was a mistake. The dub I had chosen was the Stonestream dub, a fan made dub of ear-sodomy. after switching back to a sub that was of much better quality, I soon found the only source of enjoyment was gone and I was forced to find another. I found this in the BGM. Compared to the rest of the anime, the BGM is a tasteful well done re-imagining of the source material. The original tunes from the games are remixed slightly. I recognized Fire Field, Mute City, Big Blue, and a few others. but these are really not enough since the rest of the SFX sounds laughably generic.

Overall, I really wanted this anime to be good, but it just isn't. I was so much better at F-Zero than making friends growing up. I was excited when I heard of this anime. but instead of the tasteful tribute of a beloved childhood friend, I got a gibbering oaf doing a puppet show with crayoned in cardboard cutouts.

A very underrated Masterpiece that takes place in a different Timeline, based on the fast Racing game F-Zero that Nintendo seems to always forget where Captain Falcon came from or even care about. But if your an F-Zero Fan or just love fast speed space machines! You will enjoy this anime so much amazing stuff and lore to the pilots and characters. (Mind you this anime aired in the earlier 2000s so give it some flack.) Also Please watch it subbed it is twenty times better then the crappy Foxbox/4kids one.

Characters
Pretty much all of them where vary likable. Dr.Stewart Jody Summers, Lucy Liberty, Ms.Killer.

I originally ... hated Ryu Suzaku, but ended up liking him as he grew in the anime. When

Black Shadow is a pure evil character on here compared to his F-Zero GX/X counterpart. Thats for sure dude loves to see people suffer and laugh at them.

Captain Falcon, showed me his moves he was so awesome every time he would show up. Can we get that man who thought giving him the Mute City theme every time he came to save the characters was a good idea? BECAUSE IT WAS! I LOVED IT!

Music - Amazing sounding

Art- 2000s so take it or leave it. I thought it looked decent for it's time

Nintendo - GIVE US ANOTHER F-ZERO!

10/10 would watch it again so enjoyable for an F-Zero Fan like myself :3

For all I would like to say for this anime is that, despite the obvious budget they had to deal with, this anime had genuine effort to give a good story to the F zero fans and they delivered well. The main parts of the anime do a good job from beginning to end. The cool parts happen and gives the fans what they want. I like how they handled and i find it odd that they gave Super Arrow a lot of attention through out the series. I really like the characters designs in the anime and i think that was a really good ... art direction to take for these characters. All characters dont feel flat and its thoughtful that they try to use as many characters from the game. The anime itself isnt very good but as an F Zero fan this is the only really good things well get to see and the last thing we will get to see that is F zero.