Rating: *
In 1993, NAMCO released the fighting video game 'Tekken' about a martial arts contest held by the powerful Mishima corporation. It was extremely successful, and was followed by the greatest fighting game of all time-- named (what else?) 'Tekken 2.' At this point, there have been four more sequels, including a Tag Tournament and a Game Boy version. This anime follows the storyline in the first two.
Let me start off by saying that I think anime stinks for the most part. Only one show, 'Dragonball Z', is any good, and it drags its stories out far too long. This adaptation of the game series, however, has the opposite problem: it is far too short.
The fight scenes are pitiful and don't even start to get thrilling. Of all the characters in the game, only Kazuya, Heihachi, Lee, and Jun get any decent screen time (Lei and Jack-2 are the only others that get any real time at all). And they're not developed nearly enough.
A couple of Lee's scenes are interesting and there is one attempted assassination on Kazuya by Nina that's sort of okay, but otherwise this is a badly written, boring anime flick.
And when a sixty minute movie is boring, you know you're in trouble.
Anyone not familiar with the story line will be utterly confused and find the film completely incomprehensible. Those familiar with it will be disappointed by how poor it is.
The script is so bad that the writers call 'Tekken' a mysterious thing that doesn't make sense. After Lee's two incomprehensible sentences about it, it is completely ignored. What is it-- the Force? A magical fighting style? An underwear style? Who knows.
Tekken means Iron Fights, and the geniuses who wrote this piece of crud don't understand that this is supposed to make just a little bit of sense. Not to mention that what is understandable is extraordinarily stupid and illogical.
Besides the script reeking, the rest stinks, too. The voice acting (I am talking about the English version) is awful, the direction is pointlessly poor, and the music score wanders between okay and really, really annoying.
If you aren't familiar with the games, avoid this at all costs. If you have, you might consider seeing it on TV as a point of interest, but don't waste any money on it. There aren't a lot of films worse than this.
Rating: *
