Netflix drops the first trailer for a new video game anime, ‘Tekken: Bloodline’

Netflix continues to take swings on turning video games into TV. The latest is Tekken: Bloodline, an anime adaptation of the classic fighting game series. Its first trailer is here at last.

I don’t follow the Tekken games myself, but the belief among observant fans is that the story picks up prior to the events of Tekken 3. The anime’s star is Jin Kazama, a young man and martial arts expert who sharpened his skills from a young age under the tutelage of his mother. But when an evil force takes everything from Jin, he sets out on a quest for vengeance and power that leads him to the high-stakes “King of Iron First Tournament.”

Games don’t always have the most comprehensible stories, and that’s especially true for enduring fighting game staples like the Tekken series. That’s both a hurdle and an opportunity for Bloodline‘s creators. They can’t count on viewers to know the series lore inside and out, but at the same time that opens up the possibilities for artistic license to twist the fiction in cool directions.

It’s not clear which studio is making Bloodline, but Netflix has seen some success with its previous game adaptations. Castlevania and Dota 2 have both gotten the anime treatment from the streaming service, and the League of Legends-source series Arcane has been a buzzy addition since it hit the service in 2021.