King of Fighters: Another Day

The King of Fighters: Another Day

Based of The King of Fighters series, more specifically KOF: Maximum Impact series of games, which is something I indulged myself into only briefly.. I am a big fan of the main series of The King of Fighters; other than it's spin-off series which is KOF: Maximum Impact. This is one anime you will have to have some background knowledge in order to fully enjoy.

Story: 6/10
This particular anime takes place after the events which unfolded in the first KOF: Maximum Impact game. The King of Fighters: Another Day has four interlocking episodes, which range approx 10 minutes each.. The episodes ... revolve around central protagonists; brothers Alba & Soriee Meira, who are protecting the citizens of Southtown, after the demise of Duke and his gang..

I admit I was thrown off at first of what was actually going on in the anime, seeing how I didn't play the first KOF: Maximum Impact.. But that didn't necessarily stop me from enjoying this anime, seeing how everything came in full circle in the end anyway, all of which is explained in KOF: Maximum Impact 2, a game I actually own.

Art: 7/10
The art style is fair, nothing great, but nothing bad either. The characters are drawn pretty decent, and when put into motion, the fight scenes aren't all that bad.. Granted it could be a bit more fluid, but I digress, it's still a enjoyable experience.

Sound: 9/10
I guess the real selling point of this anime for me is the incredible soundtrack. Many of which is fully orchestrated, and fits in really well to the anime. It really sets the atmosphere when Southtown is under going a crisis.. I could actually feel what the characters are feeling, so moving.. On the flip side, the action scenes offer a electro/trace/suspense mix of tunes, and gets you pumped for the fights when you hear that tune spark! Plus the ending theme, "Regret" by Dakota Star is freakin' brilliant. I love this soundtrack!

Character: 7/10
Most of your favorite characters from the KOF series are here:
Kyo Kusanagi: The Scion of the Flame
Iori Yagami: Unbridled Instinct
Terry Bogard: The Lone Wolf
Mai Shiranui: Ninja Girl Extraordinaire

Plus others like Ash Crimson, K', Rock Howard, Athena Asamiya, etc.
All of which have contributing elements to add to the story.

Naturally this story is based of the two KOF: Maximum Impact characters; Meira brothers, Alba & Soriee, our heroes of this anime.

Enjoyment: 7/10
Naturally as a fan of The King of Fighters, this one was a must watch for me, and I relatively enjoyed what I seen. Story was indulging, fight scenes were decently done, and the ending was good. If anything it'll get you in the mood to play KOF: Maximum Impact 2, what is what I will do after I finish this review. Though I can't necessarily say this anime is for everyone, it's definitely one of the better anime adaptations of a video game series. That being said, if you like fighting games, I say give it a watch.

Overall: 7/10
What is to say that hasn't already been said?
I am a KOF fan, and this is one anime that I would gladly pick up and watch again.

I honestly do not know why I am writing a review on King of Fighters because watching it was a very unusual experience. For starters, I felt that the anime was rushed because it was trying to accommodate a full story within a runtime of less than 40 minutes (~8 minutes X 4 episodes). As a result, I found myself scratching my head at the end and it just felt like a pointless and rather detached anime. Anyway, since I already started writing, here is my review:

Story: 3/10
The flaw is quite simple to understand. The story was too complex and it was being explained in ... a very limited amount of time. This gave an extremely "rushed" feeling to the anime overall and during the whole process, I felt no connection whatsoever to the events that were happening in the show. Unless I was supposed to watch a prequel to this in order to understand what was going on, the story was poorly illustrated and it seriously lacked substance.

Art: 8/10
I found the art to be quite impressive actually. The characters looked amazing and the overall art was very good and succeeded in giving a mature feel to the anime overall.The fight scenes were also quite outstanding however brief they were. To be honest, the fights were probably the only reason why I gave this anime a 6 overall. Although I could not connect at all to the plot, the fight scenes were fun to watch.

Sound: 7/10
The music running in the background whenever there was a fight scene was quite appropriate to what was going on. There were some other "cool" sounds in the background as well which gave a little life to the anime.

Character: 4/10
I don't know. To me, the characters seemed very shallow and lacked substance. The dialog was also a bit silly and there was absolutely no chemistry between the characters. The only time when they actually had a presence or "feel" to them was when they were fighting, which showed who they were. otherwise, I thought the characters were silly and immature.

Enjoyment: 6/10
The only reason why I gave this anime a 6/10 is because of the fight scenes. IMO the quality of the fight scenes were very good but they were brief. Everything else was pretty much a joke. But hey, I'm not complaining. Because this anime is VERY short, I only spent ~40 minutes to complete it. My final impression is that it was a strange experience and there were things which I could not understand because the pace of the anime was ridiculously fast. They could have actually turned this into an excellent anime if they had spent more time on it and made it longer in it's runtime. Do I recommend you to watch this? Sure, its only 40 minutes. But, I am supremely confident that you will be equally lost when you complete it.

I'll start by saying that I'm not a hardcore KoF fan. I've played some of the games and I liked them fine, but I never got into the franchise as a whole. So if there's a problem with characters being out of character or anything like that I didn't notice.

The story follows a simple formula. One or multiple KoF character(s) encounter more KoF characters, they fight and a reference to a fire is thrown in somewhere. I'm sure this seems like it should be good enough for a very short ONA, but there's another problem. The fight scenes are boring. They move really stiffly ... like they're practicing choreography for a community theatre production. You'd see more action playing KoF or watching a friend play it. Most of the fights don't even get resolved, instead something interferes to stop the fight and the characters involved go their separate ways. In the end it adds nothing to the KoF storyline, making it completely pointless.

The characters involved change with each six minute episode so they get no development. Once again, playing the games would be better since then you would actually learn more about these characters than just some one-dimensional traits.

The art is pretty good. A lot of effort went into making the characters and backgrounds look good. This leads me to wonder why the fight scenes look so unnatural. Clearly the artists knew what they were doing and I know that Production I.G can draw good action sequences from their work on titles like Blood+, Ghost in the shell, and Le Chevalier D'Eon so what happened here? Did they just get lazy when it came to the fight scenes? Were they trying to show of their animation by having the characters move slowly? Was it for padding purposes? Did they just not care? Your guess is as good as mine.

The music is decent enough. The voice acting is just poorly delivered. Most of the voice actors sound like they're bored and it's very obvious that they're reading from a script. They really sound much better in the games. To be fair, voice acting in fighting games tends to involve only delivering a few lines so maybe this project was just too big for them. Except that I know that Ikezawa Haruna can do better because I've heard her actually do really nice work with Maria Sama ga Miteru. Maybe she was the only decent voice actor and she just lowered herself to the level of everyone else or maybe she just got few enough lines that I didn't really notice her talent.

There's no yuri in KoF: Another Day. Since you learn basically nothing about the characters they don't have time for it. so its yuri factor is 1/10.

My final score for KoF: Another day is 4/10. Normally I'd give it even lower but since it was released on the Internet and as a bonus when buying KoF: Maximum Impact 2, I'm not going to be too critical. It may be below average, but at least it wasn't something people had to pay extra for. Honestly, I couldn't even recommend this to KoF fans. If you're a fan of the games, that's great, but this anime is just dull and you'd have more fun playing the games than watching this.