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.

Review

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

Battle Arena Toshinden, yet another fighting game-based anime, is based on the first couple of a largely forgotten series of Playstation games. It's only two short episodes and its main claim to fame was being the first US anime DVD, but it does manage at least a functional amount of characterization between the long string of superpowered battles.

The plot consists of a random evil organization (called, creatively, "The Organization") building cyborgs that can copy the moves of skilled fighters. So, of course, they go around beating the tar out of every character in the game to collect data. I can't remember if I've actually seen this exact plot several times before or it's just so cliched that it seems that way, but regardless it's a functional excuse to give every character at least a quick brawl and build up an "unbeatable" supervillain to fight at the end.

The story may be tissue thin, but it does manage to set up relationships between the rather wild collection of fighters that almost seem to make sense, and at the very least give them all reasons for being involved with each other. The games weren't plot-heavy, but this sort of feels like a sequel; the character list comes straight from the second Toshinden game, and so far as I can tell it's something like mix between a direct sequel to that game and an alternate telling of the story in the third one.

As for the characters, the focus is mainly on Ryu/Ken clones Eiji and Kayin, who are stereotypes but at least feel reasonably human. Sofia--sexy street fighter with amnesia and a serious maternal streak--has just a bit of substance as well. Rungo, Ellis, Fo, Mondo, and Duke all make appearances but their parts are, for the most part, rather small (Duke is onscreen for all of about 15 seconds, and some of the others don't fare much better). But, if you're a fan, at least they show up.

The relatively "realistic" (I use that word loosely) characterization is a strong point of the whole thing, and had me almost caring about these folks despite not being a fan of the games at all. The other strength is that the drama isn't heavy enough to bog it down--the feel is relatively light.

That's the good. The bad: All three-and-a-half villains seem to have had their backstory edited out for time. Gaia is the most substantive, and while he had the potential to be some sort of mysterious antihero, he doesn't get nearly enough screen time to do anything more than pose and sound cool. Sho (Eiji's long lost "evil" brother... apparently) is worse--he gets talked up a lot but seems to be a totally random excuse for unnecessary additional drama. As for Uranus and Chaos, the latter is just a skinny, cackling maniac and the former is completely devoid of backstory: She's an evil mastermind. Why? How? Who knows.

There's also the question of why these people walk around with claymores and katanas and can fire massive energy waves from their weapons--Sofia gets a "former evil experiment" excuse, but there isn't so much as a mention of "secret family techniques" or "chi flows" to explain everybody else. Finally, the plot is left wide open at the end, though that's par for the course.

Let's face it, though; most people don't watch this sort of thing for the deep storyline. You're expecting see the characters from the game fleshed out a bit and doing all those moves you love with a little bit of added flair and a lot less button-mashing. On that count, Toshinden gets the job done--the distinctive character designs are sharp-looking, attractive, and recognizable, as are all the moves (and everybody yells the right thing when doing them). The fights are short, but most are reasonably exciting and the animation is consistently above-average. The backdrops are rather bland, but then the games weren't known for their spectacular arenas, either. The two episodes fail to serve up any big, meaty showdowns, but it's never standing still long enough to get boring, a definite plus.

The music is completely forgettable (except for the oddly spunky end theme), as is the acting. The casting in Japanese is pretty good, but nobody even has enough lines to call the acting good or bad. Eiji and Kayin sound reasonably likable as antagonistic partners and Sofia gets just a bit of drama, but that's about it for the lot of them. On the annoying side, somebody decided to have Ellis' trademark "I won't give up" line from the game make up about half her dialogue for no particularly good reason. I didn't bother with the English version.

Bottom line: If you remember the Toshinden games, this anime puts together the characters from them, gives them a bit of humanity, and has enough decent-looking fights to satisfy. If you don't, you're going to feel like you're watching a sequel to something you've never seen, but the story is too thin to care anyway--what counts is that the characters are likable enough to care about and the drama doesn't get in the way of the short-but-consistent battles. Not highly recommended to anybody, but if you like yourself some superpowered fighting, it's a decent way to waste an hour.

Related Recommendations

As you might expect, Battle Arena Toshinden has quite a bit in common with the Street Fighter II movie, though that one is definitely higher quality. It's also a little like the first two Fatal Fury OAVs (less so the movie, even though it was directed by the same fellow).

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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