Summary: Lackluster anime adaption of the popular arcade hit places heroic samurai warriors against quisling evildoer. It's uneven animation, impetuous plotline appeals to die hard game fans.
Title Aka:	Samurai Shodown: The Motion Picture
Company/Distributors:	A.D.V. Films
Year:	1993
Length:	80 Minutes
Rating:
Genres:	Action, Fantasy
Format:	Feature Film
Content Level:	Violence: Moderate Sex: N/A Nudity: N/A Profanity: Mild
Comments:	N/A

Synopsis: During the periods of feudal Japan, and of the ancient shogun amidst chaos of epic war there lies the brave samurai warriors and powerful hostile gods. Their clash was product of a tole between a great force of darkness as well as the legions of skilled armies of samurai warriors. 100 years ago, amidst the chaos there existed seven holy warriors; bestowed upon them was the incredible skill which they used to defend against all evil. While each one contained distinctive skills and abilities, arguably no was as powerful as none other than "Amakusa Shiro". Amakusa then betrayed the six other holy warriors and the legions of samurais, summoning upon the scorched Earth the demon god "Ambrosia Ankokshin". With the evil under Amakusa's control, the six other holy warriors were soon destroyed. Now 100 years after the betrayal, the six holy warriors are now gathered once again to bring peace to the land, and to halt Amakusa's evil intent. These six are "Haohmaru", "Charlotte", "Nakoruru", "Galford" (Along with his trusty companion dog "Puppy") "Wan Fu" and "Tam Tam". Will the five of the holy warriors be able to tame the rage of their comrad "Haohmaru" whom is engulfed in hatred embedded from the death of his own family, an act waged by Amakusa. Will the six holy warriors be able to restore peace and just throughout the lands, as well as rid Amakusa of the evil spirit living within. It's all part of the excitement and action of this stunning animated adaption of the popular arcade "fighting-game" (Um, "Cough".....!#@%^&#) "Samurai Shodown". Review: You know, it's an incredibly funny thing about reviewing anime style "fighting-game" based films. All of you who know about or read this site realize that I solemnly feel that this genre of anime film making usually never succeeds in my proper judgment as something worthy of praise. Let alone plain technicality as mere decency in storyline, as well as all the paper-thin, two-dimentional, down right annoying and tiresome pathetic genre that it is. I say again and again, that "fighting game" based anime films are always and most prominently usually complete turkeys. Real let downs so to speak. Of course this is always done to the extend of mere impetuous aspects. Considering all the countless fans out there of this genre, this really could be product of decent anime, if the animators would just take their time with this genre in producing something entirely decent to say the least. Often series and OAVs allow for these aspects to reach further extents in both character develpment and storyline structure. Often "fighting game" based animes are two short, they don't allow for the audience to be enticed enough to fully enjoy the story. Often characters in video games are too uninteresting to be placed into an extended series. Probably the best presentation of an RPG or video game anime is most likely "Record Of Lodoss War", which was truly made out to be classic. Animes like street fighter end up trying too hard to produce a good story structure, alas we get the sense of cliche, the overlooked and the foolishly rampant. All of this is often the product formed when attempting to produce a decent "fighting game" based anime. It greatly disappoints me at times, that often a "fighting game" concept turned film can be so promising in the beginning, that when it is also ruined one often looses all interest in something which tries so hard, so many times to get right. I haven't seen it happen yet, and when somebody finds a "fighting game" based anime film that can be looked upon as good or great, call me and I'll erase this whole review. While being one of the coolest fighting games around, Samurai Shodown is greatly under appreciated in this often clustered, cut n' paste feel, poor excuse for an action movie type of film. As I've said before, Samurai Shodown starts off so promising in the beginning. These are some of the coolest characters ever created and it's a shame they get thrown into this array of bad direction and film making. This film is a cluster of both good and bad genres, sub-plots and re-used cliches of anime. Based around a poor misconception of a distinctive group of characters played like a bad aftertaste of kinky dialouge . But what makes Samurai Shodwon interesting from others is something very odd indeed. What is surprisingly the worst aspect about Samurai Showdown is it's poorly executed action sequences, which are painstakingly done entirely in "stock". It really suprised me that the animators, rather than spending so much time in effort into incorporating decent action sequences, (This was done considerably well in Street Fighter & Fatal Fury) but instead they tried to turn around the plot line into something nearly leaning toward chessy melo-drama. As if Samurai Shodown contained good pieces of drama and dialouge, which in turn are predictable and flawed could have been saved by half-decent action sequences. This is something product of aspects seen in films like "Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie". At least animes like "Fatal Fury" concentrate so hard to make the dialouge half-decent so that the often corny action scenes seem forgivable. Samurai Shodown twists all these considerably decent and promising aspects into something of a B-movie. Whats even worse than that is Samurai Shodown really was a great concept unlike the more underwelmed "Fatal Fury", this really could have been a great anime. It really does disappoint me greatly when the anime medium wastes this great genre this way. After all the flawed series, films and OAVs I've seen of this sort, this may force me to feel otherwise about the promising values of this anime film genre. One I've seen flawed too many times to be impressed or even half-impressed. It will be a pretty long time before I see another "Record Of Lodoss War" or even "Street Fighter II: V". And on top of that, "Record Of Lodoss War" wasn't even a "fighting game" based anime. Like it?, Don't like it? Agree or disagree with me or this review. For right now lets face it, when it comes to anime ; "fighting game" based are by far the apsolute worst. Click Here To See Overview!

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