Tenjou Tenge
Tenjou Tenge is the kind of anime that is typically shounen and involves all the elements that worked well for a shounen anime combined with a High School Setting. It incorporates the themes of delinquents as well as martial arts. The parody nature of Tenjou Tenge is what makes it most enjoyable. However, did it really come up to our expectations and just blow our minds? We’ll talk about it in our in-depth review.
High School is a place where everyone is excited to go. It’s full of opportunities and is the basic building block of your career. However, for Soichiro Nagi and Bob Makihara, it’s just a place where they can hone their fighting skills and become the best delinquents.
The dreams of both Nagi and Bob are shattered when they learn that the school they are studying in is not an ordinary one. Instead of getting students to focus on studies, the school makes the students focus on Martial Arts. They wanted the revival of Martial Arts in Japan.
Both Soichiro Nagi and Bob Makihara are defeated brutally by two of their upperclassmen, Mastaka Takayanagi and Maya Natsume. This only starts a fire in both of them, and they want to become even better fighters.
What Nagi finds weird is that Maya Natsume’s little sister had been stalking him all this time. That’s when the two of them realized that the school they studied in was not an ordinary one. Will both Nagi and Bob be able to become the best martial artists of their school?
The major problem that we noticed with the series is that half of the series is just flashbacks from the past. We get to see a massive flashback from the past that explains the events going on in the present. There is no development of the story, and everything, including the characters, is one-dimensional. There are a lot of unanswered questions that are left hanging till the end of the series.
We are also deluded into thinking that Mastaka is a central and significant character. He’s rarely taken seriously and feels more like a joke throughout the entire series. But the truth is that he is forgotten and stays there as a background character with no importance. This just kills the primary goal of the other main characters to improve themselves and become stronger than Mastaka, who seemed to be invincible at first.
We have also noticed a lot of ecchi moments which are there for the fanservice only. It is a little unpleasant to see the creators desperately trying to take out something that could reel fans right in from the series.
The series had so much potential, but it became so generic that it became unbearable for us to watch it and enjoy it. There are a lot of characters in the series that are given an exciting aura at first but then soon, they all become side characters with little to no importance. We were highly disappointed with the way things turned out and had very high expectations for this series.
The two main characters seem intriguing at first as they are all excited and motivated to get stronger. However, they soon became bland, and we didn’t see any motivation in their characters. The only character that we absolutely loved was Maya Natsume. She had developed to her full potential.
We knew her from the present and didn’t know a thing about her past. But still, we were able to understand her character fully. There are also a bunch of side characters who also make a lot of sense. They’re even better than the main characters but were overshadowed by them, becoming only the background characters.
Overall, the characters were pretty decent, except for the two main characters. They had a lot of potential to be good, but sadly it didn’t happen with them. The overshadowing of some of the most amazing side characters is also something that disappointed us a lot.
One thing that we must keep in mind is that this anime series came out back in 2004. With that being said, the animation of this anime series is quite impressive. We’ve not seen any anime from the 2000s with such unique and fluid animation. The character designs are excellent. We’re introduced to a bunch of very colorful and vibrant characters that instantly steal our hearts.
There’s a transition from vibrant animation in some instances to very dark animation, which we found really cool. Overall, the animation is the strongest point of this anime series, and we appreciate the creators for creating such beautiful animation.
We were introduced to a very corny opening soundtrack, but it slowly grew on us and became our favorite. The ending soundtrack was pretty decent as well. The background music was just okay, and there was nothing special about it. Overall, the music department did great with the openings and endings. Even though they sound excellent, they are inevitably forgettable.
Tenjou Tenge had a lot of potential only if the plot and story were not so convoluted. The characters were also not very fun, and they did not serve any purpose in the story’s development—You can watch it and then come to a conclusion if you want to! The only good things about this anime were the animation and the music. But we can’t invest our time in anime just because the animation and music are good.
