This Week in Anime

Is Tekken: Bloodline Worth Watching?

Nicky
A bear is no problem. Ever since I spectated the last EVO, I have been spending day and night practicing combos and failing miserably. I'll never make it to the bear because I can't even avoid getting my butt kicked by Reindog. Though, a bear also scares me less than the idea of having to fight Neco-Arc.

Inspired by the plot of Tekken 3, Tekken: Bloodline focuses on Jin Kazama, who was raised by his mother, Jun Kazama, up until a creature called Ogre came a knockin' and blew his whole life apart. I'll note while it's based on the popular Japanese fighting game, the script and the original dub for this adaptation were completely written in English and animation being mainly done by the anime studio Larx Entertainment doing the kind of 3DCG we've all come to expect from Netflix.

And unfortunately I have even less experience with fighting games other than what I can randomly absorb through osmosis. Which is actually quite a bit considering all my best pals are huge nerds. Though I remember Kazuya's Super Smash Bros. Ultimate promo video particularly for making tossing other characters into an active volcano like his father did to him an equally dramatic and hilarious bit. And I wish Tekken: Bloodline carried even a fifth of that energy.

Personally, reading the Tekken wiki boggled me less than trying to read the Guilty Gear one. (I both greatly anticipate and dread the day an actual Guilty Gear anime gets announced.) Cuz when you zoom out, it really is just the story of one really violent family with a lot of flashy execution and stuff in-between. Some of which follows some archetypes commonly found in other martial arts based narratives. Like Tiger Masks?!

Yeah, while trying to be a more modern adaptation there's part of me that wants to diagnose Bloodline with "Netflix Disease," the condition where, once infected possibly by some sort of executive motto, all anime produced by Netflix start feeling the same. The same pace, the same ADR, the same visual direction and plot beats. Despite being done by different people!! Jin at age 15 is being chased by bullies through the forest. He retributes by opening up a fresh can of ass-kicking upon them. But by that time I'm already inflicted by symptoms of drowsiness.

He gets scolded by his mom and teacher about the importance of self-control, but y'know in a down-to-earth mom fashion? She's got hella mom jeans.

It's not an actor problem either since I know Kaiji Tang, who plays Jin, can do excellent work from hearing him as Gojo in the Jujutsu Kaisen dub. But every line read is just soooo slow and since it's likely recorded in English first, switching to the Japanese dub didn't make much of a difference in performance. But it's worth mentioning since it makes all Jun's lessons in particular feel pretentious and unimportant because there's no weight behind their meaning. This is a huge failure because she's supposed to be the moral crux of the story and her death is the thing that drives Jin throughout.

I am of the belief that it's partially in the writing because Jun is portrayed as this young and relatable cool-parent that's more typical of many mom stories now, but it creates a less imposing impression of someone who very strongly believes in her ideals that we're supposed to really internalize as truth.

It also doesn't really seem to fully flesh out some of the material it does have either. Like, it could've been a cool opportunity to show things like Jun's feelings towards Jin's evil father Kazuya in the way the games never could, or we could've seen some of the crazy things the Mishima Corporation were up to without tearing away from the focus of Jin's story. Instead, the scope seems small. Jin's mother tells him to seek out his grandfather, Heihachi Mishima, and then after a couple years of of training he's off to the tournament.

After being lectured by his mom for a full episode we then spend several episodes being lectured by Heihachi, his paternal grandfather. Unlike the Kazama style his mother taught him that focuses on throws and disarming people, the Mishima style is to be fully aggressive, striking down and destroying your opponent until there's nothing left. Heihachi is as brutal in the ring as he is in business. He doesn't respect anyone, especially not Jin.

Unfortunately, the fights still feel pretty weightless due to the CG, so even though there's supposed to be different styles, none of them felt greatly different to me.

He has the potential to be a pretty good heel as well as ideological opponent for Jin, but he talks forever and never feels quite as interesting as your average Baki villain. Which is the level of HAM I would've wanted for something like this.

If only the real world solved CEO battles through deadly combat. I could pick a few that could use a good toss off a cliff.

Why is Polnareff here and why did he steal Ken's outfit?

We also get Kazuma's friends/rivals Hwoarang and Ling Xiaoyu that he met during his time training and going to school while living under Heihachi's roof.

But also, major points down for the fact that Xiaoyu doesn't even have her panda with her.

That's part of what I meant about the scope being too small earlier, Jin spends more screen time punching training dummies than these guys before the tournament.

The show's style isn't bad all the time, some of the 2D close-ups of expressions are clean, but it's that kind of consistency that makes it blur very hard for me both aesthetically and emotionally.

I think Xiaoyu had my favorite fights overall since she's really different compared to some of the more brute force styles and her technique comes off despite the floaty-ness of the animation. Even Heihachi gives her some credit, which is super rare for him.

Though, we also got Leroy Smith, who I was surprised to see cuz he's actually a new character that was introduced in Tekken 7 but then I got super disappointed as he only exists for Jin to break his leg in the first match.

He has a decent reason to hold a grudge too since Mishima Corp killed his whole family in New York 50 years ago but do we ever get see that? Nope. Again just a lot of waisted potential to expand the scope that the story never takes and leaves only to implication at best.

And while some of the tournament fights can be sweet, they're ultimately short and usually sandwiched with exposition. Like I thought the stuff surrounding King being a successor was interesting because the first King was reported killed by Ogre but the way it was told was kind of boring when everything is just delivered by Heihachi to make Jin and the audience feel dumb or by tell and don't show.

But it sucks when that applies to every character that you could feel just something better that you're not actually watching! Jin learns that Mishima might be totes responsible for the Ogre problem after Julia Chang fails an assault on Heihachi and still wants to go along with the tournament for the sake of his revenge.

Yeah, so if the point of this series is to draw new people like us into the Tekken franchise it really fails at that because it leaves out so much that brings in wider appeal even when kept to its most base elements. I don't really see the appeal as fanservice either when you don't get an expanded version of the thing you've already experienced, even if this is technically a step above PSOne graphics.

I think even if this was somehow just supposed to be an empty excuse for a brain-off action show, it doesn't serve that treatment. I know there's a mass audience for a Tekken anime. There are a few satisfying moments in this but they can't carry the show through its slow pacing. If you're a big martial arts nerd, you've probably already got a bunch of more interesting foreign films clogging your Netflix queue or a ton of anime in your backlog you haven't watched yet.