Tekken: Bloodline Review: The anime adaptation fails again because of the Tekken franchise

The first character that the anime Tekken: bloodline The long chain of failed adaptations of the popular fighting game series is unlikely to be broken because it’s almost impossible to enjoy at normal speed. The six-episode miniseries, stream on Netflix, has its characters so slow and in such a awkward way that the show only looks “right” at 1.25x playback speed, with some fights needing to be cranked up to 1.5x. This was probably not done on purpose to make the show more interactive like the video game that spawned it.

That said pedigree actually does Try to recreate many familiar elements from the Tekken Games in anime form. They’re just not the right items. Among all the great fighting games out there are the Tekken games have always been among the slowest. The core gameplay of Tekken involves controlling a character’s individual limbs with different buttons, so one button is for right-hand punches, the other for left-leg kicks, and so on. This forces players to go beyond button-pushing and master the process of stringing together the simple moves to unleash each character’s full potential and unique fighting style. Therefore Tekken Matches can look slow and easy, although they require a lot of skill. That’s all well and good in a video game where the audience controls the action. watching passively Slow-moving characters in an anime series are much less rewarding.

The slower animation might not be an issue, though pedigree featured intriguing characters. The anime is loosely based on the plot of Tekken 3. It follows young fighter Jin Kazama being trained by his grandfather, Heihachi Mishima, to win a fighting tournament that will lure out an immortal green god of battle.

Out of all three characters, only one has a real personality. Although the god is effectively the Aztec Hulk, he’s not that interesting to look at, but Heihachi is. While at first glance he may seem like the same “tenacious martial arts master” archetype we’ve seen over and over again, the show faithfully paints Heihachi as both a fighter and the CEO of a large corporation, and he’s fun to watch , applying his No Mercy rules to combat in a business setting. Unfortunately all other, objectively more interesting Tekken Characters like white-haired Black Wing Chun prodigy Leroy Smith or Nina Williams, a ninja assassin in a purple bikini catsuit, are relegated to little more than cameos without delving deeper into their backstories.

One of the biggest draws of Tekken games is the list of funny characters that aren’t on the left. Maybe Alex the genetically engineered dinosaur in blue boxing gloves wouldn’t have worked pedigrees story, but there was no reason to introduce American judoka/MMA fighter Paul Phoenix and then do absolutely nothing with him. You can’t show the audience a man who looks like he’s styling his hair with Viagra and then tell us how his fight with a bear (Kuma, a real Tekken character who’s actually a martial arts bear) happened off-screen took place. How absolutely dare you?!

Reducing this fight to a non-visual anecdote not only robbed the show of a scene that could have been free promotion for the anime for years to come, it also feels like a waste of dark tone pedigree sets up. During the Tekken franchise has its share of goofy looking characters, there’s often dark, gory drama beneath the goofy costumes and designs. As odd as it may sound, an odd character like Phoenix fighting a real bear could have been dramatic if treated like something out of the ordinary The revenant. And this kind of juxtaposition of insane graphics and reasonably realistic combat is actually one of the secrets of Tekken’s popularity: a kind of reverse mullet approach to its tone. Silly in the front, serious in the back.

Another thing the Tekken Games speak for themselves are the different fighting styles of the characters. These are also missing in the anime. in the Pedigree, Characters like Heihachi like to talk about how unique the tournament fighters are, but when it comes down to it, Leroy’s Wing Chun, Ling Xiaoyu’s Wushu, and Jin’s Karate all kind of look the same on screen. Why? And while we’re at it, why are the characters’ most powerful moves portrayed as Dragon Ball-esque blasts of energy when the original Tekken always prioritized semi-realistic combat over magical moves? Also why are pedigreefight scenes so short? (A fan complaint: They also skip Tekkens your opponent’s signature aerial juggling.) Fans of Tekken games may wonder “why?” a lot while watching Pedigree.

The problems with Tekken customization extend beyond the latest anime series. Tekken: bloodline is like a spiritual successor to the 1998 animated one Tekken: The Moviein the worst way. Tekken: TMP is loosely based on Tekken and Tekken 2, and it mainly narrows its cast down to a handful of characters: Jun Kazama and Kazuya Mishima (Jin’s parents), as well as Heihachi. All of the other cool characters in the franchise are relegated to the background and heavily toned down because they’re hot pedigree. And while the movie’s fight scenes move much faster, without any Pedigree-Style Sparks or electrical explosions coming out of people’s fists when they hit someone, also they are way too short and don’t show the differences between each fighting style.

The most frustrating part Tekken: The Movie, however, is that writers Ryota Yamaguchi and Seiichi Ishii seem to have understood that the games are a mixture of goofiness and serious drama, but then did everything backwards. The Tekken Games are silly on the outside and dark on the inside. The anime does it the other way around as Jun and Kazuya are discussing a traumatic event from their childhood when a lady walks in wearing a cocktail dress and holding a bazooka. It shows that the filmmakers nearly Understood the task, which is more frustrating than just not getting it in the first place.

A tekke Anime should be more like a specific scene from 2011 CGI movie Tekken: blood revenge. In this film, a robotic assassin — who dresses like a pastel-colored clown stripper and is outfitted with wings and chainsaw hands — pauses to talk about how she and another character who was experimented on have bodies shaped by the defy nature. She wonders what that makes of them. This particular blend of the absurd and the tragic is what defines Tekken should look like on screen. Unfortunately, that’s probably the only thing about the games vendetta get right.

In apparent tradition at Tekken adjustments, vendetta doesn’t leverage the impressive character stable of the original games. Instead, it focuses almost entirely on Ling Xiaoyu and the robotic assassin, without making their fighting styles look unique. It’s such a bizarre place to fail. Not only did the filmmakers have to come up with two different forms of combat, one of which was for a chainsaw robot. There was so much potential for fun style. in the The MandalorianWhen the IG-11 droid stands in one stance and rotates segments of its body to shoot everyone around it, there’s a nice, creative, robotic precision to its movements. Something that could and should have been thoughtful and unusual vendetta.

Dwight H. Little’s 2010 live-action Tekken film gets that a little right. In the movie — the actual Tekken Game director Katsuhiro Harada apparently called himself “terrible” in one. since deleted tweet – all the different fighting styles actually look different. Capoeira looks different from kung fu, which looks different from boxing and so on. However, everything else about the film just isn’t Tekken. It’s way too serious about its premise, it omits the characters’ memorable backstories, and it ends up messing up Heihachi (played by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) by seriously toning down his lethal nature.

So what would a perfect Tekken customization look like? On the surface it would feel absurd given its huge roster of colorful characters, but it would be able to find drama and heart in their fights and interactions. By the way, it would be based on real martial arts Avatar: The Last Airbender and its sequel The Legend of Korra although like those two shows it could get fantastic and explosive at times for the sake of spectacle. Most importantly, it would have to take the audience on a journey that would emulate the feeling of mastering a Tekken Game by showing us how much work can go into the simplest martial arts movement.

Unfortunately, that basically describes Netflix’s Cobra Kai, a series with its own family tree, backstories and fandom. Tekken fans will just have to keep waiting for an adaptation that takes the games’ strengths seriously. Until that unlikely future arrives, at least they have a long and memorable line of video games to keep them occupied.

Tekken: bloodline is currently streaming on Netflix.