sfjaryukenfight

The brainchild of martial arts expert and lifelong Street Fighter devotee Joey Ansah, live-action series Assassin’s Fist was finally released on May 23 this year. Of course, you could stay home and watch the episodes on YouTube via Machinama‘s official channel, but if you happen to be in Tokyo on August 2, you could take in a special screening of the entire series in one night!

The Human Trust Cinema in Shibuya is hosting the one-off event, which in addition to showing all episodes of the web-series on the big screen will also include a talk session with Kōichi Sugiyama and Tomoaki Ayano, producer and assistant producer respectively of Ultra Street Fighter IV.

▼ As you might remember, we got pretty excited when these production stills from Assassin’s Fist came out in May!

sfaf2
sfaf

Adaptations stemming from the classic video game Street Fighter, which was released in 1987, have a chequered history. Joey Ansah, with his co-director Christian Howard, will no doubt be hoping to erase from our collective memory the widely-panned 1994 live-action film.

▼ Just, be cooler than Jean-Claude Van Damme, OK?

sf-4
street-fighter

In an interview with self-proclaimed “nerd-orientated news site” Den of Geek, Ansah also revealed that his previous project Street Fighter: Legacy, although released as a fan-made production, was actually financed by the marketing division of Capcom, the game’s makers. Ansah says that Capcom “got cold feet” on seeing the trailer, and he was forced to remove all their branding from the movie. “The irony is”, he adds, “[Legacy] came out and broke YouTube records and had a 98.8% approval rating.”

Ansah has spoken of his aim, with Assassin’s Fist, of making a series that is faithful to the spirit of the original game: the martial arts moves are achieved without visual effects, and the attention to detail in plotline and costuming has been roundly praised.

Tickets for the August 2 screening, which average at 1,300 yen (around US$13) go on sale July 26 at the Human Trust Cinema, Shibuya, and can also be purchased online.

To whet your appetite, you can watch the official trailer again here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99XiMYKsHl8

And if you can’t make it to Tokyo in August, make sure to check out the series online and let us know what you think!

Source: Cinema Today, Zaikei Shinbun
Images: Street Fighter AF, Hadoken.com, @SFAFofficial via Twitter