The King of Fighters: Destiny (Web Series) Review

When The King of Fighters: Destiny web series was announced to complement the upcoming mobile game of the same name, I was very skeptical.  Web series don’t have a reputation for having the highest production values, 3D animation is hard to do right and it comes from a Chinese animation studio that was not a big name as far as I can tell.  I was prepared for the worst, but at the same time KOF material outside of the games have been enjoyable even at their worst, with the exception of the movie we need to try to change the title of and forbid from ever discussing.

Several months later the series has now ended its first season and animation studio Idragon has two more planned as well as a movie.  They have some serious confidence in this series and with the overall positive reception, it’s not unwarranted.

Since it’s a web series you can see for free on Steam or Youtube, the question isn’t if it’s worth your money, but rather if it’s worth your time.  That’s not as much time as it may look.  Listings show episodes as being 20 minutes long, but the truth is more than half of that is the overly long opening prologue about Orochi, the rather bad opening theme and an excruciatingly long credit roll.  Each episode is only 7 to 9 minutes long if you skip all that.  With enough editing they could make it into a movie.

KOF: Destiny is an alternate continuity to the main KOF games, largely keeping the overall premise and characters, making a few changes, adding story elements and giving certain characters more of the spotlight.  The first season is based on KOF 94, the planned second and third seasons will be based on the other games and the movie will serve as the grand finale to the Orochi saga.  Newcomers should have no problem watching it, but fans will get the most out of it.

Like the game, the plot revolves around the King of Fighters tournament everyone wants to enter, but this time Kyo is not the only hero.  Fan favorite Terry Bogard shares the spot with him and Geese Howard is one of the main antagonists, running the tournament along with a mysterious backer only known as R.

Gee, I wonder who that could be!

Probably Ramon.

It details the Fatal Fury character’s histories so KOF: Destiny is also an alternate continuity to those games.  Fatal Fury’s characters were always favorites, but plot-wise they’ve been side characters in KOF.  Making this change and integrating it all into the relatively basic plot of the first KOF game makes for a more engaging story and I’m sure it also makes Terry fans excited.

New to the plot is an evil plot macguffin Geese and R are using called black crystals.  These crystals were taken from the government and emit a radiation that can absorb energy and boost someone’s physical abilities at the cost of their minds.  Somehow it’s being used so everyone gets Orochi power like Rugal did in KOF 95 and it’s the reason Heidern’s team gets involved.

Terry also gets something of a love interest and no it’s not Blue Mary.  This girl, named Angelina, is apparently Geese’s daughter and has her own problems with him that further adds to Terry’s story.  She’s not totally superfluous, she does get a significant amount of time for development, but she isn’t important in the grand scheme of things and I think the story would work fine without her.

Even with these added elements thrown into the mix, it’s a familiar story.  There are good guys, there are bad guys, both get some establishment and both fight.

Like in the games, the actual tournament doesn’t start until about halfway through.  I applaud them for emulating the prologues to set characters up and there’s enough fighting and insight among those characters and their foes to keep it interesting the whole way through.

Some characters couldn’t get the time for establishment, but most are given a chance to show off and are written well enough to get their characters across.  Even the American Sports team gets some action in KOF: Destiny.  You read that right!  They actually did something with the American Sports team!  They don’t get any characterization because of the plot, but we never see those guys anymore!

Fighters get these cool introductions when they're first introduced.

The characters are accurately written from their game counterparts for the most part, in my opinion, but Benimaru went through some kind of change in the transition.  Now instead of being a cool rockstar prima donna he’s more like a rock star poser like he’s Johnny Cage.  Like Cage, he gets a lot of funny exchanges and he’s a badass in his own right, but it’s a far cry from the Benimaru that always keeps his cool.  Either they’re setting up his character to develop into the one we know or the writers didn’t want to wait for Shingo and needed a whipping boy.  I hope it’s the former.

Is this really 1994?

Kyo is also a little more polite and cares more about Orochi than he’s supposed to at this point in the story.  He still has some of his smarmy cockiness from the game, but it’s downplayed and he seems less loose and more like a traditional hero.  I don’t know if I like that, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say his character is derailed.

The writing overall is serviceable, but that’s only half of it.  The rest is how it’s presented.  Is it as bad as I feared?  Like I said, 3D animation is hard to do right and some of my worries about this series looking bad came true, just not to the extent I envisioned.  A lot of the animation can look stilted and, for lack of a better word, janky.  It’s very easy to tell how much of it was motion-captured.  It’s not on Food Fight’s level by a long shot, but it can be distracting when the series tries to do the more complex movements.

A lot of character faces also don’t look like they do in most of the games, but KOF has always had a longstanding case of “depending on the artist” throughout its history.  I can excuse that, but not so much how some of the faces look like variants of the same face, making them lack distinguishing looks outside of their clothes and hair.  The comics did that too and it's one of its more glaring faults there as well.

Even with some of its awkward art and dialogue, I still love the comics.

This isn’t the case for everyone, thankfully.  Characters with less generic “prettyboy” faces like Goro, Chang and Choi look pretty good and balance a look of realism and stylization.  In fact, I’d argue Chang and Choi look better in Destiny than they do in KOF 14.

Destiny’s nicely-done cinematography can hide the rough spots in its animation sometimes and it does get better as the series goes on, but the cheapness of it never goes away completely.  It’s at least competent.

It doesn’t help the presentation that the whole thing is dubbed.  This happens to just about any foreign series with detailed lip movements.  It was originally in Chinese and then dubbed into Japanese so there are times where the dialogue doesn’t quite match or the actors are cut off by lip lock.  It’s not a common occurrence though and if you go into it knowing that you might be willing to forgive it because the actors themselves do a great job.

It's fair criticism to call a character model ugly, but it wouldn't be Chang if it weren't.

The entire series isn’t all in 3D.  There are a handful of flashback episodes, titled “side-stories”, which are a series of still artwork with the occasional motion showcasing a character’s past.  Cheap as it may be, I honestly really like them.  The artwork is a beautiful oil painting style with a lot of expression that emphasizes the action and emotions, and since there’s no lip movement the actors have no dialogue restrictions.  It reminds me a lot of motion comics and the cutscenes of KOF 11.

My favorite one is Geese’s.  KOF media doesn’t give enough attention to Geese’s backstory, so seeing one with him (and Krauser) as a boy is a nice treat.  These episodes complement the 3D animation by changing it up visually and contributing to characterization with a break from the main plotline, but if they don't interest the viewer they can be skipped.

Keep working on that moustache, kid.

Parts in the 3D episodes where still images are shown on the screen instead of any animation, on the other hand, look cheap as hell and it’s quite obvious when it happens, furthering the primary issue.

But what we all really come to a franchise called The King of Fighters for is the fighting.  As much as I criticize the animation, this is where Destiny's greatest strength comes in.  By the second episode it becomes apparent that Idragon either allocated their time and resources heavily into their fight scenes or they specialize in it so much that they showed a demo of one to SNK representatives and they instinctively took out their wallets and started throwing all the pocket money they had at it.  The King of Fighters: Destiny’s fighting kicks serious ass.

This is after he dodge rolls away from Clark's attempt at a counter grapple.  Fights get elaborate.

The people behind Destiny know KOF and it shows in the way fight scenes play out in a similar manner to the games.  Everyone can block anything with a guard stance like they’re Wonder Woman and sparks fly with a meaty sound effect for each hit.  They use their special attacks from the games combined with the traditional punching and kicking, complete with real combos and attack chains from the games mixed in with slow motion and situational mix-ups.  Fights are full of dodging, striking and counter maneuvers that make it look like a more elaborate rendition of matches from the games.  The choreography is top-notch and the cinematography keeps up with the quick action, all accentuated by well-used visual effects.  From Kyo’s fire to Benimaru’s lightning to Athena’s psycho energy, fights get pretty flashy.

To mix things up further there are a few times in which characters fight multiple foes at once, sometimes armed ones.  In the games that’s always happened offscreen, particularly during the NESTS saga, so it’s fun to see how they do it here.

The story was nice, but one of the real joys I don’t often experience was waiting every week to see what fight we’d see next, then seeing people online’s cheers and jeers with each one.  Just look at the Youtube comments for some of these episodes.  There's genuine excitement.  That kind of thing is fun for me.  It was like pro wrestling, which I guess would make Kyo and Terry like John Cena and The Rock.  And Goro is the Great Khali.

Jeers of disappointment are sure to be thrown at the exclusion of Takuma and Ralf.  Takuma doesn’t appear onscreen at all and is only briefly mentioned.  Ralf gets some screen time and looks great, but doesn’t actually fight.  KOF has a big character count and when telling a story some are going to have to be cut, but I wish they’d at least show Takuma.  Hopefully the Art of Fighting team as a whole will get more attention later on and since the writers seem to know how to please the fans, I think they will.

The only thing more kickass than KOF’s action is its music.  Destiny’s soundtrack uses new renditions of classic KOF music, like KOF 96’s Esaka, Geese’s theme and Rumbling the Docks.  They’re all used to great effect and make fight scenes even better, but as much as I liked the songs they used, the overall soundtrack is pretty limited so it gets a bit repetitive hearing the same tracks get recycled.

It's a personal preference, but I kind of wish they’d use music from the game they’re representing so it's even more familiar for fans.  KOF 94 had a nice soundtrack.  I would’ve loved to have heard Jungle Bouncer or the original Esaka.

I guess since they had SNK’s entire sound catalouge and music rights they didn’t want to restrict themselves.

In a web series based on a fighting game with a short run time you would think that fight scenes would be the only thing going for it, but for The King of Fighters: Destiny they’re only the highlight.  It has the characters of KOF, the fighting styles of KOF, the plot structure of KOF, the music of KOF, the unintentionally silly moments of KOF and all sorts of small details and references to KOF and other SNK games that made me grin.

Good cinematography.

It has all the things that make The King of Fighters fun.  I had my doubts, but KOF: Destiny ended up being very enjoyable.  It’s held back by some of its cheaper animation and corner-cutting, and not everything in the writing works for a compelling narrative, but if Idragon irons out those wrinkles this series could reach greatness.  Fans will love it and newcomers should give it a watch too. I still recommend newcomers play the games for the real story, but Destiny can give them an idea of what The King of Fighters is all about because it is a faithful recreation of this awesome series.  I give The King of Fighters: Destiny a 7.5 out of 10.