Those are the only three words needed to describe this abomination, "Ugly Anime Wannabe." The only thing worse is when it goes into poor quality CJI. Now the fact that it was made in 95 is no excuse for that. Toy Story same out in the same year. As for the non CJI animation, well Little Norse Prince was made in 1968, 27 years before MK:TJB and the animation in LNP is still a hundred times better. So knowing that the CJI is poor quality for it's time and the animation would have been poor quality if it was made 30 years ago, IF you can forgive that, how is the story? Well it is competing with the CJI and animation to see what can be the worst. You get a bit of info about why they are going to the island. Raiden has 3 boring flashbacks all in that terrible quality CJI and it ends with them going to compete. So no tournament. Just 3 boring flashbacks and one or two badly animated fights. As I said before, Ugly Anime Wannabe.

Back in the day, I was a big MK fanatic. One night, I saw this tape at a video store and rented it. After seeing STREET FIGHTER II: THE ANIMATED MOVIE, I was psyched. When I hit "Play", things really started to go down hill.*PLOT SPOILERS* It started out on Shang Tsung's ship en route to the tournament. Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, and Sonya get jumped by Sub-Zero and Scorpion. Raiden breaks up the scuffle between the fighters and scolds Tsung for making them fight before the tournament started.The rest of the movie pretty much is Raiden explaining stuff about Mortal Kombat and the stakes at risk, stuff about Tsung, and tournament champion Goro.Finally, a bunch of Baraka-lookalikes come charging the the three Kombatants from Earth. Then, we get the *glorious* ending where the narrator tells the audience to watch the live-action film.*END PLOT SPOILERS* In terms of animation, it was a bit on the cheap side. In the 2-D category, they reused a lot of shots (Tsung leaving and entering entering his cabin, for example), if it was THAT low-budget, why bother making it in the first place? As for the CG, I'll try to be nice as it was the mid-90's... the backgrounds were alright for my taste, but the fights Raiden relates to the fighters left A LOT to be desired. They move a bit slow and tend to leave a slight afterimage or shadow.The music was the film's saving grace for me. It captures the atmosphere of the otherworldly events. I have no complaints there.Final verdict: I will not recommend it to anyone expecting the story to continue. The animation's cheap and the "ending" really killed the potential it could have had. Though they did have profiles for the characters from MKI at the end (but not for Kano and Reptile), it's little to add to the mess.

This cartoon is definitely worth checking out. As far as I'm concerned, it's set in the same universe as the great, first MK movie, though there are some differences, mostly the absence of Kano and Shang Tsung being an old and conniving weasel instead of the confident way he was superbly portrayed by Cary Tagawa in the following film. Not surprisingly, it's used as an advertisement vehicle for that film, which is fine with me. But back to the cartoon, it shows some beautiful background animation, even by today's standards, and considering it's from 1995, that's saying a lot. I challenge anyone to find prettier eye candy than the water, or island, or cave, or sky, as are done in this cartoon. Second, we find out some very well-written past history on many of the MK movie's participants. Shang Tsung's victory over the temple master was very dramatic and sad (imagine being the master's students who found his body, and realized that the soul had been removed after death), in addition to the history of the ultimate villain, which being Goro. Here, we learn the type of parenting that fed Goro's bloodlust, leading him to kill his older, stronger brother, and Kung Lao, the human champion. It's very heartbreaking, and infuriating, to see Goro kill these two noble characters, especially Kung Lao, as this human was clearly kicking his rear end for quite a while before Goro simply used his massive size to his advantage.Fortunately, we MK movie fans know that Goro will be meeting his end at the hands of an arrogant, yet very smart and brave, Johnny Cage quite soon after this cartoon, in an ironic recreation of the way he murdered Durak. Third, the music to this cartoon is one of the beautiful and most haunting you'll ever hear. It was enough for me to buy the soundtrack, while the graphics and story were enough for me to buy the tape.Which isn't to say it's perfect. There are scenes where some shots are repeated, and needlessly so. Having the last fight where the three heroes take on hordes of expendable nomads could've been shorter and just as effective. I know that's the reason why so many people dislike this. But it's a very small minus in a filmstrip that's otherwise full of pluses.So highly, highly recommended.

First of all, I'll start by saying that I'm a huge Mortal Kombat fan so I got this thinking it would be pretty good. Well I'll tell ya, this was brutal, well its not so much the story that is bad but the animation and the art. The art is some of the worst I've seen in an animated video and the computer graphics is cheap and the fights repeat the same moves alot. This looked like it was a cheap and lazy attempt to get Mortal Kombat out everywhere and milk the name. The thing that I liked was the Making of Mortal Kombat:The Movie at the end of the video.