After the abysmal Art of Fighting TV Special, hopes were high that an anime for Samurai Shodown would turn out better. But this wasn't the case. The Japanese version was another TV special, broadcast in 1994, whilst the English dubbed version was released in 1995. It doesn't really matter what language you watch it in, since either version is bad.

There seems that there could be a good story in Samurai Shodown, but the anime just screws it up. The holy warriors all die, but then come back to life 100 years later, for some reason. And the bad guy is alive during this time, but she doesn't bother trying to hunt down her enemies whilst they're still children or something. And why is Haohmaru the only holy warrior not to realize who he is? Why do the other holy warriors not seem to recognize him when they first see him? One of the biggest faults of this anime is the poor story-telling.

And then there are all the other faults, like the average animation (a lot of battle scenes are just still pictures), poor English dub and lackluster fight sequences. Samurai Shodown: The Motion Picture isn't quite Art of Fighting bad, but it's still one of the poorer video game anime adaptions out there.