Summary: >

Fighters from all around the globe gather for a tournament (ever hear that before?). Currently it's been a year since the Toshinden tournament was held. Now a crime organization is building up a new fighting force consisting of cyborgs that can learn moves just by watching them - and they don't even need to look at the directions on the side of the arcade machine. As the former tournament members are hunted down, a few decide to take matters into their own hands before the fight comes to them.

Thoughts: >

You know I wonder why I even watch anime based off of video games. Actually I just don't anymore, but when writing the update for this review I noticed the age. At the time I just didn't know any better which is why I watched this show. And yes this is one of the titles that led me to the conclusion that anime based off of fighting video games SUCK. And I probably shouldn't get into it in depth, but the problems with video game anime is pretty much exactly what is wrong with Battle Arena Toshinden, so I guess that really leaves me no choice.

First of all the story is stupid. Lets face it, the story for the game is really stupid too however the point of the game is to play the game. I think that Fatal Fury is probably the only game that understands it's dumb but goes along with it because... why the hell not? In contrast when you take a dumb concept from a game, and transform it into an anime.. the results are not surprising. And that's another thing, you need to be familiar with the game to know where these characters are coming from. That assumes that either you played the game to begin with, or that you for some reason cared enough to understand the story of the game. And yes you can play a fighting game a lot and have no clue what the story is supposed to be. I always had the feeling that Tekken 3 had like a huge manual I was supposed to read to make sense of it, but who cares - I just want to fight.

And then you have the focus - which is always the characters. However how do you build characters without a plot? Apparently that was supposed to be done by your previous knowledge of the game. Besides which the point of the game was to execute moves, therefore the anime also feels obligated to show you those animated. But honestly it's hard to feel impressed by them. I mean I remember playing Street Fighter ONE (this was years after the machine should have been in the video game graveyard) and Ryo's haduken was almost a hidden move. It was something that was very difficult to do and not something you would rely on. Then comes Street Fighter 2 and suddenly people are shooting more fireballs off then most Star Wars films. Err... I'm getting off track here, but watching an anime for fighting moves just doesn't make sense either. Now I guess according to Battle Arena Toshinden you can become a powerful fighter that can defeat almost anyone if you happen to spin a lot, but if there were an honest market for watching animated characters spinning, you'd see more ballet anime. If watching an anime to see moves from a video game sounds stupid, then at least you can start to see why these titles are so bad by default.

And even for a fighting game, what's up with the bad designs? I mean usually if a fighting game anime is going to have any qualities, it will be action animation, and probably designs. So with the lackluster designs you have to wonder what this anime was trying to do. And that I think is the real key here. This anime was made just to be made. It had no point nor did it try to accomplish anything. Perhaps the game was doing so well that they decided to cash in on the hype. Anyway bottom line is avoid this title. If my rating of sucks seems harsh, then consider my point. I can't think of any reason to recommend this title to anyone. Seriously, play the damn game or watch some other title. Even better, save your quarters play the game and invent your own stupid story. You'll have more fun guaranteed.

Screen Caps: >