Tekken

I was really disappointed and mad after I watched this movie. My expectations were too high. The beginning of the movie was the best part because it was giving the information of the story. Beyond that it started to decline more and more. The thing that really made me mad was why show characters from Tekken 3 at the opening credits if they weren't in the rest of the movie. That's just stupid in my eyes. Once the tournament started, what happened with all the characters? Yoshimitsu, Marshall Law, Paul Phoenix, King, Armor King, all were seen and didn't show them throughout the tournament. Everyone had a story to tell in that game, but they only centered it on Jun and Kazuya. They only thing that was a plus was that it was filled in some of the blanks on Tekken 2 between the two of them. Lee Chaolan was just an idiot on the movie. I understand that in game story he was obsessed about controlling the Mishima Zaibatsu, but he would never go as far to kill himself and and destroy the company so no one else would get it. He's not that insane.

Overall, the movie really let me down. Like I said before the only thing that was good was the information. At least now we know that how Jin came to be born. I just wish we could've learned more about the other characters. That's the only thing that was wrong about the movie. Hopefully, if they do another movie they would get it right, but that's only going on hope.

I personally am a huge fan of the Tekken series (specifically 3 and Tag Tournament), and when I saw that there was a Tekken anime, I was thrilled. Since I couldn't find it anywhere, I set it to download on Kazaa. It took two or three days to download, building up the anticipation of seeing one of my favorite video games brought to life. When I finally watched it, I was thoroughly disappointed. This movie had very little redeeming qualities to it: the characters were mostly annoying (ie- Lee Chaolan, Nina and Anna, Heihachi, Jun Kazama), and as has been mentioned before, the fighting and character development were minimal. Seemed like the most interesting character was Jack and the little girl, though it seemed a little corny and done before (the whole machine learning how to feel, etc...). The plot line went all over the place and ended up barely resembling the game. What also bothered me was that some of the more interesting characters from the series (Paul Phoenix, King and Armor King, Yoshimitsu, etc...) were in it for about 5 seconds in the background in the final scene. Much of the movie was completely gratuitous (Anna's shower scene, the stealth mutant dinosaurs). This movie gets a 2 for effort and the couple half-interesting scenes with Jack.

This movie is about a rich man, Heihachi Mishima, who is obsessed with destroying the devil in order to create a better new world. He intentionally throws his son Kazuya from a cliff creating a devil within Kazuya. However, nobody has ever seen Kazuya ever since. Certain that Kazuya will go for it, Heihachi announces a martial arts competition. The one who get to Heihachi first and the manages to defeat him, wins the prize-money and the title of "King of Iron Fist". Kazuya shows up indeed but as he attempts to kill his father he is consistently stopped by Jun, a girl from his childhood, who was there when Heihachi threw him off the cliff. Now is there at the tournament and she won't stop at nothing to release Kazuya from the devil within him.

Although this Anime is not the exactly best, I think they did a very good job with the story. Considering the amount of Tekken characters in existence (52, including the ones that are not in the game)they managed to get many of the characters in it without harming the continuity of the story. On the other hand I thought there was too little of Devil in it and Jun just doesn't stop talking. 6/10

From the video game 'Tekken' comes an anime movie, 'Tekken: The Motion Picture'. The story begins the same as the story of 'Mortal Kombat'. As in 'Mortal Kombat' the main villain makes sure another person has to seek revenge, as in 'Mortal Kombat' martial art experts get on a boat to arrive on an island, and as in 'Mortal Kombat' a tournament is the reason to do so. We follow a couple of different persons who all want to kill the villain, all with their own reasons. On their journeys they encounter some strange enemies and of course hidden secrets are revealed.

Although the animation is not as good as we normally see in this kind of movies there still is some energy, especially in the fighting sequences. This is not a very good movie but since it is not that long, less than an hour, it was quite watchable. Although most things are ridiculous, even for anime, I was entertained. Because of its running time it doesn't find a chance to become really boring. There are better movies from the genre but for only an hour there is a good chance you will like it.

This was a bad idea from the get go. Tekken is not a game that would translate to the screen very well. First of all Tekken has 20+ characters, most of which have little connection to one another so in order to get everyone on screen for a remotely decent length of time it would be a giant montage of fight scenes (because no one is about to sit through the slow development of all 20 characters out of which only 5 are worth talking about). There are too many characters to work with so it's inevitable that they focus in on a select few.

But which few? Most have nothing to do with each other. Adding insult to injury, this anime also tries to morph the plotlines of Tekken 1 and Tekken 2 together. Yay, more characters. If they stuck with the Tekken 1 premise – a simple tournament and a simple father/son rivalry, this would have worked much better. They should have focused in on Kazuya's past, his rise throughout the tournament, the very beginnings of his dealing with Devil, and his confrontation with Heihachi. The narrative could stick with Kazuya as he faces off with different people and occasionally jump to other fights by the main characters thereby incorporating them into the overall story as well - then it might be worth watching.

That would leave the door open for a Tekken anime sequel, it would keep the non-Tekken literate viewers informed as to the whole mythology around Tekken, and it would have been an overall better film. Also that approach would give them plenty of time to either kill off or incapacity and/or address certain characters so they don't have to deal with as many in a sequel. But nope, they tried to pack everything into one film – even Tekken 2's joke characters which had no place in the game, much less the movie. So we get lots of characters on screen who ramble and add nothing to anything and hardly ever fight despite being based on a fighting game.

Another point – for one I did not like for the quality of this anime's drawing. It wasn't very inspiring. Add to that the fact all of Tekken's characters previously have been strictly CG-rendered which makes a drawn interpretation feel like a fish out of water; looking across the characters I found myself saying, `That's not Lei Wu Long; that can't be Kazuya . . .' and I couldn't buy into much of it from then on out.

Final thoughts: Tekken isn't a game that lends itself too terribly well to anything other than its own medium. It's shallow as a fighting game, so it's no surprising that the anime adaptation reflects this so well.