Our expectations for Netflix’s Tekken: Bloodline series were pretty low, admittedly, but I was pleasantly surprised. Loosely following the story of Tekken 3, this show follows young Jin Kazama as he is trained in martial arts—first by his mother Jun, then by his grandfather Heihachi—and then competes in the King of Iron Fist tournament. He makes a few friends and rivals along the way, including my personal favorite Tekken fighter, Hwoarang. The whole series is comprised of six 22-minute episodes.

In case you don’t remember, Tekken 3’s cinematics looked like this.

Visually, Bloodline is kind of an odd duck. The show is CG animation, which makes complete sense given that all Tekken games have featured elaborate cutscenes with impressive 3D animation (for their time). However, the visuals here goes for a cell-shaded, faux hand-drawn animation style.

That’s already a strange choice…probably better to go with Tekken 7’s pre-rendered cutscene style, or actual hand-drawn animation. Surely, either one of those options would cost too much, however. So I suspect the cell-shaded style won out more for budget reasons than artistic ones.

You can get used to Bloodline’s visuals pretty quickly and they’re actually pretty good, except for one specific element… And I’m hesitant to bring this up right away, because once you see it, it can’t be unseen; and after you’ve noticed it, it’s actually super distracting. I’m of course talking about the weird static lighting used for characters’ bodies, particularly their faces.

For some reason, all characters are rendered as if there is a light source directly above their heads, with a triangular shadow cast across their face. It doesn’t matter what light sources are in the scene, how well lit or darkened a room is, or even whether or not the character is facing camera. All characters in all shots have the same triangular shadow cast on their head every single time. It’s so weird, as if the show went out to streaming before the finishing touches could be completed.

If you can look past the triangular shadows though, Tekken: Bloodline isn’t too bad. The entire series is just six 22-minute episodes, so it does not overstay its welcome. (In fact, with that kind of runtime, it kind of seems like Bloodline should have just been a movie. Not sure why they opted for the series format instead.) The fight choreography is generally pretty good, although they do reuse the same animations for Jin a couple of times. Still, if you like Tekken, the fights here are good enough to keep you watching from scene to scene.

The biggest surprise for me is that the story was actually quite good…at least in the beginning. Everything in the first episode, with Jun raising Jin to be a good person and how to use martial arts for the right reasons, was excellent. Then the brutal aggression of Heihachi’s training, which runs completely counter to Jun’s philosophies, was also decent. The angel/demon contrast they set up made for a cool dichotomy for our hero has to navigate. However, it doesn’t feel like the story really does much with this setup. And unfortunately the ending really just fell flat for me.

At least in those first couple episodes though, I was impressed that the writers could manage to make ‘Mishima Family drama’, of all things, actually compelling. That’s quire a feat, even if it didn’t last.

Bloodline is laser-focused on Jin and Heihachi, and the show could have done a lot more with Tekken’s extensive cast. For instance, I would have liked to see some buddy/rival dynamics with Paul Phoenix and Martial Law. Or maybe some Jackie Chan-like shenanigans with Lei Wulong. And where the hell is Yoshimitsu? At least we did get some good King action, some classic Nina stuff, and I genuinely love that they included Leroy Smith, even though that character wasn’t added until Tekken 7. (Leroy is filthy, y’all.) Plus, if I’m being honest, there are a lot of dumb Tekken characters who aren't worth including in your TV show, so I am definitely fine with the writers choosing only a select few.

Ultimately, I’d say that Tekken: Bloodline on Netflix is surprisingly good. Not fantastic, not even necessarily “great”, and not a must-see by any means. But a solid effort and a reasonably good time. By the way, I watched it with Japanese voices and English subtitles, the way the Good Lord intended. It’s probably the same experience with English voices, but that’s never my first choice. If you are looking for video game-inspired martial arts anime action, then you might as well give this one a watch.

After all, it has Hwoarang, and he’s the best.