Review for Tekken: Blood Vengeance (Review)
Friday, 3rd February 2012, 16:20

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Introduction
It’s 2012, the era of high-tech, and Tekken: Blood Vengeance is the latest 3D CG anime movie to come via the auspices of Digital Frontier, the studio behind the similar Appleseed and Vexille movies. You’re wondering why Manga Entertainment aren’t releasing it on Blu-ray; you’re wondering why you aren’t watching this in high definition. Well, that’s because you clicked on the wrong department of your entertainment emporium of choice. Click on video games, go to the Playstation 3 aisle, and place Tekken Hybrid into your virtual basket. Not only will you be able to play the game, but Tekken Hybrid offers you Tekken: Blood Vengeance as a bonus to the game, on Blu-ray disc. The last time I played a video game, they still came out on cartridges, so I don’t know if that HD release of Tekken: Blood Vengeance will only work on PS3s, or if it will also play on standalone Blu-ray players. If you are as technologically inept as I, then this DVD only release will come as a godsend.

Then again, if you’re as technologically inept as I, maybe Tekken: Blood Vengeance isn’t for you. I played the original Tekken on Playstation way back when, and for me it was just a pretty looking beat-‘em-up. Consider my shock when I learned that the series is now past Tekken 6, and that Tekken Blood Vengeance is set in between Tekkens 5 and 6. Consider further my shock at this implication that Tekken has a storyline running through its games. Despite several examples to the contrary, I still have a mistrust of movies based on videogames, and I have to admit that I didn’t approach Tekken: Blood Vengeance with anything approaching enthusiasm, especially given the passing of the buck when it comes to who is responsible for its release here. Manga Entertainment are releasing it on DVD in the UK on behalf of Kazé Entertainment who have the European release rights, so the format of the disc is down to them. Except that they are acting as agents of Namco Bandai, so the content of the disc is their responsibility. I suppose none of that matters if the movie is actually any good. Of course me being completely out of touch with the Tekken franchise, I haven’t the slightest idea what was going on when the movie started.

Mishima Zaibatsu and the G Corporation are in competition for the M gene, the key to immortality, although that competition is apt to get violent when sisters Nina and Anna Williams are on opposing sides. They track down the gene to a high school student named Shin Kamiya, and in order to get close to him, Anna enlists a female student to join his elite school and spy on him. Ling Xiaoyu has to be ‘persuaded’, but the operative that Nina finds only has to be programmed, as Alisa Bosconovitch is an android. But as the two rivals investigate Shin for their respective employers, they uncover conspiracies and plots that point to something dark and ominous, a relentless lust for blood vengeance that involves three generations of the same family. To counter this darkness, Ling and Alisa will have to join forces against their employers.

Picture
Tekken: Blood Vengeance gets a pretty smooth 1.85:1 anamorphic PAL transfer. The image is clear and colourful throughout, and the animation comes across well. There is a slight softness to the image, especially in the fine detail and edges, and there are spots of moiré and moments of jerkiness, but it isn’t enough to diminish the viewing experience.

However, the animation itself lacks a little something when compared to Appleseed or Vexille. Maybe I’m biased by the source material, but other than nods to movies like The Matrix or Terminator, Tekken plays very much like a feature length videogame cut scene, with action dominating, and character development non-existent. It’s just flashy visual upon flashy visual. The character designs no doubt match their videogame equivalents, and while the voice acting couldn’t be faulted, the motion capture actors who provided the source of the character movements tended to overact, with every gesture ending up like a pose from a catalogue.

Sound
Audio comes in Dolby Digital 5.1, with English, Japanese, French, and Italian options, while subtitles are available in English, Italian, French and Dutch as well as signs only tracks for Italian, and French (The video has burnt in English text translations for all versions). The audio is fine, the dialogue is clear, and the action comes across well, although greater emphasis is given in the audio balance to the action, rather than the music score. Because the lip movements of the characters are motion captured, the sync fits the Japanese dialogue precisely, but the other language audio tracks aren’t as smooth a fit.

This should make the subtitles indispensable for those choosing to watch the original language audio because of this, but alas Namco Bandai have only provided dubtitles, that is subtitles that follow the English dialogue track exactly. When you have watched as much anime as I have in the original language, you’ll have picked up just enough Japanese to get you into trouble if you actually try to use it, but also enough to notice when what’s said on screen varies wildly from what is written down below, both in terms of content and timing. That happens here. Unfortunately for our European brethren, it looks like their subtitles are word for word translations of the English dubtitles.

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