The Next Step For The Tekken Franchise Is This Weird Cartoon

When it stepped onto the scene in the late 90s, Namco’s Tekken series defined an entire genre, which was new at the time: 3D fighting games. It’s currently on its eighth official installment and has several spinoff games to its name. In the meantime the brand has repeatedly attempted to break into other media, not always with good results.

The first was back in 1998 when the games were brand new and Tekken: The Motion Picture seemed like a good idea. It was embarrassing for all involved in practice. In 2011 they attempted a CG-animated film called Tekken: Blood Vengeance that didn’t fare much better. Bandai Namco‘s last try to cinema-fy Tekken was the reviled anime Tekken Bloodline on Netflix. At this point, we guess the options were to either give up or do something radically different, and they picked option #2.

A strange trailer appeared on Bandai Namco‘s YouTube channel today depicting a Japanese man finding a curious DVD case among copies of Tekken 9 and popping into his player. What he sees is this:

Sure, why NOT a wacky, bouncing cartoon with round-edged, exaggerated versions of Tekken characters? If you remember the debacle that was CN’s Thundercats Roar experiment, it is probably on your mind right now.

We’re not sure exactly WHAT this is going to be…another movie, a TV series, or a bunch of web shorts…but Tekken Cartoon will be directed by Sohta Ozawa of NERD), who has been behind many popular music videos. The bold redesigns of Kuma, Alisa, Yoshimitsu, Kazuya and Paul come courtesy of designer/animator Amehiro. Masteru Miyamoto is the series planner alongside creative director Syohei Hashimoto and Hinori Hasegawa. Sora Kanesaki is serving as assistant director.

Look for Tekken Cartoon, coming soon to wherever it’s coming.