Martial Arts, Kung Fu, Gone Missing in Tekken Series

Starting with Tekken 7 and their rage art and rage drives animations, the overall martial art combat presentation has descended into a garish blunt force trama bang-em-up look. Now with the new Tekken 8 character reveals its clear that Tekken has completely shed any semblance of martial arts finesse or nuance. The fighting presentation and character contests are nothing more than loud over-the-top gaudy presentations of Brute Force Brawling. The character models of many fighters have gone from sophisticated and plausible to muscle bound knuckle draggers. (e.g. the new Marshall Law looks like he has a serious steroid problem)



Prior to Tekken 7 the series at least appeared to pay respect to and give a nod to the Martial Arts and Kung Fu pop culture icons from the famous Shaw Brothers, Golden Harvest, and Dragon Dynasty films. Namco took pride in the intricate motion capture of real life martial artists moves for characters in the game. There were styles in the Tekken series taken straight from:

• Five Deadly Venoms
• The 36th Chamber of Shaolin
• Enter The Dragon
• Five Fingers of Death

But it seems that Tekken wants to move away from these classic Kung Fu, Karate, Judo type presentations to a new modern day approach of Crush-Kill-Destroy with as many on screen fireworks as are allowed by the Unreal Engine. Gone from the official Tekken Roster are:

• Wang Jinrei Fighting Style: Xin Liu He Quan Kung Fu
• Lei Wulong Fighting Style: 5 Animal Kung Fu (crane, tiger, snake, panther, dragon)
• Baek Doo San Fighting Style: Taekwondo
• *Leo Kliesen Fighting Style: Bajiquan

The visual presentations of these styles and characters in previous versions of Tekken gave Tekken at least a hint of martial arts and kung fu authenticity. But these fighters and their styles have largely been dropped from Tekken and replaced with spiked baseball bat wielding maniacs, vampires, bone crushing robots and old school gang bangers. While Tekken 7 did add Wing Chun to the line up, they added a Pit Bull with it just to keep things going in the right direction. Obviously Harada envisions a future for Tekken where classic martial arts Savoir Faire is replaced with loud, absurd gratuitous bombastic 4K techni-color-beat-downs where every attack is a hammer and every opponent is a nail. There is no style, no nuance, no sophistication, no martial arts restraint. There is only over-the-top beast-mode bludgeoning poorly disguised as a martial arts match All of the body types are starting to blur into the same muscle bound block of clay graphic.

I'm concerned about my Tekken brethren and the Tekken community. They've convinced themselves that Tekken is going in the right direction (perhaps because they have no other choice). Looking at the most recent Jack 8 Tekken reveal its almost like Harada is making fun of the Tekken community by purposely creating Satire of the entire Tekken roster. It looks almost like he wants to see if all the Tekken Youtube streamers will fall for the joke

When Tekken 7 replaced a stylish and cool Bruce Irvin (Muay Thai/Kick Boxer) with the hulking beast fahkumram they were giving the community a sneak peak at where the series was headed. My Tekken Brothers and Sistas Wake UP!



Movies like Five Deadly Venoms , Enter the Dragon, and Five Fingers of Death helped to launch the Tekken franchise. I guess for Tekken 7 , 8 and beyond Namco and Tekken have moved on from that allegiance to a more modern day basic Assault & Battery Style graphical presentation

The next entry in the Virtua Fighter series should definitely go in the opposite direction and pay realistic homage to the kung fu classics