This might be on par with World of Destruction, Fight! Spirit of the Sword, and MD Geist: Death Force for being the worst anime title ever made. It's just a mess from start to finish. I've mentioned how big of an SNK fan I am in previous reviews, and even Samurai Shodown (Which I liked, for all of it's cheesy glory) didn't do such little justice to it's video game counterpart. If you changed to title from Art of Fighting to Cops and Robbers, I doubt anyone would've had an inkling that this was supposed to be based off anything. Ryo Sakazaki and Robert Garcia, much like Ken and Ryu in the SF2V anime, are potrayed as martial arts lunkheads who can barely produce enough brain cells to breathe right, accentuating the point that unless these guys are punching something, they're completely useless. After about two sentences, I wanted both of them to die in a fire. Now granted, in the AOF games, they weren't the brightest crayons in the box, but there's a difference between writing a charming goofball and clinically brain dead. Padded rooms are too dangerous for these imbeciles.
When talking about a plot for a video game-based anime, you'd think it would be very easy. Even something as simplistic as "rescue the girl" gets bungled up by this drivel. It's all triggered by kung fu Ren and Stimpy here (They don't deserve the names Robert and Ryo) when they happen to stumble on JUST THE WRONG PLACE to witness the murder of some guy we don't know hiding something we can't care about. To make a short story even shorter, Ren and Stimpy are suspected by the crooks to have what they're looking for leading to probably the best scene in this. King brings up a profile page of the 'heroes' that I assume she had to break into county hall records or steal birth certificates in the eight minutes between scenes, and it lists their names, height, weight, and PERSONALITY TRAITS!! It's like eHarmony '96 or something and I howled with laughter. Did Mr. Big keep tabs on every single citizen in Southtown to know if people are meek and shy? This seems useless for these relatively small time crooks.
"Alright, he's from a rich family! He'll be our next hit!"
"But Boss, he has an outgoing personality and is very witty in conversation!"
"Drat, that's way too charasmatic. Type up a search for an upper middle class, soft-spoken female!"
The animation and character designs are putrid. I've seen Highlights books in the dentist's office waiting room with better coloring. Backgrounds are poorly drawn, you can get better fight scenes out of Rock'em Sock'em robots than trying to watch these clunky, almost flipbook-like kicks and punches connect. Certain shots are disproportionate and you can't tell what you're looking at or whose striking from what angle. The English dub is impressively bad, as voice actors and I use "actors" in the loosest sense of the word, actually shouting "Hiyaaa!" and "Hawh!" in the most wooden way possible it makes english dubbed hentai sound more realistic. If there were special moves from the game, I didn't recognize them. Maybe two, but that's giving it way more credit than it deserves.
IN CLOSING: If you are on a mission to see just how bad anime can get, you can stop and check this out at tyour own risk. It's a little over a half-hour, so you won't waste much time, but there is just nothing good about this one at all. I'm not even pissed that another of my favorite fighting games have been bastardized, I'm pissed as to how little effort was put into it. The fact that after the final cut, the director looked at this product and said, "this is exactly how I wanted this to look.", is inconceivable. And I can't even blame Masami Obari for it!
STORY: 1
ART: -0
SOUND: 3
CHARACTER: 1
ENJOYMENT: 2 (Go build a snowman in August, you'll accomplish more)
OVERALL: 2 out of 10
PROS: It isn't Linebarrels of Iron
CONS: Ryuhaku Todoh as a chief of police. Come on, this the Dan Hibiki of SNK, he deserves better than this! He produced Kasumi Todoh, for crying out loud!
