Crunchyroll’s Anime Effect hosts say the FGC’s ‘dream’ fighting game is already here

We sat down with the hosts of Crunchyroll’s ‘The Anime Effect’ podcast at EVO 2024, where they opened up about their love of fighting games and what the FGC’s “dream” anime fighter would be.

EVO 2024 cemented itself as the largest open-bracket esports tournament in the world, bringing together over 10,000 registered players together in the Las Vegas Convention Center to duke it out in their favorite fighting games like Tekken 8, Street Fighter 6, and more.

This year, Crunchyroll partnered with EVO for a special anime night, where they showed a screening of the classic Street Fighter II animated movie. The hosts of Crunchyroll’s official podcast, The Anime Effect, were also in attendance, who spoke with us about their experience at this year’s event.

Nicholas Friedman and LeAlec Murray said they had a blast when we talked on Sunday, referencing how “accessible” the fighting game community has become over the years and how intertwined the FGC and anime fans really are.

“When we were recording yesterday, the thing that was evident was that you don’t have to really get up to speed with anyone,” Friedman said. “It’s like you can start immediately talking about shows and we all get it, and we’re all part of that same community. Just hearing their stories of how completely intertwined their fighting game journey has been with their anime journey — that’s the thing that we’re seeing. Honestly, it’s the reason why we were really excited to come out is to be around like-minded anime fans.”

With an eye-popping number of anime series in the world, it stands to reason that fighting games fans might want to see their favorite shows realized in a 2D fighter.

But after speaking with members of the community over the weekend, the two hosts realized that many players’ ‘dream’ anime fighting game had already come to fruition years ago. 

“I’m somebody who grew up playing fighting games, and when I started playing Street Fighter II, I also started watching the original Dragon Ball,” Murray said. “As my love for the fighting game community grew, my love for anime was growing alongside it. The culmination of that was when Dragon Ball FighterZ came out. Of course, there’d been anime fighting games before that, but it felt like the fully realized version of, ‘Oh hey, there really is like a full crossover.’

“Everyone we talked to yesterday was saying that it was the dream, because we asked the question: ‘If you could pick any anime, or if you could have a dream fighting game, what would it be?’ And they’re like, ‘Oh, that exists. That’s Dragon Ball. It’s already there. We got it,” Friedman added.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t more room for dreaming about what anime would make an amazing fighting game. Murray and Friedman bounced back and forth with several big ideas, one of the major ones being a My Hero Academia-based fighter.

“You gotta account for all the quirks that are going on. I feel like seeing how those would interact, the archetypes… I can already see it, like if you use too much of All Might’s power, you have an automatic debuff, and he just throws really weak punches or something,” Murray said excitedly. 

For Friedman, a Capcom-style 2D Digimon fighting game would be the best thing since sliced bread.

“It’d be very cool,” he explained. “You’d start out as Rookie, and if you get stun-locked, you go down to Baby form. But as you power up, you can Digivolve. Your move set slightly changes. …especially in the way that you can use meters in games, I think they could do it.”

While this was Friedman’s first real foray into the fighting game community, Murray has been a diehard fighting game fan for many years. He let us into the moments in his childhood that solidified his love for the genre, saying that both his father and a stranger at an arcade introduced him to the scene.

“My dad was a really big driver for me playing fighting games,” he said. “He used to go to the arcade with me, and he would just feed me quarters, like playing Tekken. He would just sit there and watch. And I’d be like, ‘We can go play something else.’ And he was like, ‘Nope. Just keep doing what you’re doing.'”

“The reason I fell in love with tag fighters is, I walked into the arcade and I was like, I don’t know what’s going on. And I just happened to be standing in front of the huge, MVC machines that they used to have. And there’s this guy sitting there, he had to be like maybe in his twenties. And he was like, ‘Hey, you want to play?’ I’m like, yeah. And he kind of walked me through arcade etiquette and like all this stuff.

“And he was like, ‘Alright, let’s run some matches.’ Beats my ass. ‘Thank you.’  Just just runs the fade and I’m like, ‘Oh, okay,’ but he was like, ‘This is how you learn. Keep playing and you’ll get better. And I kept going back.”

Murray’s experience echoes that of many other players in the FGC. While this was Friedman’s first real rodeo in the scene, he got to witness the pure, unadulterated passion of the community — and it’s safe to say that he’s a fan.

The intersection between anime and fighting games is absolutely real, and with titles like Guilty Gear Strive getting a series in 2025, there’s more of a crossover between the two mediums than ever before. Thanks to our conversation with Crunchyroll, we got to see for ourselves just how close the anime fandom and the FGC really are.