Is The Tekken Anime Telling The Same Story as the Game?

Fighting game fanbases are notoriously very passionate about their game, and with that, it means if you offer them a plate of sub-par product that is not a game – they will throw that plate against the wall with a vigor you have never seen.

That is what happens to Tekken animation products every time they attempt them. While they can absolutely nail some amazing fight choreography, all that will be lost in distracting animation techniques, non-canon ridiculousness despite the actual canon being just as insane, and the game not actually having a particularly robust plot to begin with.

What Game is The Tekken Bloodlines Anime Adapting?

The Tekken Bloodlines anime is adapting the story of the Tekken 3 game where Jin, after watching his mother get murdered by Ogre, trains to defeat him and is given a chance when Ogre is lured by the King of Iron Fist 3 Tournament.

While the Tekken games are not remembered for their plot, Tekken does have a pretty lengthy ongoing, if convoluted, story. While the Tekken anime covered the basic story Tekken, it was also pretty clear what the show creators were trying to do as a secondary objective – offer fan service.

With a large roster, it meant the series creators felt that they had to at least attempt to inject all of the characters into the show as fan service to the people that like those characters. This means you will see characters that were not really involved in Jin’s story – as they had their own plots in Tekken 3 – being inserted into the plot just so they show up.

Traditionally, Tekken main plots are all Mishima family-centric, but when you play individual characters, you get to see their specific, not always Mishima family-related, reasons for wanting to enter the fighting tournament. As Jin is the main character of the anime, a lot of other characters just get thrown in there which is when the series sort of falls out its canon story.

What About The Other Tekken Anime?

Tekken Bloodlines is the only animated Tekken property that was actively attempting to adapt the actual story of any of the games in any sort of diligence.

However, the 1998 movie, Tekken the Motion Picture, although it melded the stories of Tekken 1 and Tekken 2 together with no small amount of non-canon, did make a decent stab at adapting the Kazuya/Heihachi storyline from the first Tekken and Jun/Lei’s storyline from Tekken 2.

The 2011 Tekken: Blood Vengeance movie is the silliest of the lot. It essentially just takes Tekken characters and plays with them in an alternate timeline.