More fighting, more splattered blood and more broken limbs are featured in this second volume of Shootfighter Tekken.  If you are looking for action, this fighting show offers a lot of battles without much plot or story to get in the way.

Kiichi has been trained by his father from birth to become a master in the secret and deadly Nanshin Shadow style of martial arts.  As the second volume starts, Iron Kiba, Kiichi's nemesis from the first volume, retires from the wrestling ring.  Although he has promised to leave Kiichi and his family alone, he still wants to get revenge for his previous defeats.  So Kiba tracks down a martial artist who can take on Kiichi while Kiba goads his father into a fight afterwards.

The fighter that Kiba picks is a Jujutsu expert.  This fighter has the ability to read all of his opponent's attacks before there are even launched.  He can get any opponent in a lock under any circumstances, and can avoid any punch.  No matter how strong Kiichi is, he can't win if he can't make contact.

To up the ante, Kiichi's father tells him that if he loses this fight, he'll have to take his own life.  In order to avoid that fate, Kiichi is trained even more by his father, but will it be enough?

In Japan this was released as High School Exciting Story:  Tough, but the title was changed for the US release.  I guess they wanted to let everyone know that it was a fighting show, so they melded the names of two well know shows in the genre; Street Fighter and Tekken, altering them only slightly to avoid litigation.  It's always a bad sign when the powers that be feel they have to stoop to something like that to sell a show.

Like the first volume, this is your fairly standard fighting show with a lot of splattered blood, flying teeth and broken limbs.  Though most of the most gruesome acts take place off camera, there is still a good amount of violence shown.  The thing that I have against shows like this one is that the fights themselves become the reason for the show, with the plot being almost an after thought.  You never get to know the characters, they are just the 'good guy' and the 'bad guy.'  Any plot feels like filler between the training and fighting scenes.

There is a little bit more humor in this episode, with Kiichi's father donning a blindfold with cure little rabbits on it for example, but this show still isn't very original.  It's one fight after another, without much else.

The fights are very over the top throughout the series, but there is one scene that really takes the cake in this episode.  Kiichi is losing badly, but then he miraculously slips out of an unbreakable lock.  That is because he was actually knocked unconscious, but his body still retained all of his fighting moves.   Okay, whatever.  It made about as much sense as the rest of the show.

This 48 minute DVD contains the second episode of the three in this series.  It comes in a clear Amaray case with the chapter stops and cast credits on the black and white back of the cover.

Audio:

This DVD has both the original Japanese soundtrack and an English dub, both in stereo.  I listened to each audio track and the Japanese was superior.  The English soundtrack was a little boomy, but not nearly as bad as the first DVD.  The Japanese track had a more clear and natural sound to it, and was more enjoyable to listen to.

Video:

This show is presented in a widescreen (nonanimorphic) format, and looks good overall.  The image was a little soft in spots, but the colors looked fine.  The black backgrounds were not as even as they should have been, and there was some aliasing present.  These were fairly minor problems though.

Extras:

There are trailers for all three episodes of this series included on the disc, as well as previews for Munto, The World of Narue, Black Jack, and Cyber City the Vampire as well as an art gallery.  U.S. Manga Corps included something new and interesting too: Manga previews.  These were pretty neat, not just scanned in pages, but characters from the books superimposed over a series of different panels.  A text synopsis of the story is provided on screen to give you an idea of the plot.  It worked really well.

Final Thoughts:

This disc is very similar to the first volume.  If you are a big fan of fighting shows, you'll probably like this one too.  The biggest thing I had against the show was how similar it was to other shows in the genre.  There is a lot of blood and violence so this isn't suitable for younger viewers.  With a retail price of $19.99 for a mere 48 minute show, this is a fairly expensive disc.  That makes it easy to suggest this as a rental.