It’s been a while since I’ve impulsively picked a new manga title to read, but a chance viewing of a YouTube clip from its anime adaptation got me seeking Oh!Great’s Tenjo Tenge
Set at Todo High School, an institution where all of the students possess martial arts savvy, Tenjo Tenge focuses on the members of the Juken Club, which is “seen as one of the weakest martial arts clubs on campus.” This situation, we suspect, is about to change with the arrival of two new street-brawling students, spiky-haired Soichiro Nagi and dread-locked Bob Makihara. Their appearance on campus sparks more than one fracas and draws the attention of the Executive Council, a group of arrogant upper classmen who also have it in for the Juken Club. The first act of aggression by the council is to send a bespectacled creep named Ryuzaki to kidnap and sexually assault Bob’s girlfriend Chiachi.
Though Soichiro at one point arrogantly declares, “I’m supposed to be the hero of this story,” the first two books of Tenjo Tenge devote just as much space to other members of the Juken Club. First, antenna-haired Maya Natsumi is the club’s leader: when we first see her, she looks like a little girl, but when it comes time to fight, she transforms into a scantily-dressed large-breasted woman with mega fighting abilities. “When you’re as skilled as I am,” Maya immodestly states, “it’s a piece of cake to pull of a transformation like this.” (We later learn that she’s not the only one capable of such transmogrifications.) Her sister Aya is a trace more modest — in both personality and dress — though she is the possessor of a great power known as Dragon Eyes, which enable her to see into the future and exert her will through humans and inanimate objects. As in Naruto, for instance, this great power itself has the potential of corrupting and taking over its wielder.
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