Street Fighter II V is a television series based upon the popular video game. In specific, this show focuses on the back story for the video game, before Ryu and Ken had even mastered the Hadou Ken (wave motion fist: a.k.a. the fireball) and before they had become true masters of combat. Their first encounter with a really good fighter comes when they start a bar brawl with some U.S. Air Force guys and Guile shows up and wipes the floor with Ryu. The next day, Ken goes to take his shot at Guile, but he too gets beaten down by Guile's skill and trickery. These defeats were truly a shock to the systems of these young (17 years old) punks, and they decide to travel the globe looking for great fighters to learn from and fight.

OK, so the plot is not exactly deep. But how good is this show? Let's take a gander at the various facets of this show, starting with how the show looks. The character designs are quite different from both the game's and the movie's design. Ken has strawberry blond hair, Ryu's hair is tremendously spiked, and Chun Li has really large eyes. It is a bit of a shock at first, but they aren't bad. The animation is pretty good for a TV show, especially where it counts, the fight scenes. Some of the fights are pretty cool and some of them are just filler, but none of them look bad. Well, this is all well and good, but how about the sound? Should you pick up the soundtrack? I'm afraid not -- only one of the BGM tracks is any good. The opening and closing are great, so picking up their singles would be good, but the overly synthesized background music sucks. The voice actors are good and I especially like the voicing for Ken, done by Haga Kenji -- confident, but not overpowering. And sadly, Manga has stripped the opening and closing from the U.S. version in favor of lame techno. So sad. While the dialogue isn't brilliant, it is good enough for an action series, and you also get to see the cool game history.

I would recommend this series if you like the game and can rent the tape or have a lot of money. Or, like me, can get the LDs for $10 apiece.