Fatal Fury: Legend of the Hungry Wolf Review

Hi everybody! This week, I have a triple-header set of reviews to get through, based off on one of the old-school greats of fighting games (This is the reason why last week there was only one review). With that out of the way, let’s look at a review of the first of the Fatal Fury movies, a.k.a. Legend of the Hungry Wolf.

Story/Setup
Legend of the Hungry Wolf story is an adaptation of the first game. A young Terry and Andy Bogard are on the run, along with their master Tung Fu Rue, and their father, Jeff Bogard. Along the way, Jeff spots a small group of beggar children, one of which is a young flower girl. Jeff is distracted long enough so that one of his old rival’s (Geese Howard) henchmen stabs him. In front of their father’s grave, Terry and Andy make a promise to Master Tung that in ten years time, they’ll be stronger men, and they’ll take out their father’s killer. What’s follows is a story of hope, betrayal, death, fighting (Lots of it, by the way), etc.

This isn’t one of the most complex stories around, and given what it’s based off of, it easy to see why. The story is also one of the more easier one’s to get behind, as it’s very basic & simple to understand. It’s also kind of a fun story, despite how dark it can be at times.

Setting
Given how wild a setting in a fighting game/anime can get, I was disappointed not to see anything out of the ordinary. Having said that, what we get isn’t all that bad. It’s a typical early 90s urban environment: you got your alleyways, skyscrapers & smaller buildings, and Chinese restaurants (Seriously?), but the one exception is the fighting arena where a fair amount of the movie’s time takes place. This is the only place where I think it’s original as far as the setting is concerned, but that’s stretching things a little bit.

Characters
If there was ever a weakness to this movie (and perhaps the other films in this series), it’s the characters. For starters, we only have a pinchful of the characters from the game. 9, to be exact. On top of that, there’s nothing really much to their personalities. They all have a set identity placed upon them (Terry is hellbent on vengeance, Andy is more impulsive, etc), and they rarely if ever deviate from it. Though characters from a fighting game typically don’t always have a deep personality, if they’re in a movie, they should have more to them than from their source material.

Animation
The animation in Legend of the Hungry Wolf is.....okay, at best. The backgrounds & settings look okay but jagged, and the characters tend to look a bit better (Though I find that some of the male characters look more jagged than the females ones), but they still have something off to their looks. It’s not the most terrible looking thing on the planet, but it stands lower on the totem pole of 90s animation.

Voice Acting
Despite it behind a early 90s release, the voice acting in this movie has managed to hold up relatively well. It’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, as the voices now sound incredibly cheesy & over the top, and there’s some groaner-inducing lines, but the sound quality still manages to sound relatively fresh (I’d argue it sound like something from the late-90s to very early 2000s).

Episodes & Episode Length
Legend of the Hungry Wolf is a film (Like many of the reviews I’ve done so far), but a short one at that. Clocking in at about 46 minutes, this one comes & goes rather quickly (Not quite as quickly as the two episodes of Eiken, I should say). Normally I wouldn’t mind a fast movie, but for something that involves a fighting story like this (Despite how basic it is), I expected a little more meat on the bones. Such as it is, it’s still a nice way to kill close to an hour.

Availability & Pricing
Legend of the Hungry Wolf is difficult to find, but at the same time it isn’t necessarily impossible to find. Over on Amazon, there are 3 out-of-print editions available: a lone VHS release from 1999, a 2nd VHS release from 1999 (Coincidentally, this release also had the 2nd movie on it), and a DVD release from 2000 that’s basically the same as the 2nd VHS release. Pricing between all 3 copies varies wildly: the lone movie starts at 12.99 (Not bad for an out-of print VHS), the 2nd movie starts at a whopping 149.99 (Damn!), and the DVD release starts at a respectable 29.75 dollars. The used prices also vary, but not quite as much as the ones mentioned above ($4.74, $16.98, and $12.99 respectively). This movie is an example where you may want to go for the DVD release alone, as the conditions of the tape editions aren’t quite so certain.

Extras/Other
Since I downloaded this, I don’t know what the extras are.

General Impression & Rating
Legend of the Hungry Wolf is a typical fluff OVA of the early 90s: over-the-top, complete with goofy voice acting, basic characters, etc. This doesn’t make it a bad movie, as I actually consider this to be an above average film. It’s not exactly perfect, but I do recommend it to anyone who wants to kill part of an afternoon. 

Fatal Fury: Legend of the Hungry Wolf gets a 7 out of 10.

See you all this Wednesday, when we’ll take a look at the 2nd of the Fatal Fury movies. Until then, stay Otaku!



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If you’d like to watch the movie, then click on the link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XIP7EzEV04