Battle Spirits: Ryuuko no Ken

While trying to rescue a cat, martial artist Ryo Sakazaki and his playboy best friend Robert Garcia unwittingly break into a jewel thief's apartment. Moments after entering, they witness the thief being murdered by a group of thugs. Despite fighting their way out and escaping, things go from bad to worse when Ryo and Robert learn that the thugs were working for Mr. Big, the biggest crime boss in South Town.

Not only does Mr. Big believe that the two have stolen the "Eye of Sirius," a priceless diamond, but he has also kidnapped Ryo's younger sister Yuri, and is holding her hostage. Without the diamond and out of options, Ryo and Robert must fight their way past Mr. Big's men and save Yuri before it's too late.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Sakazaki, Ryo Main

Bessho, Tetsuya Japanese

Sakazaki, Yuri Main

Hamasaki, Ayumi Japanese

Garcia, Robert Main

Ikeda, Masanori Japanese

King Supporting

Katsuki, Masako Japanese

Mr. Big Supporting

Kayumi, Iemasa Japanese

Sakazaki, Takuma Supporting

Todou, Ryuhaku Supporting

Aono, Takeshi Japanese

Crawley, John Supporting

Shiozawa, Kaneto Japanese

Haigney, Michael Producer, Script

Yamazaki, Tatsuji Producer

Fukutomi, Hiroshi Director

Tanaka, Kazuya Sound Director

Reviews

Aug 29, 2014

vigorousjammer

Recommended

Battle Spirits: Ryuuko no Ken is an animated spin-off based in the universe of the classic 90's arcade game "Art of Fighting". It has some good parts and some not quite as good parts, but I enjoyed it overall. Let's go over the different aspects of this OVA.


Story: 6/10

The story is a pretty standard buddy cop action movie tale. The two main characters, Ryo Sakazaki and Robert Garcia get themselves into a jam when they're mistakenly accused of taking a gem from a crimelord named Mr. Big, despite being entirely innocent. Luckily, they both know martial arts, so they're able to fight their way out, ... but things soon get more complicated and they have to face off against the gang some more. The story is mostly an excuse for the action to happen, but I didn't really mind it that much. It tells a simple tale, but it's not a bad one by any means. There are some well presented scenes, and some pretty decent humor mixed in there, to really give it that classic 80's action movie feel.


Art: 7/10 (Art Style: 8/10, Animation: 7/10)

The artstyle is pretty decent, but feels a bit dated considering the time period this came out in. It looks about on par with late 80's TV anime, but this came out as an OVA in 1993, making it much less impressive. Still, I didn't hate the look of it, and it fit the story and the characters pretty well.

The animation itself is a mixed bag. Consisting mostly of low budget shots that look like they were made for TV. However, there are a few moments here & there that I thought looked really cool, and there was a noticeable improvement in quality during these shots. The animation isn't horrible, but I'm guessing it would have likely felt a bit dated, even in 1993.


Sound 8/10 (Music: 7/10, SFX: 6/10, Voice: 9/10)

The music isn't anything special, but it does a good job of setting the tone for each of the scenes. It's a pretty basic soundtrack, but I didn't have any problems with it. The ending theme bumps my score for the music up a bit, as that was pretty great, and really nailed that classic 80's action movie vibe.

The sound effects were fine. Nothing special or incredible, but not noticeably bad or dated, everything was mixed pretty well.

Voice acting was pretty great. I watched it in Japanese, and the actors all portrayed their characters perfectly. Some of the acting might sound a bit cheesy here and there, but I feel like that is somewhat intentional and adds to the fun of the film, and the fun of the characters.


Characters: 7/10

Speaking of the characters, I feel like they're well represented. We have a handful of the roster from Art of Fighting, and their personalities really shine through well. The two main characters are fun to watch, and they riff on each other pretty well throughout. The supporting cast is perhaps a bit weaker, but I still thought they were all pretty decent. King and Ryuhaku Todou are probably the two standout characters in the supporting cast; however, in King's case, I feel even though she's interesting, they tend to not really do much with her. Still, though... definitely a solid, if somewhat simplistic cast of characters.


Overall, I really enjoyed this. It's got a handful of flaws, but I feel like it's positive elements tend to outweigh them, making them rather easy to ignore. If you're a fan of classic 80's action movies, or a fan of Art of Fighting or even KoF, I'd recommend you check out this OVA. It'll be time well spent, for sure.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Jul 25, 2016

OVERFR1END

Mixed Feelings

The 1992 arcade game "Art of Fighting" is a classic fighting game from SNK. In it a player picks between fighters Ryo and Robert as they go to the criminally infested city of "Southtown" in search for Ryo's kidnapped sister Yuri. The player fights one on one with various bad guys as you go through each section of the city uncovering Yuri's whereabouts, who the kidnappers are, and why.
Now how does this anime adaptation hold up on representing this classic fighter....well not very well :(
There are many factors that made the game great and unique that the anime heavily lacks.

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1.) FIGHTING

This is the ... most important subject.
The video game had many ways of making their fights badass. With the camera zoomed up on the action capturing every moment, character's faces getting more bruised and bloody with each strike, along with animations such as characters puking after a gut punch and apparel breaking with a fierce blow, the game does a fantastic job of showing a gruesome street fight.
So then why does the anime not show any of these features?
The anime fights don't feel good to look at, as with the game. The animation is mostly cheap with poor animations that provide a lack of force with their strikes. This and the short and few fights throughout is sad coming from the source material being all about fighting.
No one even gets a jacked up face after a fight let alone a scratch, a special move like Robert's "Genreikyaku" would've been nice to see at least!

2.) CHARACTERS/ PORTRAYAL OF THEM

Art of Fighting has a lot of characters in its roster, however the anime only had 3 out of 8 bad guys for the main characters to fight. It would've been 4 but the anime decided to make one of the bad guys (Ryuhaku Todoh) into a annoying chief of police good guy spaz......like why?
I also didn't appreciate John Crawley (another enemy) being portrayed as a knife wielding creep, whereas in the game he was more like a chill bad guy who used his fists and skill to win.
Ryo and Robert's relationship to one another was spot on, as they cracked jokes towards one another in a friendly way while still having a bit of rivalry. Though I don't know why they changed Ryo's hair.
King was fine, though I wished she was a little sympathetic towards Yuri and made John back off.
Mr. Big was ok, they even included his two fighting sticks combining into a staff for a moment so that was cool. Though his goal to have all gems is stupid and unclear as to why.
Mr. Karate.......wasn't in it........ :(

3.)SETTING

The anime doesn't show the city of Southtown really, as in the game where each enemy had their own detailed background corresponding to each city's section, giving it life and giving an idea as to how the people live in this crime filled place. The anime doesn't show any of the locations in the game nor the background characters reacting to what is suppose to be a violence filled city. The game made this fictional place seem real, whereas the anime made it bland and forgettable. A setting should always enough aspects to it that it essentially is its own character (Mega-City 1 from Judge Dredd for example), and this anime failed to make Southtown what Southtown is suppose to be.

4.)STORY

The game is more then just saving Yuri, for along the way Ryo and Robert befriend and learn from their opponents while cleaning up the city on their path. It shows how determined these men are as they face enemies stronger then them in a big hostile area without hesitation and despite how much they get wailed on or even killed. It is a journey of limits that these guys must break to save someone. The game even has a cliffhanger ending which made the player want to play more and become more engaged as they wait for the next game.
But the anime instead focuses on a diamond missing plot, that really takes away from what Art of Fighting really is.

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In conclusion this anime fails to be an Art of Fighting adaptation, but is a short average film on its own that wouldn't hurt to check out. Hopefully this has at least peeked someones interest towards the video games or at least look at them with a new perspective.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Jan 4, 2011

zawa113

Not Recommended

Long story short: everything about this anime is just awful. That said, this is an hilarious anime that anyone who needs a movie for a drinking game should partake in (suggestions for the game included in this review!). So if you're in the mood for something so bad it's good you should partake immediately.

Story: 1
Ok, so the story is basic enough to make sense for sure, it's just really stupid. Perhaps the dub is inducing problems, but they constantly changed one girl's age from underage to of legal age for no apparent reason. Even then I can barely remember the story, something about finding a ... diamond and the one guy's sister so the other guy can go back to dating her in opposition of her brother. It ends with a pool party and an exploding helicopter. No, it doesn't make sense and no one who was working on this seemed to care because this was just made as a tie in for a Neo-Geo game that no one probably played anyway (especially not in America where that system didn't exactly sell).

Art: 2
Even for a 90s anime where everything was still cell animated and they couldn't just ask the computer to do everything, you can still tell they put minimal amounts of effort into this. Animation appears to be minimal during action scenes and the laws of physics were broken on a regular basis. It only ads to the enjoyment though! And oh yeah, you'll see some loop animation, don't worry. Ok, so the special effects and animation aren't Gundoh Musashi bad, but it's nothing to be proud of.

Sound: 1
Well, the voice acting is terrible, this was dubbed at a time when companies snatched up cheap licenses and just shoved stuff out the door before it could brush its teeth, but the sound effects are sub par and the music is annoying and stupid too. I suppose it's no nails on a chalkboard, but my god is the sound suck. Even for it's time, you could tell they had better voice recording technology than they used for the dub.

Character: 1
The characters are just terrible, and I partly mean that they're terrible people. On more than on occasion, not to spoil anything, the two main characters stand and watch as some random guy is killed [i]before[/i] jumping into action in the opposition of physics. Not that they're well explored either, not in this short amount of time. And the two characters, despite being friends, attempt to do playful banter with each other but it more comes off as them just hating each other's guts, who the hell wrote these characters?

Enjoyment: 9
Yeah, everything is so bad here that it becomes enjoyable. It's one of those things! Awful dub and script add to the enjoyment of a terrible story with two terrible lead characters who break into apartments and drink random people's scotch and go "oh we broke into try and find this cat we were chasing", an awful story, and the great animation with moments of Engrish to complete the whole package.

Here's how you play the drinking game, take a drink every time:
-someone defies the basic laws of physics
-everytime someone laughs a horrible scripted and stilted laugh, take two drinks if two characters laugh in unison like this with each other
-the two mains act like blatant jerks to each other
-you see a word of blatant Engrish or misspelling you see on the screen
-everytime the viewing audience all bursts out laughing
And there you go, you'll be good and drunk with your friends in no time! Enjoy!

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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Poll: Battle Spirits: Ryuuko no Ken Episode 1 Discussion vigorousjammer - Aug 29, 2014

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by Straighti »» Mar 16, 2021 10:17 PM