Tekken

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.

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.

Tekken the emotion the storyline is basically is a combination of Tekken one and two it's not really that hard to follow of course back in the '90s that's when fighting games are so popular we don't actually follow the story is much we just play the game and enjoy it so if you want the story you have to read it for yourself on the Internet or in the booklets that each PlayStation game actually had I've actually seen this movie before I even read the actual story that was canon I can understand that some people dislike this movie but I've actually enjoyed it myself so it wasn't bad I've seen worse.

I'm a huge fan of the Tekken series, as well as of anime movies, so it was only natural that I would see this film eventually. Here's my quick take on it.

The Tekken video games, despite popular belief, have very deep storylines. There are over fifty characters, all connected to one another via relationships, grudges, sordid pasts, and anything else imaginable. The filmmakers decided to crush this level of depth into sixty minutes of screentime. Obviously, only a few of the characters could be focused on, but they made a gosh-darn good effort at trying to squeeze every last character they could in there anyway. Some fighters were touched on, then lost, others existed solely to be killed by the more popular characters. The ones that did last long enough to have a real storyline were horrendously twisted from their video game counterparts', again, all in an effort to fit as much as humanly possible into an hour long movie.

The Tekken part of the movie was mangled, but sadly, also was the anime part, which could have been it's redeeming quality. In true anime style, there were long-winded speeches, sappy emotional connections, over-the-top fisticuffs, and more gore than you can shake a proverbial stick at. However, the movie takes these elements to such a level that they appear to be almost a charicature of anime. The conversations are dull and pointless, punctuated by awful voice-actors and unnecessary background music that mercifully drowns out parts of it. The emotional scenes are overdone and don't evoke any real emotions. The fights, when they do occur, consist of talking mostly, with the occasional bloody beat-down. When dinosaurs get released all over the island...well, things just get ridiculous in that department.

With all the bashing this movie has received from other critics and me, don't think you necessarily have to avoid it at all costs, either. There are some good, action-packed scenes that make it almost worth suffering through the bad ones. All in all, Tekken: The Motion Picture is good, campy fun that should be seen by all fans of the games once...and only once.

As far as this movie goes, I can only say this... WHAT HAPPENED!?

The movie starts oddly enough with Kazuya Mishima getting tossed off a cliff by his father, Heihachi which didn't really do anything for this movie.

The only real good parts about this movie were the music in the English version, (good choices) and a shower scene and implied sex scene between Anna Williams and Lee Chowlan.

Other than that... this movie sucks.

On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being bad, and 10 being excellent, this gets a big fat goose egg!