This is a Japtoon so mediocre, it doesn’t even deserve vitriol.
No, the appropriate response to Tekken: The Motion Picture is almost certainly a simple sigh and a shake of the head. The last thing it deserves is for someone to acknowledge its existence in the form of a review, but it’s Theme Week here on Colony Drop, and I pulled the short stick.
The 1997 VHS release of Legend of the Crystals stands out amongst the releases of effectively-defunct Japanimation publisher Urban Vision. The majority of their catalog is firmly rooted in the “Not Kids’ Stuff” marketing of the 1990s: violent and grotesque gothic horror, darker-and-edgier superhero remakes, and Golgo 13. A light-hearted tie-in to a video game that wouldn’t be released (officially) in English for several years doesn’t really jibe with the rest of their catalog, even taking into account the gold rush of videogame adaptation releases following the breakout success of Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie. But there it is: MADHOUSE’s 1994 Final Fantasy OAV series, easily the best non-game production to wear the franchise’s name, chilling on Blockbuster Video’s Japanimation shelf.
Though billed as a tie-in to a dating sim, True Tears breaks such shows’ trademark tendency of using hideous character designs with distorted features indicative of developmental disorders. Nominal chromosome counts aren’t the only distinguishing characteristic of the cartoon, which, name aside, turns out to have absolutely nothing in common with the eponymous visual novel. Yet, even as it fails to serve as an exploration of the game (which Wikipedia describes as a generic moé property), True Tears the animation succeeds as an enjoyable show.
[The following is a guest review from one Kid Fenris, AKA Todd, AKA “that jack-off who writes Anime News Network’s videogame column."]
If game-derived anime started anywhere, it started with Super Mario Bros.: The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach. It came way before the modern plague of anime based on dating simulators, predating even the 1990s outbreak of direct-to-video nonsense spawned by any fighting game more popular than Cyberbots. In that distant year of 1986, a profit-gorged Nintendo commissioned an hour-long movie about their biggest game, Super Mario Bros. Though the results were quickly swept aside and ignored for decades, The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach was nonetheless a harbinger of what was to follow.
Battle Arena Toshinden managed to achieve some modicum of success in the mid-1990s by the simple virtue of being one of the first of its kind in the video game world. A 3D, weapon-based fighting game was a big deal in 1995, and it was one of the most popular titles during the launch of Sony’s Playstation game console. The lackluster gameplay was eclipsed by the novelty of a fully-polygonal fighter, and the brand acquired a level of popularity far beyond what the actual quality of the game deserved. Despite being mostly forgotten today, the Toshinden franchise went on to spawn some three sequels and a handful of spin-off games (not to mention a recently released installment for the Nintendo Wii).
In the wake of the successful Street Fighter II animated film, any Japanimation producer worth his shoyu would be remiss not to try and cash in on any moderately-successful fighting game franchise and thus we have the downright terrible, two-part Battle Arena Toshinden Oriental Animation Video.
[The following review is a guest review by Tim Maughan, who found time in his busy schedule of Twittering way too much to assist us on our theme week.]
I should just raise my hand and admit it — when picking up the Zone of the Enders game back in 2001, I was, like many others, mainly motivated by the Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty demo disc that it was bundled with. Back then, the still-exciting MGS franchise provided a measure of justification for shelling out the inflated UK price for a PS2, even as the console lay gathering dust while I played Dreamcast. At the time, compelling PAL titles for Sony’s overpriced machine were still depressingly scarce, and the fact that Hideo Kojima himself had been the creative drive behind the property offered a glimmer of hope for Z.O.E.
Art of Fighting has always been SNK’s C-list fighting game, so it’s not a surprise that Art of Fighting is on the D-list of fighting game anime, which is the F-list of videogame-based anime, which is the Z-list of Japanese cartoons on the whole. We’re pretty far underground here.