Battle Arena Toshinden

Original Title: 闘神伝
Romanized: Toushinden
Literal: Legend of the God of Battle

Plot Synopsis

The Toshinden Tournament ended a year ago, and was sort of a draw; Eiji and the mysterious Gaia were in the middle of their final showdown when an even more mysterious villain, Uranus, showed up out of nowhere to betray Gaia and take control of the criminal organization he lead. Now Gaia is in hiding and Uranus is busy on a project to rebuild people into super-powerful cyborgs with an advantage over just strength--they can copy all those cool special moves you have to push a bunch of buttons to do in video games, and all they have to do is watch the original in action. The prototype (who looks too much like Sho, Eiji's brother, for comfort) starts attacking people from the tournament and using their own moves against them (starting, of course, with the less popular characters), then using his newfound skills to try and start World War III just for good measure. Pretty soon it's a race against time as Eiji and Kayin try to track down the evil organization before they put the finishing touches on the vengeful (and now cybernetic) Chaos.

Quick Review

Rating: 2 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2006-10-10

Battle Arena Toshinden is yet another entry in the crowded genre of fighting game-based anime, this one based on the first couple of a largely forgotten series of Playstation games and spin-offs. What passes for a story--random evil organization (called, creatively, "The Organization") building cyborgs that can copy the moves of skilled fighters--is a functional excuse to get everybody some screen time and a fight, and it at least manages to bring the rather random collection of characters from the games together without seeming painfully forced. On the positive side, a few of the characters actually have enough humanity to care at least a bit about; on the negative, the backstory-light plot feels rather like a sequel to something that doesn't exist. As for what counts: The art is sharp looking, while there aren't any big meaty fights it also never slows down enough to get boring, and everybody does the right moves (and yells out the right names) with an added bit of animated flair.

Not highly recommended to anybody, but if there are still any fans of the games out there they'll probably get a kick out of it, and if you like yourself some superpowered fighting, it's a decent way to waste an hour.

US DVD Review

The original DVD (cover and menu shown here) was US Manga Corps' first Digital effort, and is (if I'm not mistaken) the first anime to make it to DVD at all, at least in the US (ironically narrowly beating Manga's Street Fighter 2: The Movie, and Pioneer's Armitage III). The DVD includes Japanese and English stereo soundtracks, and English subtitles. In fact, since there was no subtitled version on tape, the DVD was the first example of how nice the multiple language abilities of DVD are for sub fans. The menu is limited, but functional and illustrated; there are language selections and a scene index, as well as short introductions to the main characters and some previews of upcoming releases. The transfer on the disc isn't bad at all; the audio is very crisp and the video isn't at all bad either--generally quite impressive for one of the first efforts at the medium.

A bit of trivia: USMC's early DVDs were done by two different companies, one of which used DVD keepcases (the kinda odd cardboard ones that you never see anymore) while the other used the now-standard plastic clamshell ("Amaray") cases. Although this disc was done by the latter, it came in a keepcase (it was the first one, and they standardized after it).

There is also a much-newer re-release that apparently adds some special features: An art gallery, a retrospective video, and a fight montage video. The cover for that version is at the top of the page.

Content Guide

Qualifies for the high end of the 13-up USM calls it on account of a bit of onscreen flesh and gore; sans a couple of short scenes, would be OK for most viewers.

Violence: 3 - Plenty of bloody violence, but nothing really graphic.

Nudity: 2 - Some pretty revealing outfits, and one brief shower scene.

Sex/Mature Themes: 2 - One brief provocative scene.

Language: 1 - Nothing notable.

Notes and Trivia

Battle Arena Toshinden is a pair of OAVs, although USM sold it as a "movie."

For those unfamiliar, Battle Arena Toshinden (just "Toshinden" in Japan) was the first of the 3D weapon-based fighting games, and something of a showcase game for the Playstation when it first came out. By Tamsoft/SCEA, it was ported to the Sega Saturn and Windows, and the first of the three sequels and some spin-off puzzle games also showed up in arcades. The series has been pretty much forgotten now.

In one pleasing development, unlike a lot of older fighting games, all the characters retain the same names in both Japanese and English versions of the games, so there are no annoying issues with "Balrog" being called "Vega" in the subtitles or such.

Availability

Available in the US from US Manga Corps on bilingual, uncut DVD. Was previously available on an earlier bilingual uncut DVD, uncut dubbed VHS, and edited dubbed VHS.

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