Virtua Fighter

Quick Review:

Story: 5
Sound: 7.5
Art: 6.5
Characters: 4
Enjoyment: 5
Annoyance: 9
Overall: 4

... Virtua Fighter is pretty much the epitome of all the tropes I hate in anime. I started watching this show to give my brother (this is his FAVORITE anime, and he's watched quite a few) the benefit of the doubt. I thought that perhaps it was truly a hidden gem and had some merit. The show made me quite upset with it by the end, but I will say that some people will definitely like it much better than others.

First, let me start with what was good about this show. Given that it is a 90s era show, the animation isn't superb, but it isn't atrocious either, and the fight scenes are fairly well animated. The animation is fairly consistent throughout the show. The voice acting (original Japanese) is fair, and features the talents of several fairly well-known seiyuu, including a few of the original voice actors from the games. The soundtrack was one of the more enjoyable parts, and I found the main theme song/preview theme to be quite catchy. The main characters were mostly DECENT (not good, or great, or anything of that sort), albeit rather shallow, but this most likely won't bother anyone who loves shonen or that type of genre, since the main demographic is a younger audience and viewers who are watching mostly for action scenes. The comedy was simple, but definitely made me laugh. It wasn't especially clever or fall out of your seat funny, but it makes for a great addition to a mostly action-adventure based show. I also really loved the character Wolf Hawkfield, as he seemed quite human as opposed to some of the other characters.

Speaking of which, the main problem with this show is... the characters, and the unbelievably stale character tropes. If you were to make a list of all the cringiest tropes from shows prior to the nineties, I would guess that a good 60% would appear in this show. Although I found this problem to be mainly with the villains, that doesn't mean I didn't see any of them in the rest of the cast. All the villains are evil for the sake of being evil; none of them have backstories other than Lau, whose backstory is the typical, "but he had no choice, it was the best thing to do in that moment" backstory, as well as "Oh yeah, I totally screwed all my relationships up and everyone thinks I'm evil, but you know, I'm not gonna try to defend myself or anything, I'll just be the badguy for no reason". We also have the totally evil woman, who wears purple lipstick and makes your skin crawl because her lines are so contrived, saying things like, "No one will be able to stop me in my quest for world domination! Hahaha!" (she doesn't actually say this, but she may as well have). You'll see tropes like the rebellious son whose rich dad wants to make him do something that he is rather adamant on not doing (you actually get 2 of these, yippee), and the kid who gets bullied for absolutely no reason. There's also a "strongest woman alive" as well as a "I just can't understand why people would be good to each other; why aren't they evil and self-seeking like me?" and topping it off, we've got your typical tsundere female protagonist who accidentally kisses the main character in the first episode. Oh, how could I forget the MAIN CHARACTER, the altruistic and OP dude who's dumb, super strong, can tackle any problem or beat any baddie, and loves food (so basically he's Goku). Not to mention that he has a whole power-up sequence/speech that happens every episode.

Aside from these points, the show does have an adventurous vibe and lots of traveling, meeting new characters, and funny scenarios, so if you like those kind of shows, than you'll probably like this show. I will bear in mind that the intended audience was probably 8-14 or so, so it makes sense that the show would be rather shallow. However, for anyone who is watching this for the story, character development, or general writing will most likely be as disappointed as I am. I rated it average for most of the categories, but the reason that it gets such a low overall rating is because the characters bother me so much.

You may notice that I haven't watched all 35 episodes. This is because the first 24 are the first season, and it's quite difficult to find the second season anywhere. You can find it on archive.org, but it does not have subtitles. I have also heard from my brother who watched the second season that it was not as good as the first season, and I have seen first-hand that the animation quality suffered massively (It's bad).

To summarize, I won't condemn anyone for liking this show, but it's not the kind of show that you should watch if you like philosophical, complex, emotional, well-written, or clever shows. It doesn't do anything new or particularly well, but it is a simple show that would be a good deal of fun to watch if you can stomach the (to me) absolutely egregious tropes. If you want to watch a fighting game anime, then you're probably better off checking out the Street Fighter II movie, The King of Fighters: Destiny, or even the Fatal Fury 2 OVA.