Tenjho Tenje tells the story of high school students Souichiro Nagi and Bob Makihara who want to become the strongest high schoolers, and after defeating the ‘top dogs’ at numerous high schools, they’re ready to fight at Toudou Academy. However, unbeknown to them, Toudou is not a normal high school—here students are taught to fight in different martial arts disciplines and it’s not easy to take down the pupils. Souichiro and Bob discover the truth quite soon when they encounter upperclassman Masataka Takayanagi, who defeats Souichiro in seconds. It’s here that the viewers find out that Souichiro and Bob are not the only main protagonists: Masataka belongs to the Juuken Club led by Maya Natsume, whose past against the Executive Council dictates the rest of the series. Together with Aya, Maya’s sister, the pool of protagonists increases, and while you might think there is a clear distinction between the heroes and the villains of the story, things are not at all black or white.

Being defeated effortlessly comes as a shock to Souichiro, so he and Bob decide to become stronger and show their new classmates who’s the strongest. However, they keep getting mixed up with the Juuken Club’s business so much that their personal lives are being affected by the actions of the Executive Council which is bent on destroying the members of the Juuken Club. In fact, the Executive Council is made up of the strongest fighters in the school, and they ‘educate’ (aka destroy) anyone who doesn’t follow their directives. It’s not that simple though—Maya and Mitsuomi Takayanagi, the Executive Council’s president, have a long history that culminated in the death of Maya’s brother, Shin.

Souichiro and Bob don’t have a choice but to join the Juuken Club to become stronger and fight back until they can climb to the top.

All the characters in Tenjho Tenge have some kind of backstory that affects the progression of the series. While at the beginning Souichiro and Bob give a Shonan Junai Gumi vibe as young thugs fighting to climb to the top, it doesn’t take long for the comparison between the two series to fade away. Souichiro and Bob learn quickly that there’s more at play than they thought, and they decide to join the Juuken Club, not only because Maya can train them, but also because they identify the Executive Club members as the villains pretty quickly. It’s only later in the series that they learn that Mitsuomi is not the bad guy. He definitely has  issues, but everything that happened before our two young thugs joined Toudou Academy was caused by the Takayanagi Clan, the strongest clan for martial arts, who had the goal of turning Mitsuomi into the one true martial artist and didn’t hesitate to play the students as pawns to achieve their goal. So the roles of hero and villain that the characters represent are switched, depending on whether we are talking about the characters in the present or in the past.

The series has two storylines: the first is the one that introduces Souichiro and Bob and their desire to become stronger, and the second one takes place a couple of years in the past, which narrates the history of Maya, Mitsuomi and Shin and how Mitsuomi caused Shin’s death. The narration is not linear and the backstory covers multiple episodes, alternating between past and present events. It’s done smoothly so there is no confusion for the viewers, and the backstory is narrated in chunks to help the story progress when something happens in the ‘present timeline’.

Toudou Academy has multiple martial arts clubs, and our protagonists face many of them, getting stronger with each fight. However, if you expect them to win every time, you’ll be sorely mistaken. The author doesn’t shy away from having the characters experience losses multiple times, as that’s what pushes them to want to become stronger. This is an action series, and as it’s centred on martial arts and fighting, you can expect a lot of violence and gore, and death in some cases. Compared to series like Dragon Ball and Naruto where fights last multiple episodes, in Tenjho Tenge the fights are shorter but way more frequent.

The paranormal elements are introduced with the backstory as it tells of the special abilities that some people have, including Shin and Aya Natsume. Both of them turn into bloodthirsty murderers if they get their hands on the Reiki, a katana that enhances the user’s supernatural abilities and many times calls for bloodshed. Only Maya can wield it in the Natsume family, thanks to her lack of supernatural powers. However, the Takayanagi Clan took advantage of Shin and the Reiki to turn him into a monster to make Mitsuomi stand out as a ‘hero’. Older brother Shin was obsessed with Maya—he couldn’t and wouldn’t let anyone harm her. A few times people around them suggested that what Shin felt for Maya was somehow incestuous, but Shin seemed more like a psychopath who tried to behave well just to make Maya happy, as he saw her as his only light. Shin saw himself as a monster, and he got to a point where he couldn’t take it anymore and accepted his death. Mitsuomi started as Shin’s friend and then became the person who needed to stop him at all costs. I don’t want to call Mitsuomi Shin’s enemy, as they were never enemies but two people who strove to become stronger to protect and possess the person they loved: Maya. While Aya can hear the same call of the katana Reiki, it’s a completely different experience. She has people around her who can and will stop her if she loses control, even if her own supernatural ability, the Dragon Eye, which allows her to see glimpses of the future, shows things that she doesn’t like and messes with her emotions badly.

There is a lot going on with the characters, and their relationships are quite complicated—I can’t even start to explain the multiple love triangles and how they start some of the fights. Romance is present in the story, but it’s a minor subplot used to justify some of the actions of the characters. However, what’s widely present is the sexualization of the female students, which gives the story the ‘ecchi’ tag. There’s a plethora of underwear and décolleté showing, and somehow when the women fight, they always end up losing most of their clothing. The sexualization of the male students is less noticeable, but the author also shows them shirtless for training and fighting, and during the fights, the only piece of clothing they lose is still the shirt. This way of portraying high school students is more common in Japanese manga and anime at the time; we  need to remember that the manga for this anime was initially released in the 90s, when other similar manga had the same style, such as the previously mentioned Shonan Junai Gumi and its follow-up GTO.

What I most disliked about this series was the non-ending (the series concludes at Episode 24; the last two episodes are OVAs). So we get to Episode 25, wondering how the producers are going to tie up any loose ends and all the fighting, only to reach the end of Episode 26 and find out that they didn’t. The anime was initially released in 2004, and as no second season has been developed, we can only assume that we won’t know how the fight between Souichiro and Mitsuomi ends unless we read the manga.

Tenjho Tenge is directed by Toshifumi Kawase (Beyblade) and produced by Masao Maruyama (Captain Tsubasa: Road to 2002) and it’s based on the manga by Oh! Great. The Tenjho Tenge Collection from MVM Entertainment gathers the 26 episodes of the series, and they can be viewed either in Japanese or in English, and English subtitles are provided as well. While I watched the majority of the series dubbed in English, I tried the Japanese language as well, and I thought the voice actors did a great job to represent the characters, especially when they had to represent the characters’ emotions—there are a lot of instances of this as this series is quite dramatic. The Blu-ray collection holds two disks, and the viewers can find ‘clean’ opening and ending theme songs, plus the promo and trailer materials with which the series was introduced. There is also a Collector’s Edition (November 2024) which includes eight art cards in a hardback art slipcase. 

Our review copy was supplied by MVM.