It isn’t for the art. No, the art here is very crisp. Maybe it’s because the writer seems to speak English as a fourth language? Yeah, that might have a role.
In the game, Tekken has a fairly good story to it. It revolves around the Mishima bloodline through the generations. The central three characters are corrupt martial artist Heihachi, his abused and now equally corrupt son Kazuya and Kazuya’s more heroic son Jin Kazama. Both Kazuya and Jin each have bouts with a curse that transforms them into a blue demon known simply as Devil. Namco, the company that makes Tekken, went an interesting path with Kazuya Mishima. Not only did they reveal at the end of their first game that their main protagonist is a jerk, but they seemingly killed him off in the following game. Between Tekken 2 and 3, an entire generation has passed. Many earlier characters are killed off and/or replaced with younger incarnations.
Basing a comic on the Tekken story isn’t a bad idea. The catch here is that they base the comic’s story on Tekken Tag Tournament. Tekken Tag is a game that came out in-between Tekken 3 and 4, featuring nearly the entire cast. It’s a dream match type of game, so there’s no attempt to come up with a story. How could there be a story when Michelle Chang is around the same age as her daughter Julia? Not to mention all the guys who are supposed to be dead.
I guess you could come up with some kind of story if you tried hard enough, but this comic doesn’t use that kind of effort. Nope. The first thing we see when we look past the cover is Kazuya Mishima calmly standing over about 80% of the game’s roster, having beaten them in no more than 20 seconds. This includes powerhouses like Heihachi, Paul Phoenix and the game’s final boss Unknown. All while this is going on, his henchman Bruce Irving is singing “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor” in the background. I fucking hate this comic.
Jin holds Unknown in his arms and damns his father, claiming that he just learned so much about him and himself. What he learned? No idea. Exposition is for lesser comics. Instead, we have Jin easily take care of Bruce and Ganryu.
Once Jin finishes them off, he gets ready to fight Kazuya. We turn away to instead watch as action cop Lei Wulong, some soldiers and the robot Gun-Jack fight off an army of Prototype Jack robots in Egypt. Unfortunately, any soldier who gets into the nearby pyramid is killed off immediately.
Somebody got paid for that lettering job.
Lei Wulong barges in and finds that all those men have been brutally murdered by Bryan Fury, an undead cyborg guy based on Rutger Hauer’s character from Blade Runner. Bryan shrugs off all of Lei’s bullets and bests him in hand-to-hand combat. When Lei asks Bryan if he ever feels remorse for all the lives he’s taken, Bryan asks back if he feels remorse for every time he flushes the toilet.
At the last second, Lei is saved by Deadpool Yoshimitsu, the loveable cyborg Robin Hood samurai. Blaming his lateness on his alarm clock, Yoshimitsu turns it into a two-on-one fight, while admitting that he might need a couple quarters in case he needs to use a continue. Their joke, not mine.
Jin gets his ass handed to him as expected. Jin stands back up and wonders how he can possibly defeat a man with this “toshin level”. They toss that term around a lot without ever really explaining what the hell it means. To make matters more confusing, whenever they refer to the character Ogre, they call him his Japanese name Toshin. Sure, I can figure it out for myself, but this is another example of this comic’s decision to shove you in the middle of nonsense while forcing you to find your way out.
Paul Phoenix gets back up and thanks Jin for giving him time to recuperate. Since Jin’s mother saved Paul’s life at some point, he asks Jin to stand back so he can get a rematch with Kazuya. Jin briefly disagrees with the grammatically problematic reaction, “But Paul I.” Paul ignores him and stands up to his old rival Kazuya. The following two images take place consecutively.
Somebody got paid for those word bubbles.
This time, Paul absolutely dominates the fight, with the explanation that this time he isn’t fighting for himself, but for Jin. He throws Kazuya through the floor while screaming, “NOW GO TO HELL, YOU SON OF A BITCH!!!!!!!!!!!”
Yes, a whopping eleven exclamation points. I think Black Bolt yelling is worth only eight.
“There’s life in this old boy… HHEHEHEHEEE”
“That was amazing sir. Didn’t think you had it in ya.”
“Yup, yup. I am a fatty boom batty. I don’t know about you kid, but I am hunggggrryyyy.”
Jesus Christ, I hate Tekken Forever.
We get an interlude with Jin’s mother Jun Kazama. She’s in a self-induced coma, with the character Angel speaking to her. I haven’t a clue what Angel’s talking about for these three pages, but it has to do with Ogre holding a couple babies and the revelation that Kazuya still has good in him. That’s all I can come up with thanks to my babbling-gibberish-to-English dictionary. By the end of the scene, Jun wakes up screaming with a glowing red thing on her forehead.
Total coincidence, only the good guys have woken up from the Kazuya beatdown from the beginning of the story. Eddy Gordo, Ling Xiaoyu, King, Forrest Law and Hwoarang join Jin and Paul. Forrest and King think Paul is pretty awesome for taking down Kazuya, but Jin and Xiaoyu each think it may have been too easy.
The plan is that they’ll go find Forrest’s dad, beat up Kazuya’s army outside (which hasn’t even been mentioned up to this point) and then Paul will treat everyone to french-fries. Hwoarang, who has a hard-on for fighting Jin, gets in Jin’s face and demands they fight at this completely inappropriate time. Xiaoyu tells him to calm down, but Hwoarang grabs her and flings her into the wall.
The Devil Gene awakens in Jin and he begins fighting with Hwoarang. “Since you want to go to hell so badly, fine!!! I’ll send you, and take the express bus getting there.”
The other good guys hold the two back and calm them down. Jin goes back to his human form. Once things look to be back to normal, King and Jin feel a disturbance in the Force. The hole that Paul tossed Kazuya down earlier glows brightly. With little warning, a geyser of energy pours out and knocks everyone back. A shirtless Kazuya rises and tells Jin that he knows how to make him reveal his true nature: Ling Xiaoyu.
No, I’m pretty sure this is the end of the nightmare, because this comic is over and the miniseries is cancelled. I doubt the other three issues would have been anything more than more well-drawn headaches.
Maybe I’m harder on Tekken Forever than Street Fighter: The Movie’s comic because I expected better. After all, wasted potential is more damning than never having the potential to begin with. Then again, at least I could follow the Street Fighter: The Movie comic. I knew what M. Bison was after. What the hell was going on in Tekken Forever? Kazuya wanted to rule the world somehow? Is that it?
Oh well. At least the comic didn’t have Heihachi wearing his diaper thong. Thank heaven for small favors.