Tekken: Blood Vengeance Review

In terms of cinematic quality, the 90 minute long Tekken: Blood Vengeance 3D CG movie falls in-between the Resident Evil: Degeneration and Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children CG pictures, landing significantly closer to Advent Children, thankfully, than the atrocious Degeneration. However, seemingly by design, fans hoping for and expecting the thrills, gritty cyberpunk atmosphere, and bone-crushing fights of the popular Tekken game series and its wonderful CG movie sequences may find themselves disappointed by the feature film.

The movie revolves around schoolgirl Ling Xiaoyu. After she’s drafted to serve as a high school spy for the G Corporation, she bumps into classmate Alisa Bosconovich, a plant for the rival Mishima Conglomerate. Both girls are tasked with getting close to schoolboy Shin Kamiya, whom both the G Corporation and Mishima Zaibatsu have their eyes on, for a mysterious reason. In the post film interview, screenwriter Dai Sato reveals that he consciously wrote a screenplay that would differ from the Tekken games. His intention was to create a movie that would give viewers a different look at Tekken, offering plot & character development and action unlike the games. And the movie succeeds in that aim, for better or worse. Revealing Sato’s experience as an anime screenwriter, the bulk of Tekken: Blood Vengeance is a high school mystery in which two teen girls bare their hearts to each other. While the picture moves along briskly, it actually includes only three martial arts fights in its entire running time (arguably four depending on how one chooses to define the first half of the climactic battle). More troubling is the fact that its central mystery is not only a MacGuffin, it’s largely counterproductive. In effect, the movie’s narrative seems to be several disparate ideas crudely mashed together, ideas that don’t effectively compliment each other or effectively develop their themes. However, with the briskness of the plot development and its frequent cuts to supporting characters, viewers aren’t likely to notice the plot holes until after the film is finished. To its credit, the movie is never aggravatingly stupid, but it’s also never fully engrossing. The few fight scenes are nicely rendered and satisfyingly lengthy, but the movie never consistently develops the suspense or intensity that characterize the Tekken games’ cut scenes. The film does benefit from a subtle and effective sense of humor. Further to its credit, the movie includes nods to the Tekken cast but doesn’t get bogged down with character cameos. The movie concentrates on being faithful to its narrative which results in a substantial ten or so game characters appearing in the film but not a roster of unnecessary and distracting character cameos.

The film’s animation is fluid and natural. Faces are never especially expressive, but their animation is adequate. Details like clothing and hair are nicely modeled, and textures throughout the picture are good with the exception of a few shots at the beginning of the film that are noticeably simplified and look unfinished. The English dub is usually adequate, although some moments seem forced or unnatural, and some lines of dialogue seem as though they may be loose localizations. The bigger problem with the dub is the fact that it’s noticeably a post-animation dub. Since the animation was designed around spoken Japanese language, character expressions and reactions are sometimes barely but noticeably out of synch with the spoken English dialogue due to the natural differences in Japanese and English grammar. In effect, at times a character’s physical motion will seem a half-second ahead or behind of the triggering dialogue. The film score is used sparingly, and while serviceable, it’s not memorable or even particularly noticeable.

The audience reaction in the theater I watched the movie in was positive, reacting at all of the right beats. But the audience was also noticeably deflated as the credits rolled, pleased to have seen a decent film but disappointed that the film was a typical anime starring Tekken characters rather than a movie which really expanded the excitement, intensity, and tone of the Tekken games onto the silver screen. The film doesn’t disregard its core audience of Tekken faithful, but at the same time, by conscious design, it doesn’t deliver precisely what’s made the games so popular. According to Tekken project leader Katsuhiro Harada, “We want to make a movie that everyone can enjoy… Not just Tekken fans.” Having Digital Frontier, the CG animation studio that rendered the game’s FMV sequences, animate the movie was a wise decision. However, bringing in screenwriter Dai Sato, who is an avowed fan of the Tekken franchise but not especially familiar with the games’ narrative, results in a movie that refers to Tekken plot points and stars Tekken characters but feels like a conventional teen adventure anime rather than the hardboiled, dystopic Tekken fighting games.

The Tekken: Blood Vengeance movie will hit American Blu-ray in November billed as “Tekken Hybrid,” a Blu-ray disc that will include the CG film, playable on any BD player, and Tekken Tag HD, a Playstation 3 exclusive high definition re-release of the 1999 Tekken Tag Tournament fighting game.