Street Fighter's New 2D Flashbacks Aren't a Separate Anime

Big swings in video game movies usually mean bigger stunts, not a detour into hand-drawn animation.

Street Fighter just took that detour anyway. DiscussingFilm published an exclusive first look on October 9 at sequences the upcoming Paramount release had kept out of its marketing entirely. Street Fighter's New 2D Flashbacks Aren't a Separate Anime

Titmouse hand-drew the Ryu and Ken backstory sequences for director Kitao Sakurai's film, with Roman Reigns voicing an animated Akuma.

Big swings on video game movies usually mean bigger stunts, not a detour into hand-drawn animation.

Street Fighter just took that detour anyway. On October 9, DiscussingFilm published an exclusive look at sequences the upcoming Paramount release had kept hidden from every trailer so far. The outlet reported that director Kitao Sakurai partnered with animation studio Titmouse to create hand-drawn animated sequences for Street Fighter, debuting a behind-the-scenes featurette alongside the reveal.

Here's the part that matters for anyone confused by the headline. This is not an animated movie, and it is not a new anime series. Similar to Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, Street Fighter dives into Ken and Ryu's backstories through flashbacks drawn entirely in 2D animation. That Kill Bill comparison is DiscussingFilm's own framing, not a line from Sakurai himself.

Everything outside those flashbacks stays live-action. Andrew Koji plays Ryu. Noah Centineo plays Ken Masters. Chun-Li recruits the pair to enter the next World Warrior Tournament, forcing them to face each other and their demons against a 1993 backdrop.

Callina Liang plays Chun-Li in that live-action storyline. Street Fighter opens nationwide on October 16, with Paramount Pictures distributing and Legendary producing. It marks the third live-action feature-length film based on Capcom's Street Fighter video game series, following the much-mocked 1994 version and a 2009 prequel.

Sakurai isn't new to genre swings. Born in Kyoto and raised in Cleveland, he built his reputation on absurdist comedy before this. He was raised in Cleveland, Ohio, and beginning in 2012 served as the regular director for The Eric Andre Show, directing 62 of 68 total episodes. He also directed the dark comedy Bad Trip and episodes of the Twisted Metal series. Sakurai took over the Street Fighter job after original directors Danny and Michael Philippou exited the project in 2024.

So why animation for the backstory at all? According to DiscussingFilm's reporting, Sakurai explains how his upbringing in Japan and Street Fighter's cultural legacy shaped these previously unannounced, unseen sections of the movie. His specific touchstones are decades-old. Sakurai describes his love for '90s anime classics like Akira and Ghost in the Shell, which helped inspire the look of these animated scenes.

That's worth separating from DiscussingFilm's own Kill Bill reference. One is the director explaining his taste. The other is a critic spotting a structural echo. Neither implies Street Fighter is remaking either of Capcom's earlier animated projects, Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie from 1994 or the later Street Fighter Alpha: The Animation. This is a new, original sequence built for one film.

Now the voice question, which fans keep asking. The flashbacks aren't recast with separate voice actors. The characters are modeled after the star-studded cast, who all voice their respective roles in these scenes too. That includes Koji himself. Ryu, voiced by Andrew Koji, throws out a blue Hadouken fireball as he trains in an animated section of the movie, and a companion sequence shows Ken and Ryu, voiced by Noah Centineo and Andrew Koji, training in an animated sequence.

The biggest name in the footage, though, belongs to a wrestler turning villain. Akuma, voiced by Roman Reigns, appears in the 2D animated flashback sequences of the Street Fighter movie. Reigns plays Akuma in the live-action portion as well, so the animated flashback functions as an origin beat for a character the main plot treats mostly as a looming threat.

Sakurai has leaned hard on authenticity elsewhere in the production, too. "Everybody that's in the movie is a fan of the game," he told GamesRadar+, adding that he'd lean on Koji for canon questions during the shoot.

None of this changes the release calculus. Street Fighter still hits theaters, including IMAX screens, on October 16. The animation is a chapter inside a live-action film, not a parallel production. For a franchise that has survived one disastrous Hollywood attempt already, betting part of its origin story on hand-drawn frames is a strange kind of confidence. It might be the right kind.