By Ben Wright (@iamzavagno | www.xgeeks.co.uk)
This review is spoiler-free.
Synopsis:
After losing his home to the powerful enemy Ogre, hot-tempered Jin Kazama trains under his zealous grandfather Heihachi Mishima whilst awaiting his chance for revenge in the lead-up to the third King of Iron Fist tournament.
Netflix and Studio Hibari have teamed up to transform Tekken from video game to anime in the streaming platform’s latest foray into animated entertainment!
Based on Bandai Namco Studios’ Tekken, with most of the story influence stemming from the video game Tekken 3, Netflix and Studio Hibari have successfully managed to create a fun and action-packed anime packed full of great visuals and a snappy-paced story.
The animation style has plenty of opportunities to flex its creative muscles and does leave a lasting impression on you! The use of colouring and lighting is used to great effect in a number of fights and the animation is not afraid to switch art styles to help enhance certain scenes. Having such good animation is a good thing, as there are a few story elements that are a little formulaic. But when you are taking a beat-em-up video game, you are always going to have limits on what you can achieve. With that said, it’s still a lot of fun, and there are darker and gritty moments thrown in between the roundhouse kicks and super-punches.
With only six episodes in this first season, the pacing needed to be perfect, and the show wastes little time in introducing you to the protagonist, establishing his motivations, witnessing his training, and then ending up at the Iron Fist Tournament. Despite the breakneck pacing, there is still plenty of time to establish plenty of characters to invest in and while ideally, we could have gotten more backstory on some, for such a short batch of episodes I think they focused on those who were the focus of the episodes.
In terms of negatives, like I said, there are some generic elements in regard to the story, but the animation and fights make up for that. It is also pretty short, but I have come to expect this with Netflix’s anime offerings as they don’t like to commit too much early on. I was also disappointed that my favourite Tekken character, Yoshimitsu, was very much in the background and was to be seen and not heard – which is a huge but expected shame.
Tekken: Bloodline is an action-packed series full of extremely creative animation and epic fights that pack a real punch!
X-Geeks 