Thought Street Fighter’s movie was all live action? It’s packing proper hand-drawn '90s anime

Paramount are taking another swing at the Street Fighter films, and—judging by early looks—this adaptation is actually aiming to do the games justice. Trailers have made a point of showing off spot-on costumes, all the familiar moves, and yes: our old friend the World Warrior Tournament is front and centre. But here’s the real twist—this one’s also piling in with full-blown, anime-inspired animated sequences straight out of a love letter to the games’ roots. Not exactly what you’d expect from your standard Hollywood punch-up, is it?

Live-action, but with proper animation

The big draw (well, for fans, anyway) is how director Kitao Sakurai is handling the backstories. Rather than flashbacks with actors wobbling about in dodgy wigs, or the usual digital de-aging nonsense, the team are going all in with proper 2D animation. It’s hand-drawn, ‘90s anime style, and done by LA’s Titmouse—they’ve worked on Spider-Verse and Star Trek: Lower Decks, so this isn’t their first rodeo. The sequences will bring us up close to Ryu and Ken’s younger years, including a dose of training under Master Gouken (voice by Don Lee, apparently). All of this is a clever nod to the franchise’s animated history—think back to the ‘94 Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, if you’re old enough.

Here’s how Kitao Sakurai explained the approach in an interview with MovieWeb: "We had written the movie where there were these sort of flashbacks to Ken [and] Ryu's upbringing and their childhood, and so when we started producing it, we were like, okay, how do we go about doing this? Street Fighter has a kind of legacy and as an IP, it's so connected to anime. And so we're like, why don't we just lean into that and do anime-inspired animation for these sequences and blow it out, make them crazy."

First time you see the animated throwback is during the film’s opening, with a young Ryu and Ken toeing the line under their sensei. It sets up more than just the tournament and Shadaloo—there’s even a tease for Akuma, promising that the plot digs deeper into the weirder corners of Street Fighter lore. Don’t be shocked if they’re already laying track for a sequel.

On why the team went for old-school, frame-by-frame animation rather than cutting corners, Sakurai said: "That was just such a more fun choice. The other important thing for me was that every single frame of animation is hand-drawn. It's like traditional '90s style, like fully hand-drawn animation, which is like an unbelievable amount of work, and like the pipeline for that is like so long, so you have to be making choices like so far in advance. It's a totally crazy process, but it just felt like fun."

The new Ryu and Ken

Now for the main pair: Andrew Koji lands the role of Ryu, who we meet as a bit of a hermit, wrestling with some threatening personal demons. Ken, played by Noah Centineo, is all washed-up flash and self-importance—definitely not the golden boy you might remember. Their glory years (and whatever it was that drove them apart) are doled out in those animated flashbacks. It’s an attempt to do something fresher: instead of just endless fight scenes, actual backstory for once.

• Koji as Ryu: brooding, isolated, with an inner battle on his hands
• Centineo as Ken: washed-up, egotistical, clinging to old fame
• Don Lee voices Master Gouken, key to their past
• Past events unfold via hand-drawn sequences, no CG body-doubling
• Akuma teased, promising more than just a Bison/World Warrior retread

So what we’re getting is a blend of detail-obsessed live-action and unabashed anime-style animation—a deliberate homage to everything Street Fighter has always been about. From the cast, to the old-school animated sequences, to the promise of deep-dive lore… Paramount’s at least giving the fans something properly different this round.