Did you know they made a Shenmue anime? A co-production between Crunchyroll and Adult Swim, the series aired in the US from February to May 2022.

And Shenmue works incredibly well as an animated series. This likely due to the fact that it’s so story-driven, with a richly realized world and colorful cast; plus Ryo and his friends already looked like anime characters to begin with. Martial arts stories have historically done well in serialized formats—from Chinese wuxia novels to Eiji Yoshikawa’s stories of Miyamoto Musashi—so it isn’t too surprising that Shenmue would fit nicely into a short series of 23-minute episodes.

Actually, Shenmue transitions so seamlessly into an animated series, I’d say it almost works too well. One could argue that the anime version makes playing the original games irrelevant. (Sure, I would never make such a claim, but I’m confident that plenty of other people will.) After all, this show follows the storyline of Shenmue I & II, and is actually extremely faithful to the games. The entire story of the first game gets wrapped up in five episodes, so by episode 6, the anime is already on to Shenmue II.

In what strikes me as an odd artistic choice, the series opens by showing the final scene of Shenmue II, along with a full recitation of Shenhua’s prophetic poem. That’s some pretty literal foreshadowing, seeing as how that is the exact point where this first season ends. I suppose that the anime was intended to build hype for Shenmue III, so perhaps this bookending of the story with Shenmue II’s conclusion makes a certain amount of sense. Still, it strikes me as more of a time filler than anything else, especially since the exact same animation getting used twice.

The animation’s first episode gives us a glimpse into Ryo’s life before the story’s inciting incident, including a couple events which players of the game would experience during the course of Shenmue I. We’re even treated to a brand new scene where our teenage hero competes in a regional karate tournament. With the story starting off in 1986, this almost feels like oblique reference to The Karate Kid films. It isn’t until seven and half minutes into that first episode where we see Lan Di killing Ryo’s father—the dramatic moment which kicked off the original Dreamcast adventure.

From there on out, however, the show is a very faithful retelling of the Shenmue game’s story; same chronology and everything, as far as I can tell. Basically every single moment I remembered from the first two games happens in over course of the anime’s 13 episodes. And to be honest, I actually thought it was pretty well done. The visual style, quality of animation, fight choreography—all the important things—were high-enough quality to keep me watching from start to finish. However, it’s probably worth mentioning that all fights in this show wrap up quite quickly. Don’t expect any extended fight sequences here. That said, even this feels faithful to the source material.

Oh, and the opening sequence they came up with for Shenmue is top-notch. As one would expect, it features a Japanese rock band performing some insanely catchy song, while super-stylized visuals highlight specific characters, fancy martial arts moves, and uh…forklifts. Yeah, as far as an anime opening for Shenmue goes, it is perfection.

Since the story of Shenmue was intended to cover multiple games with several chapters, the end of each game can feel a bit underwhelming, as nothing is ever concluded. Doing an animated series helps with this as well, as you’re not really expecting a solid ending with the potential of more seasons to come.

One change I noticed is that anime has Ryo actually catch up with Lan Di in Hong Kong and briefly fight him. I don’t believe this was possible in Shenmue II, as you just see Lan Di escaping via helicopter, already far out of reach. Perhaps an Lan Di face-off was included to give the show a bit more action, which it definitely needed, especially since all fight the sequences were really quite short.

Speaking of story, I must mention that Xiuying is a stone cold badass, and seems like she’s probably the toughest fighter in all of Shenmue. This character was cool in Shenmue II, and she’s depicted as appropriately rad in the animation. I’m still wondering though: Is Lan Di actually Xiuying’s long lost brother? That’s the impression I got when playing the games, and then I felt the same foreshadowing with the anime. However, it’s never confirmed. In fact, they mention what Lan Di’s real name was supposed to have been, and it’s not Xiuying’s brother’s name. Still, I feel like those two guys have to be the same person. Am I the only one with this fan theory?

All things considered, Shenmue the Animation is a pretty good time! I signed up for a Crunchyroll just to watch this series—and then kept it going for months, since there’s just so much to watch on there!—and it was very much worth it. If you are Shenmue fan then you definitely have to watch the anime, no question. But even if you aren’t into the games, the show is of a high enough quality that I’d still recommend giving it a look. It’s only 13 episodes after all, so not too big of time commitment.

Sure, the anime is severely lacking in vending machine sequences and intense forklift action, but it more-or-less delivers on everything else.