Anime Analyze: Tenjho Tenge (Anime)

This next anime is called Tenjho Tenge.  Made by the company Oh! Great, it was originally made as a manga and then remade into the anime series in 2004.  Like some other shows that I have reviewed, it only lasts 24 episodes, however the manga goes farther in the story than the anime.  Through the entire series there is just one opening song, "Bomb A Head" by m.c.A.T. So, lets get into the anime Tenjho Tenge. 

So the series starts out with two people, Souichiro Nagi and his friend Bob Makihara.  They are two tough guys who think that they know pretty much everything there is to know about fighting and martial arts.  That is until they decide to come to a school dedicated to the teaching and study of fighting and martial arts.  They get completely beat up their first day and eventually they go and join a small club known as the Juken club.  They learn how to use chi (which in this series, can give you superhuman abilities and strange powers that aren't really explained other than saying that it uses chi).  As they get stronger in their abilites, they learn that there is a huge rivalry between the Juken club and the Student Council which is a bunch of really strong fighters who basically rule the school with an iron grip.  As I watched this show it really showed how weird this show really was.  Every student had these weird powers and sometimes their strength got to superhuman levels.  Everything didn't make sense and it was all over the place.  As the two main guys get to know the other people in the club (all 3 of them).   They learn about how this rivalry got to the way it was and this is about halfway through the show, but the rest is history.  Literally, the ENTIRE last half of the series, save for the last episode, is one long drawn out flashback.  No jokes, that's it.  This is all there is to it.

When it comes to the animation, the series has it ok.  The show is a bit older and it looks as such.  Some things that were really annoying was the huge amount of fan service in this show, mainly pertaining to women's chests.  Every single fight had something that would tear clothing away and it would "happen" to tear away from select parts of their clothes.  It got really annoying after the third or fourth fight.  Also, some things like the size of people and their muscles were really ridiculous.  For a show that was making it seem like this was a "real-ish" type setting of high school students.  They seemed more like 30 years old at times rather than 15-16.
 

Character development was really non-existent except when it came to Souichiro and Aya, the girl that likes him.  They are really the only people that "grew" or got stronger in the show.  Everyone else just kinda stayed the same and nothing was really gained.  Aya gained more of an understanding of how people and their interests work, and Souichiro gained more power......yeah thats it, nothing really mental or anything, just more power.

Plot......yeah there really wasn't one.  They tried to put something into the show about some tournament in the school that happens every year, but it didn't even make it into the first round, so there goes that idea.  But yeah nothing, really at all.

Overall, yeah this show was pretty crappy.  Not only did the show have over the top fan service for no reason, no plot whatsoever, and no character development at all save for a tiny bit.  Half of the show was a flashback that had no purpose, and the rest of it was trying to build something that never came, and the whole premise and physics behind the whole thing failed in one epic kaboom.  I would not really watch the show, unless you are really bored.  That and the show didn't even finish, it went on in the manga but the anime ended.  Either the anime makers realized this show was crap or they just had no ratings.  Final rating is a 3 out of 10.  That is my review of Tenjho Tenge, and have a Merry Christmas to everyone reading this.

Final Rating: 3.0/10
                             Premise:           5.0
                             Plot:                 2.0
                             Animation:        4.0
                             Character Dev:  2.0
Total Episodes: 25
RVF: (Don't) but if you do, Japanese Dub
MRS: www.nwanime.com