Anime: Tekken: Bloodline

I played the three original Tekken games when I was a kid and I really liked them back then, years later I bought Tekken 5 for the PS2 and I wasn’t as fond of it, not because of the game itself, which was pretty good and had a lot of content, including those three games, but because I came to prefer more over the top fast paced 2D fighting games instead. Some years ago I also played some local multiplayer Tekken 7 and watched like two different complete playthroughs of it. What I’m getting at with this is that I know enough about the franchise to speak of this series as both a product by itself and as an adaptation.

Bloodline is, to my knowledge, the fifth Tekken based fiction, three of which are anime, and despite being a failure and a demonstration that they should give up in trying to make adaptations out of this franchise, it is so far the best of them. Let me talk briefly about those before getting to the main topic.

In 1998 there was a low budget movie based on the first two games made by Studio Deen, it looked really bad, had barely any action, a way more than needed serious tone, the plot was, as expected, really stupid, and there were a lot of characters with barely any screentime to get fleshed out on a basic level, it’s the second worst of them all and the worst of the three anime.

In 2009 there was a live action movie and although it more or less covered the basics of the main plot and tried to give the characters a similar look to the games, it was also full of HollyWood nonsense such as forced romances with no character dynamics, a needlessly serious cyberpunk setting that only made the dumb plot seemed worse, and it was obviously nowhere near as exciting as what you could do on the videogames, or animation based on them, overall it was better than the previous movie and other live action fighting game adaptations, but still really bad as a whole.

In 2011 there was Tekken: Blood Vengeance, a full CGI movie which supposedly takes place between Tekken 5 and 6, visually it was pretty cool and the final fight had great battle choreography, but it came out with a needless original bullshit plot which was very simple and thin, had a cop out ending, and didn’t really have much connection to the plot of either game. It was also needlessly slow paced as most of its duration had Ling Xiayou and Alisa Bosconovitch fooling around doing high school girls nonsense, I can’t really say if it was better or worse than the previous installment.

Then in 2014 there was Tekken: Kazuya’s Revenge, which, despite its name, was a direct to video prequel of the live action movie focused on, well, Kazuya, it had a completely original story and characterization, unrelated to the games or its sequel, while having the most serious tone of all the movies, thus easily being the worst of them all.

Bloodline is the first series based on Tekken and the best adaptation so far, simply because the bar was really low, it learned a little of previous mistakes, and had more duration than the movies to flesh out things a little more. It had more action than the first movie, it didn’t complicate the setting nor had forced romance like the second movie, it was more focused than the third as it wasn’t fooling around throughout most of its duration, and it was of course better than the fourth film, just like most things ever created. It was also the most faithful adaptation out of all of them. Despite that, as an adaptation it has problems, because it is based on Tekken 3, yet it changes plot points from the game, features mechanics and characters from later games, even the latest entry in the franchise at the moment, and Julia Chang was even redesigned to look like her streamer self from Tekken 7, I guess because her original design would be problematic nowadays.

But even if it didn’t have that, plot wise it would still be bad, simply because it is based on Tekken, a fighting game series, which translates to absolute garbage plot, that videogame genre never cares about it, it’s just an excuse for the fighting to take place, proof of which is Mortal Kombat still having the best with all of its retcons and lack of permanent consequences, and even after the most hated eleventh game.

The same thing happens in Tekken, it’s just a tournament arc from a shounen action series with characters either trying to get money to help someone or having personal vendettas against other characters, usually Heihachi, before the whole thing becomes more and more convoluted, goes up in scale to a World War between tyrants and terrorits around the whole globe and even space, keeps rewriting and retconning characters backstories and the Devil Gene, fucks up the power scale with each game, makes a crossover character from a completely different game and universe such as Gouki (or Akuma) from Street Fighter canon, has seemingly dead characters being revived or replaced by other characters, which are virtually the same thing as if they were clones or redesigns, and keeps introducing silly elements such as fighting kangaroos, dinosaurs, bears, sentient wood dummies, and even aliens.

Tekken: Bloodline is based on the third game and it focuses entirely in the Mishima/Kazama family, their family feud and the initial concept of the Devil Gene, thus not having such problems, it still had issues by itself when it comes to writing. Jin is told by Heihachi to not let others know about their ties, what is the first thing he does? Watches videos of Heihachi and Kazuya, asks every other fighter about them, and even goes to talk to Heihachi, more than just one time, thus instantly exposing himself. Then of course, he is a kid who suppodsely lures out Ogre by accident, yet he lacks power, and the monster doesn’t kill him because… the series wouldn’t happen otherwise. Jin also can’t do anything against it, but with just three years of training he becomes stronger and better at fighting than veteran fighters that fought in all previous King of Iron Fist tournaments, despite being told by Heihachi that he doesn’t know how to fight, and of course he gets a convenient power up of an evil inner energy when he needs it at the right moment, allowing him to beat his two strongest enemies. See? A fighting shounen series plot, just like I told you, made worse by the short duration.

That is another problem of the series, despite being longer in runtime than the movies, it’s still way too short for what it goes for plotwise. Xiayou and Hwoarang are closer to Jin than in the game, which was a good move, but there was no build up to that before the tournament, both characters have one very short mute scene where they interact with Jin, thus their dynamic later on feels weak. There are also a lot of other fighters, which despite getting hyped up and fan favourites, are defeated quickly and have no backstory, hell some of them don’t even have screentime, you just see their names and faces for two seconds and that’s it. The show is focused on Jin alright, but why having all these other characters then? The only ones with some motives behind are Julia and King, and even those are presented poorly, just the first talking about them, just like everything is presented in this series, by talking, not showing anything. The pacing is also erratic, half the series is spent on Jin training, or interacting with characters that are not fleshed out, the other half are three minutes fights before moving to something else and forgetting completely about what came before. The series needed to be twice as long, thus a normal cour anime series, to present everything a bit more organically.

Other minor issues in the writing include having no public in the tournament, you have all these fighters in a colosseum, and it’s completely empty. There are cameras and you see people watching the tournament alright, but they are not in the place, and the shots of the people watching it are just three and repeated. Even the first live action movie did it better by having the contestants fighting in ring and having people watching the fights in the place from a safe distance. There’s also Leroy swearing revenge on Heihachi, which could just be a throwaway line of dialogue, or a foreshadowing of a continuation to come, which is a really bad idea because, as I already said, the plot of the games only become worse and worse with each new entry.

But ok, this is an action show based on a fighting videogames series, the last you thing you care about here is plot and characters, this could still be a watchable show if it was good as a rule of cool, but it does not achieve that either. First of all, like I already said, it is short, slow, and the fights are short, which frankly makes the thing boring. Style over substance fiction is never good because of plot but because of the characters, which here are are not fleshed out, and spectacle, which here is mediocre because the visuals are bad and the sound mediocre. The Tekken franchise always had a weird but unique style of mixing semi realistic character figures, faces and martial arts, with stylized character designs, before introducing demons, intelligent animals, aliens, robot chicks that attack with their disembodied body parts as if they were Mazinger, and more stuff. This is a stylized anime, thus loosing the semi realism, but also Larx Entertainment, the studio responsible of Kengan Ashura, is behind this series, which translates to super muscular CGI. Also the motions are a bit stiff.

But the major problems with the visuals have to do with effects, particularly lightning and shading, for some reason they thought having PSX polygons as shadows for the characters, appearing particularly in their heads, even when in places where such thing shouldn’t happen, was a good idea. Also the series implements effects from the games, and although it was a nice addition as fanservice at first, it becomes overused and looses impact, on top of looking cheaper and cheaper towards the end. Also, although the show succesfully imitates the fighting styles of the characters from the game, such techniques don’t translate well to a series, such movements, as well as the blocking, have wide poses and hitboxes in the game, and here I see, for example, Leroy not being able to land a kick to Jin in the chest, despite him blocking with his arms well apart from each other. It also looks silly when a character is blocking still and the other is attacking repeteadly at the same place, couldn’t he try to hit him from another angle or something? The backgrounds are done nicely but other than that the visuals are very weak, even more if you already watched Blood Vengeance.

The sound is also a bit boring. Tekken always had electronic music as soundtrack and although I’m no fan of the genre, in the games it was always hype, here not so much, it is also dubstep, which does not fit Tekken, nor brings a nostalgic feeling from the 90s when Tekken 3 came out, and also, it is dubstep, fuck that, there’s a reason why it died out so quickly and why nobody misses it. And since this was a Netflix series, it obviously had to have the most boring intro and outro you’ll hear in your life, at least until you watch another Netflix anime that isn’t Bastard!! The sound effects were alright or weak depending on the scene and the voice acting was acceptable, although they obviously don’t sound as young as the characters are supposed to be (specially Jin), and people didn’t like King sounding as a human instead of a tiger, I didn’t have a problem with that because he is a man with a tiger mask, not a real tiger, if anything is the games which are weird, not this.

And the action is boring, sorry, the fights are short and not very exciting because of the visuals. For a series which whole plot is a tournament arc, in a medium where you most likely have already seen the Tenkaichi Budokais in Dragon Ball (Dragon Ball, not Z), or the Chuunin exams in Naruto, the brutal fights in Baki, the cool punches in Hajime no Ippo, not to metion lots of other series with far more creative, violent and over the top fights, this is nothing, plus there is no reason to care about the people fighting. The only good thing in them was the characters getting actually injured, as long as they are not Xiaoyu. You could argue that Tekken was always a bit more grounded than other fighting games, well try to see this muscular CGI anime freaks that punch or kick each other two meters in the air in a straight line with traingles all the time on their heads with orange or white lights coming out from their hits as grounded.

But not everything is bad, I did say that this is the best fictional work based on Tekken after all. It’s the most faithful and focused of them all and it incorporated the fighting styles and effects from the games, thus being ok as fanservice if that is all you care about, which I assume it is for the majority of the fanbase, as I’ve seen. Actual good stuff comes from making Heihachi more colected than the over the top cartoony villain he would become as the games went on, even claiming to try and get rid of Ogre, thus seemingly doing awful things for the greater good (although it could be a lie), and the series making Jin a more symphatetic character than in the games. Over there he had his personal vendetta alright, but he was always a jerk towards everyone. Bloodline made him a better guy towards every other fighter, caring for Leroy, Xiaoyu, Hwoarang, even King and to a lesser extent Julia, thus giving the viewer reasons to support him besides wanting to avenge his mother, as well as showing him being conflicted between the teachings of his grandfather and the upbringing of his mother. Which is the second reason why making a continuation would be such a bad idea, besides the awful plot, as the videogame franchise went on he became more and more of an asshole, even tried to pull a Lelouch Lamperouge and became a world tyrant, thus completely abandoning whatever his mother taught him and becoming a person she would absolutely despise.

So, if you are a fan of the games and you don’t care about the plot and characters (as you should), and all you want is quick fanservice, you will probably like this series, as long as you don’t hate poor CGI. Otherwise stay the hell away from it and watch Street Fighter 2 the animated movie instead, it is actually well animated, good as fanservice, it improves the plot from the game it adapts by tying character arcs together, and the english version even has better soundtrack than the boring japanese one. Or watch an actual good action show or movie instead, that would be even better.