As a fan of Tekken I felt it was my duty to at least watch this and after watching this all I did was let out with a disappointing sigh. Here's why
::STORY::
This story takes place around the Tekken 1/2 period but differs a lot from the original story of both games. The main plot being Kazuya's vow to take revenge on his father Heihachi Mishima for throwing him down a cliff at a young age. Through this story we encounter many sub-plots filled within a short space of time, Jun Kazama who is an officer working for a Wildlife protection organisation has a sixth sense
...
that she uses to detect power or intention within people, she was with Kazuya before he got tossed down the cliff and thought he was dead. 16 years later she again meets with Kazuya after searching for Heihachi during the Tekken tournament and can sense a dark power within Kazuya known as Devil, at this time she is accompanied by a police officer named Lei. Another sub-plot being Jack's (A Massive Humanoid Robot) mission to save a young girl named Jane using the tournament to get to a secret lab, he is also accompanied by Lei later into the story. Basically the story and it's sub-plots are simple, which can work at times, but in this case, it was a miserable failure. It just didn't work, you hear all of this talk about fighting spirit near the beginning, yet in the end that stuff isn't important the tournament isn't even the actual highlight of the movie as it should have been.
::CHARACTERS::
Pretty, no, very dull characters I'm afraid, if you have never played Tekken you probably wont remember anybody's name. Kazuya tries to act like the hardass living for revenge, Jun is one of those caring, yet terribly irritating characters that talk of love and crap, Lei is the one with all of the jokes, Jack is your typical robot character with a somewhat dead personality, and the others are barely worth mentioning as they add very little colour to a dull cast that fail to develop.
::ANIMATION & ART::
The art is probably the worst thing about this OAV, from the horribly textured backgrounds to the poorly drawn characters to their poorly drawn clothes, it's just poor. The least they could do is match all the clothing to the actual clothing they have in the games, but they didn't even do that, the artists just designed their own horrible clothing and splashed in some effortless background images. The art just suffers, most anime if poor, is credited for its decent art, yet this actually pulls off having bad art as well.
The animation itself isn't awful though, not that anything in this OAV would have been significantly hard to animate, much of it is simple running or basic fight scenes, there aren't as many fight scenes as you'd expect since this is based off of a fighting game, but when the fights do come around they come off looking pretty stiff, sluggish and very simple. As an avid fan of good fight scenes AND Tekken, I was harshly disappointed with the simple uppercuts and body blows used in this anime, but overall there is just about enough action throughout the movie.
::SOUND::
I only watched the dub of this but the voices weren't horrible, if you've played the game you might have been annoyed with a few voices, maybe Kazuya and Heihachi are slightly too deep, but all-in-all it wasn't as bad as dubs can get.
The opening and ending wasn't anything special I have trouble actually remembering the themes but as they come to me I see its because they aren't worth remembering, basic rock here.
And the background music, well they aren't that bad themselves, but mixed in with Tekken, which thrives on having smooth, eclectic beats in the games, doesn't suit it at all. Mostly you'll hear overly-generic hard rock tunes that someone will throw on to their AMV thinking that it's original. This is the case with every fight scene.
::CONCLUSION::
Don't even bother, unless you really feel the need like I did, just don't watch, if you are a Tekken fan but you aren't a fan of Kazuya, Jun, Heihachi, Lei, Jack 2, Lee, Nina or Anna and possibly Michelle don't bother watching because you'll be disappointed most of all, especially fans of Law, King and Paul because they barely get more than a minute of screentime, and they'll mostly be standing there with expressionless faces, actually even if you are fans of those characters, don't watch this. You'll be doing yourself a favour and could be doing something productive in the hour you'll be wasting by watching this. As an adaptation, this is bad but as an anime, this is just pathetic. Not worth watching
Mar 10, 2009
As a fan of Tekken I felt it was my duty to at least watch this and after watching this all I did was let out with a disappointing sigh. Here's why
::STORY:: This story takes place around the Tekken 1/2 period but differs a lot from the original story of both games. The main plot being Kazuya's vow to take revenge on his father Heihachi Mishima for throwing him down a cliff at a young age. Through this story we encounter many sub-plots filled within a short space of time, Jun Kazama who is an officer working for a Wildlife protection organisation has a sixth sense ... Mar 9, 2009
Soul Eater
(Anime)
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Soul Eater is an impressive anime. It's one of those where you will no doubt enjoy watching
::STORY:: After watching some of the first episode you'll think Soul Eater will have your typical Shonen story. Basically, human weapons and their student technicians reside in Shibusen and have to collect 99 evil human souls and 1 witch soul, the reward being that the technician's weapon will transform into a Death Scythe. It seems pretty formulaic, nothing you haven't seen before. The way the first few episodes pan out will make this seem like the main goal, but soon after you'll realise there is actually a deeper story developing. ... |