Review of Tenjho Tenge: Vol. 4

Introduction

Fighting anime, a genre that would normally have me heading for the hills. Characters facing each other, building up their stats and unleashing special effect laden finishing moves, it all seems barely one step above the console games that inspire them. While the younger audiences are catered for with card swapping mayhem like Pokemon, older viewers need something a little more adult with their combat. As well as adding some bone-crunching violence and free flowing blood, there is a fair bit of sex as well, with mini-skirted vixens with ample breasts that would be excessive in a Russ Meyer movie, getting into the fist fighting fun. Yet Tenjho Tenge, which has all of this, has managed to win me over. It also has an interesting story, characters that go beyond the usual anime clichés, and a sense of irreverence that occasionally borders on the parody. To put it succinctly, it`s fun, and I actually find myself looking forward to seeing how the series progresses.

Souichiro Nagi and Bob Makihara have built a reputation of ruling the roost of whichever school they are transferred to. They do this through using their fists relentlessly against whoever stands up to them. This has been going on for some time now, but the 100th school they attend is a wholly different prospect. Todo Academy`s mission statement since its founding has been to resurrect and promote the Martial Arts. The students there are a completely different prospect, and Souichiro and Bob will not wind up at the top of the pile as they so casually assume, quite the reverse in fact. They are taken under the wing of Maya Natsume, who sees promise in their abilities, and she trains them as part of her Juken Club. The problem is that the Juken Club stands for everything that is anathema to the school`s Student Executive Council. The third volume saw Maya Natsume begin to relate the background of the rivalry that exists between the Juken Club and the Executive Council of Mitsuomi Takanayagi.

In the four episodes in this fourth volume, the flashback continues as we learn more of the dark past that haunts Maya Natsume and Mitsuomi Takanayagi, all centred on her dead brother Shin.

13. Magical Power
At the hospital, after seeing the state of the Katana members, Maya determines to confront her brother. Mitsuomi wants to help, but finds it difficult to even move. Yet the first to face Shin is his right hand man and best friend, Bunshichi, despite the battering he received in the previous volume. He walks straight into trouble, as Shin has fallen completely into darkness.

14. Hellfire
The odds are evened when Shin is deprived of his sword, although Bunshichi has to go through hell to achieve it. In the aftermath of the confrontation, Maya has to face her injured brother, while Mitsuomi must deal with the fears that have unexpectedly paralysed him.

15. Yin and Yang
The Katana group is defunct, and a power vacuum has formed at Todo Academy. As the only ambulatory member of Katana, Mitsuomi is the natural successor to the Presidency, but being merely a freshman, there are countless seniors ready to challenge him. Meanwhile Shin wants a closing ceremony for Katana, even if Mitsuomi will be the only one to attend.

16. Conclusion
Maya`s tale is complete, and now the members of the Juken Club must come to terms with what they have learnt. They don`t have much time though, as Golden Week is over, and the school is buzzing with gossip about the bowling alley incident. Now Souichiro and Bob have to defend their newly earned reputations, while Maya has to await the punishment of the school for her infractions.

Video

Tenjho Tenge gets a clear, sharp and exceedingly colourful 4:3 transfer. By and large the transfer is excellent, with few if any artefacts or colour banding. The animation is something of a mixed bag. The character designs are excellent, but the dynamic opening sequence isn`t mirrored by the show. This is one of those static animations where everything remains static except the lips in dialogue scenes. It also lacks visual depth, it`s very obviously a CG 2D animation, and it feels very much like an animated comic book. That is except for the action sequences, which are dynamically realised, with the fights accomplished with flair and impact.

Audio

You get a choice between DD 2.0 English and Japanese, with a further choice of translated English subtitles, signs or nothing at all. The dialogue is clear throughout, and while as usual I prefer the Japanese track, I spot checked the English track and found little to complain about.

Features

Once more the bare minimum, with just a jacket picture, Screenshot Gallery (useful if your pause button is broken), and trailers for Saiyuki Reload and Paranoia Agent.

Conclusion

Volume 4 of Tenjho Tenge continues the good work started by the previous volume. We get more background to the story, and more character development as Maya`s flashback continues. As I stated in my review of the previous volume, Tenjho Tenge seemed like just another fighting anime, high school factions battling for supremacy, with a bit of mythology and philosophy thrown in for good measure. It seemed a pretty cut and dried `good guys versus bad guys` plot, with the heroes of the Juken Club battling the villainous Executive Council, and recruiting antiheroes Bob and Souichiro to help them. Now that we learn what happened two years previously, all that is subverted, and the story takes on greater dimension.

As we see here, Maya`s older brother Shin was a nasty piece of work, wielding the same "Dragon Eye" power as youngest sister Aya, yet unconstrained when it came to using it. Future head of the Executive Council Mitsuomi on the other hand is a more gentle and thoughtful character, a far cry from the muscle-bound monolith that we first met. It also becomes apparent that the Takanayagi clan orchestrated the situation two years previously, and it seems that Mitsuomi, having divorced the Executive Council from that manipulation may turn out to be a good guy. The ambiguity that these past two volumes have thrown up has certainly made Tenjho Tenge interesting to watch.

But this being the middle of the series means that we don`t get all the answers here, and the fact that the flashback story is actually being narrated by Maya is made abundantly clear when she ends the story just as it`s getting to the interesting bit. It also means that we have to wonder just what she left out or altered to manipulate the Juken Club members to act in her favour. As it is, we still don`t know the fateful events that resulted in Shin`s death, and the eventual rift between Maya and Mitsuomi. While these episodes have laid the groundwork for those events, it will be up to later episodes to fill in the missing pieces.

More annoyingly, this disc ends on a cliffhanger, with Bob and Souichiro walking into the lions` den, while Aya starts playing with the same fire that fatally burnt her brother Shin.

I never thought that I would be engrossed by a fighting anime, but Tenjho Tenge has a bewitching quality to it. While the clichés are all present and correct, it transcends its genre by telling an engrossing story, painting some vivid and multi-faceted characters, and actually paying its mythology more than just lip service, not just using it as an excuse for volumes spanning confrontations, with increasingly explosive outbursts of chi. As a fighting anime, Tenjho Tenge will probably spoil you for all the others. Well worth considering, and I`m looking forward to Volume 5.