The Mishima Style Anime Review Of Tekken: Bloodline

This is me thinking all along that the “Devil Jin” was really “The Devil Gene”. At least this anime series really answered my doubts on this, but it seems this is the shortest series that would be much better if it has at least 12 episodes.

This is the Mishima Style Anime Review of Tekken: Bloodline.

First before we proceed on the review, I didn’t know that it was Devil gene not Devil Jin. Though eventually both came true and made no difference if you heard it as Devil gene or Devil Jin. That’s the other part of the story where Kazuya has the Devil gene and eventually it reveals itself to Jin.

The series is just 6 episodes, and I can’t help but wonder, why they made it very very fast. All of the story behind the Ogre, and the relationship of Jin to the Heihachis is not very well explained; it was so sudden that Jin already knew everything about his family.

Though the series revealed a lot about the Mishima family and how Heihachi affected the lives of the other fighters in a very brutal way. There were lives that were taken and a lot of people were angry at the Mishima clan. Only Jun Kazama sees the good in Kazuya, since they had a child.

The producer wants to put a lot of things in the story however they have no budget to extend at least to 10 episodes. At least we had a glimpse of a good Kazuya meeting with Jun. I guess that would be a cheesy episode but at least a flashback to what was back then. Flashback won’t take a lot of time at least, Jun would remember something about Kazuya and why the Ogre just suddenly appeared out of nowhere. 

I guess the focus was the training of Jin, at least 3 to 4 episodes of his training on how he really struggled in the hands of Heihachi. For me that was the focus of the series that even the actual Iron Fist Tournament was not able to showcase all of the moves of all of the participants. I saw Lei in the tournament but did not actually showcase his moves. Good thing I am a Hwoarang fan and I saw the moves in the series are actually the same as the one in the game. I was really impressed that I saw the flamingo-style, the one with one leg up. That is important to me, as a fan of the character, I was happy the writers and producers of the series are generous in giving Hwoarang enough scenes in the series.

Tekken focuses on the brutal side of the Mishima and not on the actual tournament. With the limited episodes of the series there are a lot more questions than answers. Who is the real King? They did not even show a flashback of the scene about Leroy’s past and why he is mad about Heihachi. Why can't Nina Williams kill Heihachi since she is an assassin. How did Xiayou and Jin meet up together with Hwoarang? They seem close during the tournament but do not have actual scenes that they bonded, just walking home scenes after class, that’s it? There are a lot of good things in the series but it does not make sense why things are not happening. Like when Jin is battling Hwoarang for an instance, Heihachi is consistently brainwashing Jin but it did not affect Jin when battling Hwoarang? During the battles the Devil Gene could have kicked in already and manifesting over Jin.

Though I like how Jin finishes the Ogre while not manifesting the horns and the wings of the Devil Gene, however, they really like to showcase the Devil Gene is also within Jin. Heihachi really has skills extracting the bad side of you. For me it is just a better twist if Devil Jin really did not manifested and be it in an open ended scene that Jin indeed have it.

Tekken: Bloodline could have been a better series like the Marvel projects, but I think it lost the budget having a very tight number of episodes creating a speed-run of what would be a better series. Discoveries could have been a better twist but of course not in a very obvious way. The episodes are very straight forward and like a said a speed run of the Mishima heritage. It could be better if there is a Season 2 and much longer series. The series is not a flop on its own, it is just missing the x-factor, it misses the excitement element. I could have expected an exciting tournament but the plan was revealed beforehand so the story was told according to Heihachi’s bidding.