Tenjho Tenge

Tenjho Tenge is a really weird series. If it was just a series of well-animated fights competently strung together by anything resembling a plot, I would have liked it more. As it turned out, it actually focused too much on story, to the detriment of the action.

Tenjho started out pretty promisingly. It wasn't exactly the most interesting premise and I wasn't a huge fan of some of the characters, but it was all right. There's an especially awesome scene where the cocky new guy gets his ass handed to him by the quieter supporting character. He's beating him, but when the new guy uses a cheap trick to get in a blow, he freaks out, goes into this weird rage with glowing red eyes, and viciously brutalizes him. It's a surprising, stylishly animated, cool scene. There's not much of that in the show, though, which tends towards more traditional martial arts with a lot of special anime techniques thrown in. There's a good amount of ecchi (T&A), but it's a little less enticing than intended because the character designs are a little weird for it.

What's really strange about it all is the constant flashbacks. I would guess about half of the entire series is the story of what happened a few years earlier, detailing the events of the villain's rise to prominence. It's weird since he doesn't really look like the same guy, and it's not that much of a time difference. A lot of the story revolves around a pretty crazy brother of the two female leads, and his death is what causes the riff between them and the villain. It's never adequately explained how things get from where they are at the end of the flash to the beginning of the show, and it's just a really strange way to do a story. The whole plot isn't really interesting enough to carry the show to the extent it does, and it seems like they didn't know what they wanted to do. There's some promising stuff, but it isn't capitalized on.

The movie is just a compilation/summary of the flashback storyline, and the OVA continues the story a bit without actually resolving anything. There's a build up to a final confrontation which hasn't happened yet. I don't know if it ever actually will. I'd like to see it, just so it's over, but it's honestly not keeping me up at night. Tenge is a decent show, but it definitely doesn't meet its potential.