Posted: 09/12/2011

Street Fighter: Round One Fight Motion Comic

by Ruben R. Rosario

Now available on DVD from Pacific Entertainment and Eagle One Media.

Motion comics are a simple gateway into what goes on in the mind of a comic reader. There’s sound effects for movements and the abilities that the characters put on display, as well as great music that is used for its score. Street Fighter: Round One Fight motion comic is a solid attempt at the motion comic presentation by Eagle One Media and Studio 414. The original Street Fighter comics, published by Image Comics and created by Udon Studios, were some of the best representations of the classic comic created by Capcom. Street Fighter: Round One Fight collects the first seven issues of the series and contains the first major story arc in the series.

The beginning of this series depicts Ryu on the journey to find the killer of his shotokan mentor, Gouken. Along the way, Ryu teams up with his fellow student Ken and travels to Japan in order to find out some clues. This journey leads them up against various foes of the Street Fighter universe as well as going up against the Shadaloo organization, led by M. Bison. Meanwhile, Chun-Li and Guile team up and are jointly trying to capture M. Bison for for personal vendetta’s. This leads to an all out battle towards the end of the series with both teams helping each other to fight off the evil of Shadaloo.

One of the major feats that shines on Street Fighter: Round One Fight is the use of some great sound effects. All of the impacts, hits, and special moves that these classic characters use are fully realized through the use of its effects. Ken Whiteaker’s direction for the voice acting is pretty hit or miss for Street Fighter: Round One Fight. Some of the characters are spot on and sound fantastic, while others sound very flat and present poor accents for some of the foreign characters. The score is very fitting for the source material and utilizes it ability to portray tension and accentuate action. If there’s any major problem with this motion comic it would have to be the lack of motion in it. A majority of the time, the motion consists of the movement of panels or other background elements as opposed to the characters themselves.

The presentation on the DVD is very solid and the extras are pretty great for a motion comic. There are two modes to watch the comic, with word bubbles, which act as subtitles for it or without. There’s an art gallery for the covers used from the issues to see Team Udon’s and other artists renditions of these classic characters. While this is a solid attempt at this new medium of motion comics, Street Fighter: Round One Fight is kind of hard to recommend. There are things done right and some things that are left to be desired with the presentation. Again, Udon Entertainment’s original comic book run is one of the best presentations of the Street Fighter franchise that the comic book world has ever seen. Eagle One Media does some things right and some things wrong, which makes this release aimed for die hard Street Fighter fans only.

Ruben R. Rosario is a graduate from Columbia College Chicago with a degree in Audio for Visual Media. He works as a freelance location sound mixer, boom operator, sound designer, and writer in his native Chicago. He’s an avid collector of films, comics, and anime.

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