I finished Tenjou Tenge not too long ago and have been meaning to post about it. This is that post. It’ll be some review and some summary, loaded with spoilers and pictures that skirt the edge of being not safe for work, so everything else goes below the fold.
It’s easy to assume Tenjou Tenge is strictly a fan service vehicle. It’s also not entirely wrong; there isn’t a single “average” looking character in the entire series. Here’s the main cast (as it were):
Every women Tenjou Tenge is similarly… *ahem* built to Aya and Maya, and most of the guys are ripped like Bob (or creepy ugly). Masataka and Souichiro (forth and fifth from the left, respectively) are the only really “average” looking guy in the series. This style is apparently a sort of trademark of the original manga artist Oh! great, and it’s certainly interesting. The series includes martial arts as a major theme, and it’s not hard to compare the characters here to those in pretty much any fighting game; Aya and Maya immediately reminded me of Kasumi and Ayane from Dead or Alive.
The nice thing about having everyone impossibly built, though, is that after awhile you start to forget about it. Which is good, because Tenjou Tenge is nearly as stupid as it could’ve been. The first nine episodes are entirely setup: we’re introduced to Bob and Souichiro, two punks that come to Todo Academy seeking to rule the school by beating the crap out of anyone that gets in their way. This plan is quickly ruined by Maya, who stops Souichiro’s rampage with one well-placed blow that knocks him from the main school building into the accompanying bathhouse and on top of her sister, Aya, who immediately becomes infatuated with him. Souichiro isn’t too fond of the affection and immediately runs out to pick a fight with Masataka during lunch, who quickly beats him with a chopstick.
The Executive (student) Council takes note of Bob and Souichiro and decides to teach them a lesson by attacking Bob’s girlfriend, Chiaki. After failing miserably to protect her, the two finally realize they’re no match for anyone at Todo Academy and join Maya’s Juken Club, the only club willing to stand up to the Executive Council. After a vicious assult at a bowling alley that leaves the Juken Club sorely beaten, though, we discover that there’s more to the animosity between the Juken Club and the Executive council than even long-time Juken Club members had thought.
Cue the flashback arc, which starts in episode 10 and doesn’t really end until episode 23 (leaving less than half the series dedicated to our “main” characters). Here we learn about Maya’s psychotic brother Shin, Mastaka’s big brother Mitsuomi, their friend Bunshici, and a couple of other characters relevant to the complicated past between the Juken Club and the Executive Council, some of which don’t make an appearance during the presence for various reasons. Shin killed his mother and father and tends to kill anyone that gets to close to his beloved sister Maya (Maya has a thing for Mitsuomi, by the way). Mitsuomi is being trained to be the “true martial artist” by his father. Bunshichi is… well, he’s Bunshichi. He’s probably the most down to earth character in the whole series, and also the biggest bad ass. He’s great.
At least, that is, until Shin hits Mitsuomi with an overload of Ki. Shin has a tendency to go psycho at the drop of a hat, and Mitsuomi’s father–hoping to bring out the best in his son by turning Shin into an ultimate evil of sorts–kidnaps Maya. Things go wrong when Shin actually finds out and kills most of the people involved. Mitsuomi takes a beating too, but in a different way: Shin imbues him with a huge amount of Ki, driving his body into overdrive. This gives Mitsuomi unparalleled fighting ability, but it also starts killing him. With the help of Shin’s “girlfriend” Kuzunoha Mana,Mitsuomi discovers that he probably has three, maybe four years left to live, and although he can probably beat anyone in the world in a fight, anything over three minutes of exertion puts him at serious risk of immediate death.
Mitsuomi isn’t too happy about this. He and Shin have a final bout in Todo Academies school tournament, where Mitsuomi wipes the floor with Shin as Shin struggles not to go crazy and kill everyone. Just as Mitsuomi’s about to finish it, though, Shin snaps again, severely injuring or killing everyone inthe arena before Mana steps in and finally puts Shin out of his misery. After their deaths, Mitsuomi forms the Executive Council to prevent anything like this from happening again. Maya blames Mitsuomi for her brothers death, though, and refuses to join him, instead continuing her brothers Juken Club in opposition to the Council.
There’s a lot more to that, but seriously: just watch. It’s pretty good, and it’d take forever to explain everything that goes on between all these people and how they got to where they are today. The last episode is entirely non-serious and doesn’t give us any kind of ending. An additional two-episode OVA continues the story, where we find out that Souichiro is actually the “tru martial artist” that Mitsuomi was being trained to be. Once again, we don’t get any kind of ending, though. It’s an unfortunate flaw for the series; I was really hoping to see where all this was going, but all we get is loose ends and no resolution.
Still, it’s a good watch. If you can get past the character models (or if they’re your kind of thing) there’s a good, fairly complex story going on that (unfortunately) comes no where near a conclusion.