Tenjho Tenge 16

Unfortunately, this volume puts us about even with the Japanese release. Volume 17 came out in July in Japan, but I suspect we won’t see 17 in English soon, and volume 18 hasn’t been scheduled for release in Japan yet either. Sad.

The story cleared the historical flashback about halfway through the volume, but not before losing me completely. I had trouble keeping some of the characters and alignments straight before, but remembering that anyone with a special power was a red wing, while anyone who was just strong was a white wing wasn’t hard, and it was also pretty easy to tell who was for and against the Juken Club by whether or not they attacked the main characters. This is not an ideal solution to my problem, but it was my way of keeping order, and it didn’t seem too important that I know much else about some of the side characters. The historical arc jumps around in time, and there’s at least one character who can shift his appearance, along with the characters aging. I could not keep the names or characters straight at all for this stretch. It was hard for me when things snapped back to present time too, because new characters appear who have ancestors that fought in the flashback we just saw. They were with Aya in the past, but are they with her now? I think they are. But they’re in the car with Mitsuomi. Maybe he’s actually with them now, and they’re fighting the common enemy of Sohaku, who may not be dead because he can manipulate life force? But maybe Soichiro is the new Sohaku?  Reading a summary helped me get a bit more of what was going on, but it was pretty clear reading it that Sohaku totally dominated everything that went down in Feudal Japan, and that there was something involving his eyeball and a woman who appeared a few volumes ago (who is apparently very old, and also had her teeth punched out by Mitsuomi) that affected the present.  I suppose that’s all I need to know for right now, and things will make themselves clear as need be.

Putting all that aside, I’m pretty pumped, because the second half of the volume started the fighting tournament at Todo. That’s all I need to know. Tenjho Tenge has some of the most beautiful and well-choreographed action sequences of any manga, and I’m really looking forward to this tournament. I can understand what happens as people win and lose and someone takes control of the school. That’s easy. I am slightly bummed that Maya seems to be out of action for the time being, though. Here’s hoping the Hotaru family has her back on her feet before the end of the tournament.