Tekken: Blood Vengeance

This is my first review, so please, bear with me if I do something wrong.
Introduction: I’ll try to write this review from points of view of both, Tekken fans and people that barely heard of it. There isn’t much of a story summary on MyAnimeList right now, so I’ll write something short. For people that know Tekken, they need only to know that the infamous grandfather, father, son trio is at it once again. For others, keep reading.

Summary: The main character is Ling Xiaoyu (side character in games) who is given a mission from G-Corp to spy on a certain guy called ... Shin Kamiya. They first meet when he tries to jump of a building and is saved by her. Soon after, she meets a strange girl, Alisa, who claims to have a crush on Shin. It all seemed like an easygoing, slice-of-life I’d never watch at this point but I can assure you, it’s anything but that.

Story: 6/10
First of all, you don’t need to have huge previous knowledge of Tekken in order to truly enjoy the story. The most important things are either stated outright or hinted at so obviously that you’d have to be drunk and play a video game while watching it not to get it. The only thing you need to know is that Kazuya and Jin don’t like each other. But that’s rather obvious, I guess. Plot was really interesting, something like a mix between a mystery and a slice-of-life at first, turned into an action packed piece very fast. Fortunately, it wasn’t fast enough to get lost in it. The main focus is on G-Corp (read: Kazuya Mishima) and Mishima Zaibatsu (read: Jin Kazama) fighting for… well… even they forgot what they were fighting for at the end, what mattered to them was that they were fighting.

However, nothing is perfect and also this story suffers at the quality level. Although I liked it, the plot holes destroyed the atmosphere for me. There are too many important things left unexplained and many other forgotten (The whole thing with Shin.) that should have at least left the characters wondering what happened. Instead, it felt that the scriptwriter didn’t bother finishing it and gave all characters loss of short-term memory.

Characters: 8/10
One of the most appealing things for me was that the story focused on Xiaoyu and Alisa (originally side characters). Despite the huge majority (read: all but one) of characters being from Tekken games, it also brought something new into the Tekken world a completely original character Shin Kamiya. He is the one everything and everyone is focused on (although they forget about him very fast when they get a chance) and plays that role very good. This seemingly emo boy with a dark past and a bad habit of jumping from buildings proved to be something more very soon and got deeply involved in a certain family quarrel. I really enjoyed the brand new character as it gave the film a mysterious feeling.

The two main characters, Alisa and Xiaoyu, turned out to be good leading characters even though they had very little (if any) interactions in the games. The dynamics between the at first clueless cute pink haired girl and the panda owner (no kidding) that had to hide her purpose at the school was very interesting form the start to the end partly because their relationship changed over time as they both found out the deepest secret of the other. The changes were very fluent despite going from rivals in love to enemies to close friends within a few minutes.

All other characters are perfectly portrayed in the film compared to the games and talking about them too much would just spoil it for non-Tekken fans and be a bore for Tekken fans. I can assure you that you’ll be able to tell importance and nature of nearly everyone after one scene with them.

The only problem I had with the characters was that they were quite easy to predict if you knew them and many of them had a few cliché scenes.

Sound: 8/10
I, personally, really enjoyed the sound because it fit perfectly to the scene, whether it was a fight or a gloomy moment. It went along with what was going on adding to the atmosphere very nicely. However, I don’t consider the score to be anything spectacular on its own.

Animation: 9/10
Animation was amazing and as fluent as it could be. Fancy effects were nearly everywhere so that even a water drop felt like art. Battle scenes were a true highlight of the animation because nearly everything (besides the usual Tekken exaggerations) felt real. There was something that felt overdone here and there (Xiaoyu’s sinister glare that was supposed to be a teasing grin) but that could be just me.

Enjoyment: 6/10
Battles were amazing just as the Alisa and Xiaoyu duo, however the story destroyed it or me. It really felt as if the scriptwriters gave up at the end, being unable to fit everything into the hour and a half and decided to forget about it in favor of cool and flashy battles (fortunately they were cool and flashy).

Overall: 7/10
This film isn’t bad. It’s actually quite good but I don’t advise you to watch it unless there’s a certain hook for you there, ideally being a fan of Tekken as knowledge of what’s going on only helps. Actually, knowing at least a little about Tekken and enjoying it is enough. Watch this if you like action and epic fighting scenes but don’t expect a complicated plotline where eventually everything gets explained. If possible, forget about the whole story when all characters do and pretend it never happened, the film is truly amazing and nearly flawless when you do that.

Whoever composed the trailer for this film deservers some sort of award for editing, because i for one was whole-heartedly anticipating this film a great deal.

Given the sheer amount of characters and character turnover, and the fact we're now approaching the 6th generation of games, the story has been somewhat of a shambles for some time. That said they do attempt to the focus the story on a handful of cast members, with the odd cameo appearances from Tekken regulars.
Xiaoyu, Jin, Kazuya, Anna and Nina make up the main stays, joined by newcomer from the most recent game Alisa Bosconovitch.
Xiaoyu is recruited by Anna ... on behalf of Kazuya to investigate Shin a former class mate of Jin's. I frankly have lost track of if she's still looking for Jin as was the case at some point, but i assume this to be her motivation for going along with this.
The story was, even by Tekken standards pretty terrible, poorly constructed and largely unnecessary, the story merely serves to gather all the characters behind the scenes together for big show down, rendering the leads as little more than spectators.

The CGI doesn't seem to have made any real progress from the first Final Fantasy film. It generally all looks very nice, and the action scenes flow very well and look highly impressive, but they've still got a long way to go with the character models. Xiaoyu looks down right creepy at times, any time they attempt to animate anything facially the whole process falls down horribly, and looks terrible and often deformed. Alisa came out better, but there's still plenty of off moments. Claire Redfield's model in Biohazard: Degeneration single handedly destroyed the film for me, and with that setting the bar pretty low the efforts here have not done much better.

Xiaoyu and Alisa's friendship in the film actually worked for me and was one of the better aspects of the film. I'd not learnt anything of Alisa from the last game, but her voice acting was good and most of her scenes with Xiaoyu were enjoyable. The rivalries between Jin and Kazuya and Nina and Anna also feature heavily as a secondary focus, none are fleshed out in any meaningful manor, but this was clearly aimed at existing fans, so entirely forgiveable.

Now i doubt many people expected much from the story, so what about the fights? The answer is very hit and miss. All the early action is very average, Xiaoyu and Alias's mid way fight was probably the high point for me, with the end 3 way show down being hugely disappointing, although i did enjoy getting to see all the devil forms in action. There's allot of wasted potential here, I'd have enjoyed nothing more than seeing Jin and Kazuya go at it as often as possible, there's a total lack of focus, or downright epicness to the fights, i was left feeling largely unsatisfied and would have no real desire to re-watch any of the sequences, there just not that technically good.

Overall there's just allot of wasted potential, i get that they couldn't do anything to drastic to the Tekken universe, but the fights we did get were just hugely underwhelming, the story wasn't well thought out and there's not allot to praise, i can't help but wish one of these game film adaptation's would adapt the actual game material, the events between Tekken 2 and 3 would have made for an excellent story, hint hint.

Greetings, commoners. It is I, Emilie De Rochefort the Great. Due to the informal situation, you may call me Lili.
As many of you have no doubt noticed, Namco made the very questionable decision to omit me from the CGI feature "Tekken: Blood Vengeance". Instead, they offered me to watch and review it for this particular website, an offer I graciously accepted.
Now, many (or all) of you may find my omission from this movie to be highly alarming. After all, I am the main character of the Tekken franchise, and the entire plot revolves around me and my exciting exploits. But I suppose that some ... fans of the series would enjoy seeing the side characters get 93 minutes in the limelight.
Now, without further ado, let us get to the bottom of things. Sebastian, bring our guests some chairs. We'll be here for a while.

The story revolves around some high school girl I don't know being hired by some evil corporation to spy on a strapping young lad named Shin Kamiya, whom you may know from the hit Tekken spin-off: A Certain Ridiculous Plot Device. Hm? What's that? Shin wasn't actually in any of the games and was just created for the sole purpose of being a generally unimportant non-character to fill empty spaces in promotional images? O-of course I knew that! I was just testing you. And you passed! G-good job!
Sebastian, shut down the Tekken Wiki for feeding me false information!
Anyway, none of this is actually important, as it is simply pointless build-up to a highly ridiculous finale where a father and his beloved son turn into dragons and start firing laser beams at each other.
And no, it doesn't make any more sense in context.

The main flaw of the story is that plotlines are frequently picked up and then unceremoniously dropped mere moments later. Was Shin Kamiya actually relevant to anything ever? Was there a point to the whole Xiaoyu and Alisa friendship story? Was the convenient ancient power buried under some castle ages ago that the villain used to fashion a giant mecha made of wooden statues ever explained or given any foreshadowing whatsoever?
The answer to all of those questions, children, is no. None of the characters have their personalities fleshed out, and none of their motives nor objectives were ever clearly explained. Indeed, my presence would have greatly improved this vulgar display of plotting incompetence. I might even go so far as to say that I would have come up with a much more satisfying story.

But enough of that. Did I ever mention that I have a beautiful singing voice? In fact, my debut single, "I Am Wonderful (And You Wish You Were Me)" is available for download at bTunes right now. I do believe your life would be greatly improved by purchasing and listening to said work of musical art.
Speaking of voices, that is something I found myself to be mildly delighted with in regards to this production. The English cast (I did not feel like forcing myself through this a second time to form an opinion on the Japanese audio track) includes a plethora of well-known names, many of which did a very competent job on conveying the very flawed script.
The soundtrack was more or less what one would expect from my humble franchise, with generic techno and rock pieces playing over the fight scenes.

Ah, the fight scenes. Indeed, one of this movie's greatest strengths is the animation. The fight choreography is elaborate and the CGI is, in general, very pretty. Obviously, my very graceful fighting style would have worked wonders in attracting moviegoers, and I would of course have won all the fights. There is no fighter in this world who would even hope to stand a chance against fabulous moi. Would you perhaps like to watch a demonstrative film of my eloquent fighting moves? Sebastian, prepare the projector. We must make sure to entertain our loyal audience.

Getting back to the topic, though I would rather not do so, I suppose this feature could be described as "all style, no substance". The action is fast and stylish, but the storyline is, to put it in vulgar terms, an absolute mess of biblical proportions.
Actually, everyone who has already watched this movie is in agreement that me taking on the star role would have made the entire production at least eight times better. I know it's true because I read it on the "inter-web". As a modest lady, I cannot flat-out state that I think the same, but let it be known that I do, and that the primitive minds at Namco have committed an act comparable to inefficiently slicing off their own heads with wooden spoons by refusing me a role in this utter travesty.

Sebastian, get Producer Harada on the phone and tell him that I will not stand for any more of this nonsense. I think it's time that he learned his rightful place in the world.

Oh? You're still here? I advise you to stay away from this sordid trainwreck, as it is nothing but a load of nonsense peppered with occasional overblown battle scenes. Namco seem to have realised their mistake, as they are now preparing a full TV anime series by the name of "Magical Fighter Lili II: Saving The World With A Smile ~A Tekken Story~". I am certain that it will be the most popular show of the Summer 2015 season.

It's time for my afternoon tea. Farewell.