Tekken the Motion Picture

Another retro anime I found on the DVD bins is Tekken: The Motion Picture. This came out years ago, during the prime of the videogame's popularity, and I hate to say it but it really didn't do much good for the franchise. The overall quality is iffy, about the same level as the lamentable Tekken Forever comics that came and went with a whimper. The anime version takes the basic Tekken story of fighter Kazuya Mishima (He of the HEAVY eyebrows) seeking revenge on his billionaire father Heihachi, for throwing him off a cliff when he was a boy. The venue for the whole story is a remote island where fighters vying for the billion-dollar prize battle until the lone survivor emerges to face Heihachi himself in a final duel.
Tekken 2 character Jun Kazama is a nature lover and environmentalist/secret agent working with an international agency tracking down the Mishima Zaibatsu's evil plots. When they detect some traces of forbidden genetic engineering back to Mishima, they send Jun and a cocky kung fu cop Lei Wulong (another Tekken 2 veteran) to join the fighting tournament. Jun's main motivation in joining though is finding Kazuya, whom she met as a child, and steering him away from killing his father in cold blood- and falling to the DARK SIDE.

You really have to watch the ENGLISH DUB to fully appreciate how lame this feature is. Among the hilarious elements shown are Heihachi catching a thrown tomahawk with his MOUTH and chewing it to pieces, villain Lee Chaolan talking with a lisp, a plan to sell genetically-engineered INVISIBLE DINOSAURS as the weapon of the future!

With the fights being short or often one-sided or unsatisfactory, popular characters such as Paul Pheonix, King and Yoshimitsu limited to mere cameos (the Boxing Kangaroo had more exposure) and lots of silly monologues about martial arts mumbo-jumbo and preachy talk from Jun about a bobcat and a rabbit, this feature is something that fans of the game would rather just forget ever happened.
But like the Street Fighter movie, I think it's still great to see for a laugh, every now and then. And it's a good way to bring down Namco a peg or two in case they ever become too popular. Heh.