Tekken: Blood Vengeance

Whoever composed the trailer for this film deservers some sort of award for editing, because i for one was whole-heartedly anticipating this film a great deal. Given the sheer amount of characters and character turnover, and the fact we're now approaching the 6th generation of games, the story has been somewhat of a shambles for some time. That said they do attempt to the focus the story on a handful of cast members, with the odd cameo appearances from Tekken regulars. Xiaoyu, Jin, Kazuya, Anna and Nina make up the main stays, joined by newcomer from the most recent game Alisa Bosconovitch. Xiaoyu is recruited by Annaon behalf of Kazuya to investigate Shin a former class mate of Jin's. I frankly have lost track of if she's still looking for Jin as was the case at some point, but i assume this to be her motivation for going along with this. The story was, even by Tekken standards pretty terrible, poorly constructed and largely unnecessary, the story merely serves to gather all the characters behind the scenes together for big show down, rendering the leads as little more than spectators. The CGI doesn't seem to have made any real progress from the first Final Fantasy film. It generally all looks very nice, and the action scenes flow very well and look highly impressive, but they've still got a long way to go with the character models. Xiaoyu looks down right creepy at times, any time they attempt to animate anything facially the whole process falls down horribly, and looks terrible and often deformed. Alisa came out better, but there's still plenty of off moments. Claire Redfield's model in Biohazard: Degeneration single handedly destroyed the film for me, and with that setting the bar pretty low the efforts here have not done much better. Xiaoyu and Alisa's friendship in the film actually worked for me and was one of the better aspects of the film. I'd not learnt anything of Alisa from the last game, but her voice acting was good and most of her scenes with Xiaoyu were enjoyable. The rivalries between Jin and Kazuya and Nina and Anna also feature heavily as a secondary focus, none are fleshed out in any meaningful manor, but this was clearly aimed at existing fans, so entirely forgiveable. Now i doubt many people expected much from the story, so what about the fights? The answer is very hit and miss. All the early action is very average, Xiaoyu and Alias's mid way fight was probably the high point for me, with the end 3 way show down being hugely disappointing, although i did enjoy getting to see all the devil forms in action. There's allot of wasted potential here, I'd have enjoyed nothing more than seeing Jin and Kazuya go at it as often as possible, there's a total lack of focus, or downright epicness to the fights, i was left feeling largely unsatisfied and would have no real desire to re-watch any of the sequences, there just not that technically good. Overall there's just allot of wasted potential, i get that they couldn't do anything to drastic to the Tekken universe, but the fights we did get were just hugely underwhelming, the story wasn't well thought out and there's not allot to praise, i can't help but wish one of these game film adaptation's would adapt the actual game material, the events between Tekken 2 and 3 would have made for an excellent story, hint hint.

Ah... where to begin? The nonsensical plot? The horrendous dialog? The non-existent character development? If it weren't for the gorgeous 3D visuals of the movie it would be a complete and utter failure. Harada and Sato's mission to create an accessible and enjoyable Tekken film for non-Tekken fan falls flat on its face. Only someone with a flawless understanding of the Tekken lore could understand how this movie makes sense. With only a passing knowledge of the Tekken story line, it's very difficult to understand where this fits and why it was necessary. The story of tworival corporations, G-Corp run by Kazuya and Mishima Zaibatsu run by Jin, both vying to control the M-Gene makes absolutely no sense. Their reason for hunting for this mutation is never clearly explained and by the end of the film is not even relevant, as that plot-line gets completely abandoned in favor of a flashy ending fight scene. It's not an understatement to say that nothing about this film makes any sense. Those hoping that some snappy and thought provoking dialog saves a sinking story should abandon those hopes. The dialog is legitimately laughter inducing for all the wrong reasons. With lines like "sometimes you have to fail to succeed," it sounds as though every line from this film was pilfered from a budget store greeting card. As far as character development, there honestly isn't any. The characters are as one-dimension and static as possible. Their motivations are never clear and even if they were, the incomprehensible plot would make them impossible to understand. If there's one thing positive to say about this film, it's that it is absolutely gorgeous. The CG-animation is in a league of its own. Relatively realistic facial and body animations and well choreographed fight scenes make the movie a joy to look at, at the very least. The film probably would have been better off abandoning any plot or character related scenes and just presenting itself as a long montage of fight scenes to showcase the beautiful animation and jaw-dropping 3D effects. Despite this meager success, the film even fails to deliver to dedicated Tekken fans as only a fraction of the cast makes an appearance. The cast of this movie will certainly seem adequate to die hard Xiaoyu or Alisa fans, but the fact that Sato couldn't even add a few random cameos for some other fan favorites is downright sad. This movie doesn't appeal to anyone, even diehard Tekken fans will be immensely disappointed. And those without an encyclopedic knowledge of the Tekken lore will be absolutely lost. Even taking into account the amazing animation and 3D tech used in the film, it might be wise to wait until it's featured in another film that can deliver on other merits besides simply being a technological marvel. The fact that Harada and Sato put their name to this is astonishing, but don't be fooled, this movie totally sucks. Avoid at all costs.

When I hear Tekken, I remember those days when I has a PS2 and mashed buttons till my fingers wore out. This is the only reason I bothered to watch this anime. To those who haven't played any of the games and those who have an interest in the series - don't bother watching this. If you want to know why read on. I never had any great expectations whatsoever from this anime but I had some standards. - Special effects - Lots of characters from the franchise - Good action scenes- And Identifiable moves. None (except the first which should have been a given) were satisfactory. I never expected any deep plot twists or even a coherent story-line and thus shall refrain from passing judgement on this aspect. Ah, the fight scenes. I got so pumped up when the characters entered their stances but in the end nothing happened.Nothing. The fight btw Anna and Nina was satisfactory though as you could identify moves and even if you didn't know them, you would still get a good show. The fight scenes would follow this sequence - 1) Stare 2) Trade a few light shots to "test the waters". 3) Characters get serious and enter some stance at which point you suddenly get exited 4) They execute one move and break out of stance 5) Pointless conversation follows. Some scenes get so ridiculously blown out of proportion that you wonder if you're watching a Dragonball flick(in more ways than one). I counted ten characters ( plus one if you want ). Out of more than 50 they put ten. Enough said. Even with such low expectations I was utterly disappointing with this movie. On a side note if they had shown Hwoarang's face I wouldn't have been this harsh:-) .

Everyone in the cross section between the fandoms of Tekken and anime probably knows of the legendary turd that is the "Tekken" anime. If they don't, chances are they spent a lot of money in therapy to suppress the terrible memory. Over a decade later, Bandai Namco probably figured that to leave "Tekken" as the sole anime representation of the franchise is akin to leaving a shit stain smeared across the company logo, so they decided clean things up by green lighting "Tekken: Blood Vengeance". This time, you know they mean business, cos it involves people who actually worked on the Tekken games: the studiothat produced some of the cut scene animation, and even the head honcho of the Tekken games himself, Katsuhiro Harada. I'll be honest: "Tekken: Blood Vengeance" is not a great movie; it's not even a good one. However, it scratched enough of my Tekken itch to leave me oddly satisfied. As a hardcore fan of the games, I think the movie captured the essence of Tekken, and I'm happy to have it represent the franchise in anime. The thing about "Tekken: Blood Vengeance" is that it gets the important stuff right. Characters are recognisably from Tekken? Check. This might strike you as setting the bar rather low, but if you've seen the other Tekken anime, you've probably uttered the words "who the fuck is that meant to be" and you'll know not to take this for granted. Given Tekken's 3D roots, the decision to have the whole movie in CG is a canny one. The whole thing looks like polished up cut scenes from the latest games. And as far as I'm concerned, that's perfect. Great fights? Check. Again, this may seem like setting the bar low, but an astonishing number of fighting game adaptations fails to clear this hurdle. "Tekken: Blood Vengeance" hits multiple home runs when it comes to the fights. The action is riveting, with characters striking one another with bone crunching blows. A friend of mine who also likes Tekken said he didn't rate the action very highly because it felt like they were punching through brick walls. I agree with that description, but didn't understand why he used it in a negative context. Every fighting game has its own "feel" to the combat, and to me, Tekken definitely feels like "punching through bricks walls", which means "Tekken: Blood Vengeance" managed to successfully capture the feeling of the games. In my book, that's another plus. Special moves incorporated? Check. This is a must for any fighting game adaptation looking to obtain accreditation as fan wank material, and again, "Tekken: Blood Vengeance" doesn't disappoint. In fact, the movie integrated the special moves better than any other adaptations I can think of. If you haven't really played Tekken, you can probably watch the whole thing without realising they incorporated a lot of special moves from the game because of the fluidity of the combat. Look carefully though, and those familiar with the games will recognise many of the attacks used during the fights can be performed by the same characters in game. Epic battle between the William sisters? Check. Powered by one of the most long running rivalries of the franchise, this battle was messed up in the other Tekken anime, but "Tekken: Blood Vengeance" set the world to rights, treating us to a wonderfully choreographed fight between the Williams sisters. Adding all the above point together, and what do we get? Bona fide fan wank material? Check. By this point you might wonder why I rate "Tekken: Blood Vengeance" so low. The reason is that beyond being a fan wank flick of laudable quality, the movie doesn't have anything else to offer. Head Honcho Harada stated he wants to make a movie everyone - not just Tekken fans - can enjoy, but he failed on that mission. The failure is a strange one, especially in the writing department given the involvement of Dai Satou, whose project CV extrudes gems such as "Eureka Seven", "Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex" and "Cowboy Bebop". Despite Dai Satou allegedly having quite a bit of creative freedom, the story ended up bland and unmemorable. It's one of those movies where you wish there was less plot, less talk and that people would just get on with punching each other. One of the first and main mis-step comes from having the movie revolve around Shin, which automatically alienated a portion of the fandom as he doesn't even exist in any of the games. In addition, Shin is the "silent and moody" type, also known as the blank-slate personality type. As though to compensate for Shin's lack of words, the anime surrounds him with Xiaoyu and Alisa, whose annoying voices gets fed far too many lines. I don't think I realised just how annoying those two characters are until I watched this movie. Xiaoyu and Alisa getting so much screen time really drags the movie down, and the only bright side is that they kick the shit out of each other at one point. As satisfying and as awesome the fight was though, it doesn't quite make up for the pair's prominence in the movie. To be fair, the characters don't come off as inaccurately portrayed, I just think the makers could have picked better characters to front the movie, especially given Tekken's huge roster. The only other complaint I have is the final fight. The anime tried too hard to make a fitting climactic fight. While it kicked off great, it ended up too long and too ridiculous (even by Tekken standards). I see it as probably the weakest fight in the movie, and also the longest. So there you have it. "Tekken: Blood Vengeance" - bad movie; good fan wank material. Personal rating: -1.0 (bad)