Scolding Reviews: Battle Arena Toshinden

Way to make it seem like there's a 3 way in the movie, guys.

My ambiguous relationship with Anime aside, I do feel a little jealous of Japan. See, under a certain level of obscurity, you're never gonna see most videogames adapted here in the west. No matter how much you think Darkstalkers would make a kickass movie, the Hollywood system would prefer things with names people know like Asteroids. Meanwhile, in Japan, you kick a bush and an anime OVA of some obscure Playstation game drops out.

Fuck, even PORN fighting games get adapted!

My relationship with said game series, Battle Arena Toshinden, extends mostly to playing a Demo on Toys R Us back when...well, when it was new. I remember it had a character named Fo, which I guess was funny because of cultural reasons you don't care about.

The Anime begins with a fleet of warships  reunited to celebrate the end of the cold war. Huh?

Cold War, you say...

However, the cold war soon gets hot as a long haired super warrior begins exploding everything and killing everyone.I don't think he does it for any reason.

Maybe he doesn't believe in peace between the Cherry Bomb block and the Avocado block.

The mane-man, named Sho, hunts down and attacks the only character I remember from the game: Huge claws wielding Fo, and they have  a fight. Sho wins it when he uses the same technique as Fo.  I don't know how, since Fo's attacks involve  (for lack of a better comparison) Wolverine-ish claws and Sho uses a Katana blade. Whatever.

We finally move on to our protagonist, Discount-Store Ryu Eiji Shinjo, as he remembers how the tournament ended with a confusing fight involving a huge, Trojan Man voice Samurai named Gaia,  creepy sword licker for this show Chaos, and himself. It ends with Gaia and Chaos disappearing and  Eiji no closer to finding his brother.

Was wondering the same myself.

Wait...the tournament ended? Then what the hell is this movie about? Well, to answer that  Kayjin, the Ken to our Ryu has yet another fight with him. It's six minutes in and we are at 3 fights. If you don't like anime swordfights, rescind now. Besides friendly sword-banter, Kayjin wants to let Eiji know someone's been attacking tournament participants, and that maybe they should look into it. I don't know how there are "participants" left of a "tournament" which involve swordfighitng, but I guess it's best not to think about it...

THERE ARE NO RAYS INVOLVED IN THIS MOVE, KAYJIN.

Meanwhile, at the Hall of Doom, one of said fighters, Rungo, is forced to fight Chaos for the entertainment and enlightenment of our villain, Lady Uranus, a pompous , haughty woman dressed in increasingly silly and improbable outfits. I...have no choice...

Tell Harry...

...I'm sorry...

Also, get used to Chaos bringing up Gaia. This guy mentions Gaia more than the Planeteers.

Our heroes try to keep ahead of the nefarious and lazily named "Organization" by visiting Sofia, a fighter formerly brainwashed by Org. that now spends her days trying to remember her previous life.When she hears the Organization is "on the move" either the music gets really stupid or she drops  all the cutlery in the house.

Ain't no stoppin' them now?

While this happens, Lady Gag-me is having her Steve Jobs-like presentation of the "Man Machine Project" in the DARKEST FUCKING CONFERENCE ROOM IN THE WORLD. The stockholders, or potential investors or whatever they are can only be seen when they turn on their personal monitors. And there's a projector behind Uranus showing images of Sho wrecking the "End of the Cold War" fleet. Jesus, wasn't this on the news?

Sofia and Eiji discuss Eiji's tragic backstory, unaware that from her ANGEL SHAPED THRONE, complete with HALO, Lady Urinal is plotting to control Sofia. See, the organization did some kinds of experiments on her and now Cammy Sofia is reliable as a Manchurian candidate.

The trap is sprung as Sofia takes an obligatory sexy anime bath and visits Eiji in his room, naked. While he's distracted by all the goodness, she tries to  stab him in the neck. He jumps out the window, and when he lands, he's in full costume despite being at least shirtless inside. She jumps down, and now she's in her fight costume as well. The Fuck?

Tetas!

You see, I get WHY you're not having this two fight naked, I just don't see why you would try and have it both ways by having them naked only for them appear conveniently in costume. If you don't wanna be Ninja Scroll it's fine, just don't SET IT UP!  At any rate, Eiji defeats her, with the power of love.

Then Sho shows up. And he's all, "I don't have to explain anything , fight me!" And they fight! Sho defeats Sofia and Eiji with his magi-blasts and superior swording. So Eiji, realizing this is probably not the brother he dreams of stabbing with a sword, turns the battle around and whups Sho.

Lady Pretentious shows up in her cupid suit. The Following exchange ensues.


Eiji: Who Are you?


Lady Uranus: This has given me excellent data.


Eiji: Data? What are you talking about?


Lady Uranus: I am Lady Uranus.Everything is gone just as I had planned. Creating the Man Machine android in the form of your brother resulted in heightening your emotions to levels I've never seen before...it's so  easy to manipulate you trough your emotions! You're an amateur.


Eiji: Why you...What do you want from me?


Lady Uranus: That's for me to know!(Fades away)

After that, Eiji tends to Sofia, and wonders what is going on, despite it having been mostly told to him by Lady Ironman.

Meanwhile Not-Ken arrives at a circus to talk to Ellis, a little girl who is liable to be  the next victim of the Organization. She's practicing her knife tossing routine on her boss, when all a sudden she's distracted by Kaijin's appearance and she  misses her mark.It's funny when he's offscreen, but once we see him, she got him on the neck. He needs a medical attention!

The first episode ends with Eiji jumping off the grand canyon into the sun. I don't get it either.


Moving on from that. Ep 2 opens with Gaia fighting ninjas while Chaos sort of tells himself how awesome killing Gaia is gonna be. This real time, or a flashback? Hell if I know.

Then we see Ellis doing her knife routine. The crowd loves it, or maybe they haven't realized they are watching a little girl in a cleavage exposing, junk riding swimsuit. Goddamn it, Japan.

I mean, I know your women peak early, but at least wait until puberty...

After the show, the gets debriefed on the Man Machine Project and how they probably want to get to her too, to study her data. I just hope lady Uranus would put the data of the fighters into something cooler than  stupid, Chai-like  Chaos. Like Sunglasses.

Of course, then they pretend to leave so that she can have a fight with perverted, blade-licking Chaos. Because Japan likes the idea of a blade licking pervert fighting a pre-teen in chest exposing beachwear. Eventually though, they do step in, but Chaos reveals he's a much betterer super fighter than the last one, who was only fighting at 30% power. Fuckin' power levels, this isn't the Scruffydragon Forums!

So Chaos beats them, and is about to hopefully just kidnap the girl and kill her, when Gaia intervenes. Gaia handles Chaos pretty well, until Chaos, inspired by the best, burps noxious green gas into Gaia's face. He seems to not be bothered by this but Ellis(who is his daughter) doesn't seem to know, as she jumps into the cloud to save him. Sure enough, she get poisoned, and it's a poison only Lady Urawhore can cure in her lair. They invite  Gaia to an obvious trap in the headquarters of the organization.

They rush Ellis to the hospital, where a cop lady with blue hair in a skanky outfit gives them grief about their story, which apparently involves them fighting a stray dog.

Officer, is this a porn movie or am I in trouble?

Meanwhile, an attack on a military base is seen on the news, with the anchor wondering who it could have been. Didn't he read the news?

That Alien Fiend's plans won't go unopposed...

Anyway all points converge at the Headquarters of the Organization, As Lady Cop, Sofia, Eiji and Kaijin  head there. The HQ is seemingly a mountain with two towers set  above it. Also, Ninja are everywhere and try to stop them. Eiji and Kayjin leave the women behind to fight the mooks while they split up between the towers. Eventually, they run into what they should have expected.

Bullet...FIYA!

But wait, a Samurai guy makes the save! He's here to help! And the guy we last saw choking in his own blood at Casa Organization! He's also here to help! And also some knight guy with the cliche bullshit about beating Eiji first! And Fo! Is anyone missing?

Sekretary! You did come!(Heroic music)

Lady Uranus seems pretty certain this is no big concern, but then  Gaia shows up at her room and they talk while Chaos blathers on in the background. Lady Overdressed tells Gaia the final phase of the project is the removal of all thoughts that aren't fighting. That seems...impractical. You're not creating guard dogs, lady, you're creating Super Soldiers. Although a guard dog that only attacked would make a poor guard dog.

So, what can I do to send you home with a blade licking murderous pervert who screams "Gaia" all the time and can only  think of fighting?

Eventually, though, Chaos and Gaia engage in combat. Kayji finds the building where Gaia and  Chaos are fighting, while Eiji finds the Man Machin incubation centre. He blows it up and  does a pretty impossible stunt to get to the other building.

While the supporting cast show off their incredibly stupid special move names, Eiji and Kayjin and Gaia cannot beat Chaos using theirs because he's programmed to react to them. So they switch moves around and start doing each other's moves, which  he does not expect. This eventually wins the day as Eiji does a hyper uppercut in the air and orgasms Chaos into exploding..

DISAPPOINTED FIRST NIGHT OF SEX TOGETHER FOLLOWED BY 4 YEARS OF BITTERNESS! FLASH!

However, despite being overwhelmed by Eiji, Kayjin, Gaia, and  a sudden appearance by Sho, Lady Ur-a-nut manages to slowly fly away to make more stupidly named things.

All the heroes reunite and laugh at the fact that they worked together now, but in the next Toshin Tournament, some dumbass is going to get stabbed. Also, Ellis wakes up to our lead Shotos as her father gave her the medicine, but left. Eventually Eiji wanders into the promise of a sequel and the movie ends.

"Because we're all in this together..."

This anime is...not bad. It's sort of a poor man's Street Fighter 2 anime, but hey, you've already seen that a million times. While it certainly isn't innovative or amazing, it's good for a watch or two. It's fairly well done for an Anime based on some game no one ever cared about, and while it's pretty much going through the motions, there are certainly worst Anime out there.