Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I give you:
InsaneBen's Review of Art of Fighting (the anime)
Right from the get-go, this movie kicks into overdrive: a whole stream of obscenities, a whole bunch of cops get gunned down, a guy is blown to pieces, a woman has her shirt torn off and her stomach sliced open, a bunch of civilians get blasted clean through... oh wait, that was the anime I saw before that, Angel Cop. Art of Fighting has none of that; in fact, only one person dies, and he was a very minor character.
The plot: Ryo Sakazaki and Robert Garcia must rescue Yuri Sakazaki from Mr. Big by finding a rare and valuable diamond (basically, it's your typical Scooby Doo mystery, minus the monsters). Right from the start, there are quite a few things wrong with this movie: Ryo Sakazaki's hair is brown, not blond, Todoh is a bumbling detective for the city's police department, and Yuri is completely helpless; she doesn't fight once throughout the whole movie (then again, she was completely helpless in the original Art of Fighting, so that's understandable). Not many fighting sequences take place, so the film is basically one giant "search for the diamond" mystery, intersperced with a few fighting sequences, which aren't very spectacular, to say the least. Another dissapointment is, of course, the fighting sequences. None of the trademark moves of any of the characters are performed (not even Ryo's Ko-oh-ken), and no one suffers any serious damage (I was really hoping to see some blood, at least). Worst of all, the story isn't even similar to that of Art of Fighting (and there's no Mickey or Mr. Karate); it's just one big yawn-fest. If this film were any more tame, it would be like watching an episode of Pokemon, except that people would be doing the fighting instead of Pokemon.
If you really must buy this film (I'd like to know why), just remember: you're not watching an anime version of Art of Fighting, you're watching a trite piece of junk that claims to be Art of Fighting.
