Review of Street Fighter II: The Manga, Vol. 1

Man, this book brought back some memories. The manga it contains was originally released in the U.S. in the early 90s in 8 comic book issues. It was colorized and mirror-imaged (so it could be read left-to-right) and its translation was a little confusing, but Street Fighter II was the biggest thing in my life at the time, so I loved it.

Now, the awesome guys over at Udon (the same company that began publishing its own original Street Fighter comic book, which is also very good) have given us a clearer, easier-to-understand translation of Masaomi Kanzaki's manga, presented in its original right-to-left format. The artwork still looks great even after all these years, and since it's now presented in its original black-and-white, it looks better than the first U.S. release (the other company's colorization wasn't exactly stellar). The story, which surrounds a street fighting tournament held on the man-made island of Shad (the base of operations for the secret organization called Shadowlaw), mainly follows Ryu and Chun-Li, but gives all the familiar characters from the original game a decent amount of things to do. There is a lot of action (what else would you expect) and a decent amount of comic relief, all well-drawn and nicely paced.

The only unfortunate thing is, this book covers only the first half of the story; the rest is covered in volume two. However, the book gives us a few nifty little extras, including a chart that shows the characters' relationships with each other (within the manga's story, not necessarily how the game managed them) and a peak at the Street Fighter Alpha manga.

This book is a treat for any Street Fighter II fan, young or old. Major props to Udon for bringing this manga back into print in the U.S.