conroy.charity - 2013-05-18 10:39:35

[Note: this review is written almost soley from the point of view of a fan of the games. Due to the amount of references made to the games, those unfamiliar with them might find this review confusing.]The "Tekken" franchise is probably my favourite line of console games of all time, so when I found out there's an anime based on them, I was really keen to watch it. However, as I came across review after review on it, my enthusiasm was gradually curbed. To say the reviews were negative is an understatement - they made it out to be one of the worst anime ever made. Even so, I couldn't help but feel quite excited going into this. If "Tekken: The Motion picture" had been anywhere near good as the "Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie", I would have happy.Unfortunately, it wasn't. It was a terrible disappointment. It had trouble coming up with great fighting sequences; it had trouble staying true to the game; ("Tekken tournament is a tournament that's held every year." What the hell?! Even the closest two tournaments were supposed to be a couple of years apart!) Heck, it even had trouble deciding WHICH of the Tekken tournaments it was supposed to be set in. The storyline of Kazuya trying to overthrow his father Heihachi is taken from the first "Tekken" game, but the character roster (Jun, Roger the kangaroo, Ganryu the sumo etc) is taken from "Tekken 2", which was supposed to be about Heihachi reclaiming his throne from Kazuya. The stuff about Mishima Empire taking over the world sounded suspiciously like it's based on the background of "Tekken 3". Did they even TRY to avoid contradicting the material from the games?! Why did Namco even allow this disgrace of an adaptation to go ahead?! It's almost as if the movie was helmed by someone who hated the games, and deliberately made it terrible, as I have trouble believing any fan would butcher it in this way.Admittedly, the character's personalities were generally true to the game, at least for the few that were on screen for longer than the time taken for a basic jab to hit in "Tekken 3" (8 frames). One of the things they did change is Lee Chaolan's personlity. I disliked that change, but having said that, even the characters that were faithfully portrayed did not come off great. I initially wondered whether this was due to "Tekken" personalities not translating well to screen, but the recent "Tekken" anime "Blood Vengeance" showed enough promise (even though it didn't end up being very good either) to suggest that isn't the case.I was looking forward to an exciting martial arts anime and watching the characters I'm so familiar with from the game battling it out. What did I get instead? Lame battles that only lasted a couple of blows. Kazuya made the most of his fights look so easy they weren't even worth watching. The battle between the William sisters - fueled by their legendary rivalry - started off promisingly, only for it to be criminally cut short by uninvited guests. Other regulars such as Paul (blond guy in the red judo outfit, for those unfamiliar with the game) and Law (the fighter in the white Chinese outfit) didn't even get to fight on screen! In fact, they weren't even introduced by names and just sort of appeared in the some background shots as the camera panned across a gathering.And where were the fighters' signiture moves? Where's Nina's "Blond Bomb"? Where's Paul's "Phoenix Smasher" and Baek (the taekwondo guy)'s "Hunting Hawk"? All the elements that should have been in an anime based off a fighting game just wasn't there. And it's not like they filled the time with something of worth like a great story - the whole movie is less than an hour long, so they could easily have expanded it with more and better content."Tekken: The Motion Picture" doesn't deliver on the technical front either. The background music features some distracting and intrusive rock tracks; that didn't do as much damage as the art though. The biggest flaw in the art of this movie is that the characters looked so different from the game. Kazuya is one of the few that looked quite like how he's supposed to look, and even so, there's something not quite right about his character model. Most of the other characters are barely recognisable from their facial features - I had to guess that the guy in the taekwondo outfit is Baek, and the guy in the white Chinese outfit is Law, because they look nothing like their game counterparts.The only thing that "Tekken: The Motion Picture" brings to the table is that it provides visualisation for the story of "Tekken", piecing together and expanding on the fragments of background info provided in the game manuals. For example, I liked the way it interpreted the event that involved Heihachi throwing Kazuya off a cliff - it seemed ridiculous on paper but the anime made it a lot less so. Because of these things, the movie might *just* be worth a single watch for the most hardcore of fans, although the general lack of faithfulness on many parts of the story caused what little it did do right to carry less weight.At the height of its popularity, "Tekken", which features the King of Iron First Tournament, may have inherited the crown of being the King of Fighting Games from "Street Fighter" for a while. When it comes to anime adaption of fighting games though, "Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie" is still King, and it's not about to be budged by the likes of "Tekken: The Motion Picture" any time soon.