The follow-up to Street Fighter Alpha: The Animation from five years earlier, Street Fighter Alpha: Generations delivers a more small-scale, intimate story. This one, in my humble opinion, was the underrated SFA anime. Although upon rewatching it recently, I can totally understand why people tend to dismiss it.

For one thing, SFA Generations is incredibly short. At just 45 minutes long, the animation hardly qualifies as a movie. I suppose you could call it a short film, but the length is closer to a single episode of a TV drama than your typical standalone movie. Second, while it hints at numerous revelations and the possibility of making impactful connections between characters, it manages to conclude without answering a single question. It almost feels unfinished. To the point that when the end credits roll, you are likely to go, “Oh wait…that’s it?” And for an end product this short, the story feels extremely light. There just isn’t a lot of meat on these bones.

Much like with SFA: The Animation, the story focuses mainly on Ryu once again. This time, however, Gouki (aka Akuma) gets nearly as much screentime and we actually get to see the Raging Demon in action. Personally, I really love how this film only uses Akuma’s (real) Japanese name, Gouki. “Akuma” does sound cool—and I like the idea of this guy taking on a new demonic identity after succumbing to the Dark Hadou—but Gouki is still the cooler name. Plus, it works so well with his brother being named Gouken…and his master being named Goutetsu. Akuma feels like a downgrade in comparison.

The narrative of this film is really about Gouki and Ryu. How the former was corrupted by the Dark Hadou in his pursuit of power, and whether or not the latter will follow the same path. And “Generations” is a good subtitle for the story, since the story is framed with a divide between the older generation in the past (Gouki, Gouken, Sayaka) and the younger generation in the present (Ryu, Ken, Fuka). Oh right, and again like SFA: The Animation, we get a handful of original characters who don’t come from video games.

For the brand new cast, the film has two female characters. Sayaka is Goutetsu’s daughter and a peer of both Gouki and Gouken. It seems like Sayaka is a love interest for either Gouki or Gouken—perhaps both!—and, of course, her father is their martial arts master. Fuka is of the younger generation, seemingly close to Ryu’s age. She lives with an old monk she calls “grandfather”. Though as it turns out, he is not actually her grandfather, but instead a distant relative of some sort.

That old monk is our third original character, a mysterious and unnamed elder, simply referred to as “Old Man”. And he plays an outsized role in the story. He fights both Ryu and Ken at different points in the movie and has absolutely no trouble trouncing the both of them. He was an old friend of Gouken’s and knows all about the Dark Hadou, so presumably he might have trained under Goutetsu at some point. Funnily enough, Old Man seems to be this movie’s version of Dakuan, the eccentric old monk from Ninja Scroll. That character was so influential, he was immediately put into Samurai Shodown with the name “Nicotine”, and now he’s been cloned for this film as well.

In terms of action, SFA Generations is an interesting case. The movie’s short length means that there isn’t much time for big fight scenes, and so fights are generally pretty brief. You see a bit of Gouki battling Goutetsu, then Ryu fighting the Old Man, then Ryu sparring with Sakura, and finally the main fight of Ryu versus Gouki…and that’s it. Technically Ken squares off against the Old Man as well, but the movie shows none of that fight whatsoever.

In fact, Ken’s inclusion in the movie is basically just a cameo. Sakura also appears in this movie—presumably because she’s a fan favorite—and she manages to get a bigger part than our boy Ken. Sakura actually gets one fight scene and one…(checks notes)...uh…bath scene. Oh right… They are obligated to tease the anime nerds with female nudity, of course; it's written into their contracts.

The visual aesthetic of the movie is a rougher, sketchier style than the previous SF animated productions. There is a loose look to the illustrations that lands somewhere between sloppy and wildly dynamic. While I’d still prefer the clean, professional look of SF2: The Animated Movie, I actually found myself appreciating this film’s style quite a bit as well. Maybe it helps that this thing is quite short, but the wilder, less consistent art style of this movie works for me.

The action leans into what I call “pure anime bull$#!&” yet again, but at least that action is much more stylized this time. If the animators were going for a Dragon Ball Z vibe, I think they came much closer to the bullseye this time. The combat depicted doesn’t offer very much in the way of realistic martial arts like SF2: The Animated Movie did, but it still manages to entertain. The way the action is framed—especially its weird angles and extreme perspective shots—does a lot to make what little action you get look visually interesting.

The music, composed by Yasunori Honda and Bill Laswell, is actually very good. I really like the soundtrack of this film. Are they using a riff on Akuma’s theme from SFA2 in the score, I wonder? Some of these tunes genuinely sound like SF3 music, with some high-energy drum and bass. The main theme utilizes taiko drums and wailing chants, making it sound genuinely tribal. That track in particular reminds me of the band Thievery Corporation, whom Mike and I were listening to quite a lot at the time.

Apparently you can buy this film’s soundtrack on bandcamp…or at least three tracks of it? Unfortunately doing so seems to involve signing up for $22 subscription, so I can’t see anyone ever actually doing that, like ever. Which is a shame, because I would definitely purchase these tracks for a reasonable price.

The story—as short and sweet as it is—leaves a lot of ambiguity about parentage and who is actually related to whom. At first I thought the implication made in this movie was that Ryu is Gouki’s son—something that SFA: The Animation also hinted at. However, I can also see how someone might infer that it’s Fuka who is actually Gouki’s daughter. One of them really has to be Sayaka’s child, in any case. Sayaka was pregnant at the time of Gouki and Goutetsu’s climatic battle, it seems to be implied that she was likely carrying Gouki’s baby. Though it’s possible that it could have Gouken’s child, but the subtext makes me lean towards Gouki being the baby daddy.

In the DVD’s extra features, the Japanese voice actors are interviewed about their roles, and in a roundtable discussion, the actors even disagree amongst themselves as to which characters are blood relatives. In the Japanese dub, the same actor is voicing the roles of both Sayaka and Fuka, and that actor assumed that the characters were mother and daughter. Maybe this was the author’s intention, or maybe the dual-casting was simply a cost-cutting measure.

Fuka also mentions that her father was a martial artist, and he died in a battle against another fighter. This made me think that Gouken maybe decided to raise Fuka as his daughter—whether or not he was the baby’s biological father—and that she is referring to him. But if that were the case, you would have to assume that Ryu and Fuku would have been under Gouken’s care at the same time, yet they have never met. So the general assumption here is that Ryu is the child of Gouki and Sayaka, and Gouken raised him and watched over the boy, hoping to prevent him from turning evil like his father before him. Of course then Fuku’s parentage remains unexplained.

Both SFA: Generations and SFA: The Animation are about Ryu’s struggle against succumbing the Dark Hadou, essentially him resisting a turn to the dark side. While the contemplative/philosophical aspects of both movies are pretty shallow, I do think Generations does a better job exploring this part of SF lore. This movie more clearly depicts how the temptation actually works, the ease at which one might give up their humanity in order to win a sufficiently desperate fight. That said, there’s nothing particularly poignant or thought-provoking in this movie either.

There is also a lot of talk of the Dark Hadou being carried by a specific bloodline. That’s how the Old Man describes the origins of the power to Ken, and Gouki himself tells Ryu that the Dark Hadou is in their blood. Personally, I dislike this idea so much that I simply chose to ignore it. It is much more interesting, in my opinion, if the Dark Hadou could potentially be accessed by anyone with enough training and knowledge of the required forbidden techniques. Tying the power to a hereditary bloodline makes it into a boring cursed lineage thing, about which I couldn’t care less.

Oh yeah, and ghosts show up at one point! For reasons…? It’s mentioned that the Dark Hadou is an ancient power, going back generations, so one would assume these phantoms must have a historical relation to it.

Are these ghosts warriors who previously wielded the Dark Hadou? Or is this a bunch of souls who were slain by Dark Hadou users? Based on the apparitions we get a good look at, it would seem to be a mix a both. It is pretty weird to me that we get a scene of disembodied spirits in this movie, but not a single shot of Ken fighting.

Some random thoughts:

The ten kanji (天) in the sky in the opening scene is a pretty cool touch. Of course the repeat this “kanji in the sky” motif again at the end of the movie, which cheapens it just a bit.
In this film the kanji for the dojo is clearly shown as being Goutokuji (剛德寺), which would probably translate to something like “Strength Virtue Temple”. Interestingly it’s using the “Gou” form “Gouken” this time, not the “Gou” from “Goutetsu” I had assumed was being used in SF2: The Animated Movie.
Apparently this anime was created for the English-language market first and foremost, not for Japanese audiences. In fact, it didn’t see a Japanese release until it got included with the utterly terrible Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li home release in 2009. I find this pretty funny because the English audio track is vastly inferior to the Japanese dub.

All things considered, I enjoyed Street Fighter Alpha: Generations quite a bit. The story feels a lot more intimate than SFA: The Animation, and the action is much better executed. They finally gave us a movie where Gouki (Akuma) actually fights! That said, this film is incredibly short, and its story leaves all questions unanswered. I could definitely see any Street Fighter superfan who purchased this on DVD in 2005 feeling shortchanged. It’s not bad, but it’s still an incredibly slight package.