Tekken Blood Vengeance   Starring (voice): Akeno Watanabe, Atsuko Tanaka and Isshin Chiba Manga Entertainment RRP: £15.99 MANG9085 Certificate: 12 Available 06 February 2012

There is something very strange going on with Shin Kamiya. Supposedly an ordinary student he is the lone survivor of a strange incident where his whole class disappeared. Sent to the same school as Shin, Ling Xiaoyu is tasked with investigating the boy, while a rival organisation dispatches a robot, Alisa Bosconovitch, for the same purpose...

Tekken: Blood Vengeance (2011 - 1 hr, 28 min, 21 sec) is a CGI animated film, based on the popular game series. The film was directed by Youichi Mori.

The plot is slight, but that’s not really the point of the movie. This is a film aimed purely at fans of Tekken; therefore, the plot is secondary to the fight scenes, of which there are many. Of course, being CGI, the two girls spend the whole film running around, one skimpily dressed, the other clothed permanently in her school uniform. There is a minor amount of fan service, usually restricted to the odd flash of panties, but then the truth is this film is aimed at twelve to sixteen year old males.

The central plot follows Xiaoyu, as she tries to uncover just what had happened to Shin to make him so important to Mishima Zaibatsu, her own team and Alisa’s employer, Corporation G. To discover the truth the two girls are forced to work together, slowly growing a bond, which makes them both stand apart from their respective employers.

There is something slightly wrong with the picture. Presented in an anamorphic aspect ratio of 1.78:1, the picture is bright and vibrant, but the encode looks like it might have gone slightly wrong, leaving a noticeably fuzzy picture, which is a real shame as the film has the potential to look awesomely good. Character animation is fluidly realistic, although the vocals only just match the mouth movements in the English dub. The film has 5.1 English and Japanese audio track as well as a French, Italian and Netherlands track.

There are no extras, though the disc does open with various trailers for other show; the audio track for these is in French.

It is what it is, a film designed to appeal to teenage males, who like the game and taken on those merits, it deliverers on most levels. However, if you’re looking for an intelligent movie, I suggest you keep walking.

6

Charles Packer