Tenjo Tenge 1 (omnibus ed.)

Oh! great – Viz – 2011 – 22 volumes
this omnibus contains vols 1-2

I won’t lie: I love Tenjo Tenge to pieces, and I was super-excited to hear that Viz licensed it. It was in my top 5 series to be rescued from CMX. It’s got a terrible reputation for having rather graphic art and themes (which means that some only see it as fanbait manga) and being censored (which means that people who read fanbait manga won’t buy it), but it’s a really fantastic story with great art. I’ve read through my CMX volumes two or three times, and I almost never re-read series. It breaks my heart that more people didn’t read it when CMX published it.

The Viz edition of this series is really nice. An omnibus treatment is really the way to go, especially since the English edition was only 4 volumes from the end. This book contains volumes 1-2 of the original. The cover is that of volume two, and the art to volume one’s cover (which was the controversial due to the logo covering the panty shot on the CMX edition) is included in the plentiful color pages. Each volume of Tenjo Tenge in Japan comes with a double-sided poster, a double-page color title spread, an additional color page, and a color illustration on the table of contents. All of those color pages are included in the Viz edition, in front of volume one, then again in the middle of the book for the stuff included with volume two. The volume two poster isn’t a poster, but is included as a single page illustration for the Aya image, and a double-page illustration for the Maya image. Part of me thinks that Oh! great may insist that these color pages are included, since they were part of the CMX edition all the way to the end, and I can’t imagine that the series was making enough money to justify the extra cost. The book is manga-oversized, the trim size is consistent with the larger-size Viz Signature line.

And nothing is censored. At all. Fanboys, put your money where your mouth is.

The uncensored artwork… is what it is. Oh! great started his career by drawing porn manga, and it’s obvious in his style. All the girls have massive breasts, and there are several scenes that lapse into porn manga mode. Chiaki, Bob’s girlfriend, is raped in a despicable attempt to teach Bob and Soichiro a lesson about acting out in school. It’s a graphic scene, but nowhere near as graphic as it would be in a porn manga, to be fair. And also, to be fair, it was talked down a lot, with Chiaki swearing up and down that she wasn’t actually raped. It’s still a very graphic scene. Later, while talking to Aya in a hot spring during a training camp, Chiaki begins feeling Aya up, sucking on her nipple and giving her kisses. Within the first chapter, Soichiro crashes through the roof of the girls’ shower and lands on a naked Aya (directly in her crotch, actually), who begins making out with him. There are what feels like dozens of panty shots per chapter.

It’s more graphic than a shounen/seinen manga (it straddles the two, in my opinion), but nowhere near as graphic as real porn manga. I’ve read Oh! great’s porn manga, simply because I liked Tenjo Tenge so much, and I was curious. There’s stuff in there that still gives me nightmares.

I know that doesn’t sound like the makings of the fantastic series I promised, but the fanservice mostly disappears (really!) after a few volumes, as if one Oh! great proved the story could stand on its own, he was allowed to stop doing it. Once you aren’t distracted by girls getting their panties ripped off, you can see that Oh! great’s attention to his female character’s appearance works really well in a series like this. All the girls are beautiful, the characters (male and female) all have a distinctive look and much attention is paid to the clothing they wear. The settings are also detailed and nice-looking. About the only failing I see in this first volume is that, occasionally, when someone lands a punch or strike during a fight, there’s a panel where it’s hard to tell just what is happening, but it doesn’t bother me that much since, really, someone is just being hit very hard. Otherwise, his fight scenes are also really well-drawn, with lithe characters jumping around and landing the occasional powerful punch. You can tell he plays a lot of fighting games.

The story? It takes awhile to get going. Compared to what I love about the series, the first two volumes are simply exposition, and it does get much better when the lengthy flashbacks start. We meet newcomers to Todo Academy, Bob and Soichiro, and we learn that they love to fight. Fortunately, Todo Academy is a school founded on fighting, and they see plenty of action. On their first day, after all their cocky challenges, they are beaten soundly by Maya Natsume, the president of the tiny Juken Club. Meanwhile, her sister, Aya, falls in love with Soichiro at first sight. Unfortunately, Masataka, another Juken Club member, falls in love with Aya at first sight and begins sulking over her crush on Soichiro. Soichiro wants nothing to do with Aya, but Masataka beats him up out of jealousy later when Soichiro provokes him into fighting. All the fighting gets the attention of the Student Executive Council, who punishes Soichiro and Bob by burning Bob’s bike, raping his girlfriend, then beating the crap out of Soichiro and Bob. Maya gets revenge for them, but sobered by the sound beating and enraged by the line that was crossed, Bob and Soichiro join the Juken Club and begin training to beat the Executive Council. The second volume is mostly training and, later, a full-out brawl in a bowling alley between members of the Executive Council and Juken Club.

It sounds like just a shallow fighting manga, and right now, it is. But there are several nice touches even in the first couple volumes. There is some romance mixed into the story, and I love that the characters tend to fall in love out of a sense of admiration. Masataka falls for Aya as soon as he sees her, not because she’s beautiful, but because she’s fantastic at the sword exercises he sees her doing (and I suppose being beautiful helps). Soichiro slowly begins to fall in love with Maya Natsume, but again, it’s less because she’s beautiful and more because she’s a genuine martial arts master with a lot to teach. Love out of admiration fits the series well, since all the characters are constantly striving for a personal best. This is completely overshadowed by the ridiculous relationship between Aya and Soichiro, however, which is far less understated than the others. Aya falls in love with Soichiro because of an old family rule that states the first man to see the flesh of a Natsume woman is their intended, and of course this triggers when Soichiro falls through the roof of the shower and sees Aya naked. Aya also constantly forces herself on Soichiro, talking and thinking of little else. Bah. It took me a long time to warm up to Aya Natsume after these first couple volumes.

After the initial set-up, we begin flashbacks that develop the characters and the history between the Executive Council and the Juken Club. That’s when things really start to get good, I promise. These first couple volumes are still necessary reading, and a pretty decent fighting/action manga in the meantime. But it gets much better and slightly less skeevy in the future.

Also, there’s some asides that point to Soichiro as the main character of the series. Maya and Aya dominate much of the story, but I think the real main character is Masataka. It takes a long time for that to become more obvious, though. Bear with me.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.