"Tenjo Tenge" Review (From CMX to Viz Media's 'Full Contact Edition')

Title: Tenjo Tenge
Author: Oh! great
Volume(s): 22
Publisher: CMX/Viz Media
Genre(s): Action
Rated: Teen (13+)/Mature (17+)

Note: This review was originally published on The Comic Book more than ten years ago.  It is being republished here (in a slightly cleaned up and edited format) for our new site!  As a result, it may not reflect the writers currently writing style (but time was spent on it anyway,so it'd be a shame to completely get rid of it)! Also, CMX's original release titled the series as "Tenjho Tenge," which is why it's spelled that way for the majority of the review.  Enjoy!

Ah, "Tenjho Tenge." Now here's a series everyone has been talked about! When I first read scanlations of this manga I knew that if any company decided to release this series in the states then there would DEFINITLY be controversy! Why would there be controversy? Well, if anyone is familiar with Oh! great's work, then you would know that he got his start writing hentai manga, and this was probably the first "mainstream" title he's written. Never-the-less, the series was violent beyond anything I would have imagined and the sexual content was very, VERY strong! When DC Comics announced that they would be releasing "Tenjho Tenge" in English under their new CMX label, I was impressed at how much guts they had (I had always suspected Tokyopop or Dark Horse would be the ones to pick it up). Unfortunately, it doesn't look like CMX had as much guts as I thought they did, but I was still right about "Tenjho Tenge" garnering controversy!

But before we get into the politics of the release, lets talk about what the series is like first. "Tenjho Tenge" is a graphic, violent, and disturbing manga that happens to have a lot of explicit nudity and sex. Characters get raped, beaten, raped again, and beaten some more. No, this isn't a series about domestic violence: It's a fighting manga! You know, a fighting manga, like in the sense of "Tekken" and "Street Fighter," except "Tenjho Tenge" isn't based off a video game (and it certainly isn't as much fun). "Tenjho Tenge" actually revolves around several characters instead of one sole individual. Since this is a fighting manga, the setup makes perfect sense. The story begins with a young man named Takayangi, who is a shy boy, but when his emotions get ahold of him he is capable of unleashing enormous power at his enemies. He is a member of a sparing club led by the unusually short (but, of course, strong) Maya. One day (when Takayangi happens to be late), Maya's sister, Aya, is set to join their club. Upon seeing Aya practicing sparing in a way that makes it look like she's dancing, Takayangi instantly falls in love with her. On the other side of town, there are two new transfer students who are out to cause trouble. Nagi and Bob were the top dogs at their old school, and they are in this school to show everyone who's boss (and as far as Nagi is concerned, he's the star of this manga).

Both teenagers WANT to be the top dogs at their new school, but Maya and Takayangi go to this school as well, and they're both a lot stronger then Nagi and Bob! Somewhere in this mess, Aya falls in love with Nagi after he accidentally crashes into her while she's taking a shower (she tells her sister "When I looked at him, it's like I saw my destiny or something"). And then there are lots of fights, lots of revelations, and lots of sex. I know there has been a lot of attention on "Tenjho Tenge" at the moment, but out of all the things you have heard let's get one thing out of the way right now: "Tenjho Tenge" is NOT a revolutionary manga, nor is it very deep! Really folks, it's not. If anything "Tenjho Tenge" is a silly and sometimes fun series to read, but if you hear people telling you how deep the story is or anything, then just take that praise with a grain of salt, as they may be giving this series high praise for the wrong reasons. There's really not much more to talk about aside from that. The series has some cool fights, the characters are pretty shallow, and the story is really silly. Well, okay, I take that back. For a fighting series "Tenjho Tenge" may have a better story than most fighting manga's out there, yet compared to manga in general, "Tenjho Tenge's" story will make you chuckle more then anything. The characters themselves aren't even very deep. Most of the characters motives are shallow and a little childish at times...these are, of course, high school students, so maybe the lack of mature motivations is understandable! Nagi wants to be the star of the series. Bob wants to defeat anyone who's stronger then him. Takayangi wants to marry Aya. Aya wants to marry Nagi.

Meanwhile Maya is more interested in running her dojo club all the while turning into a buxom beauty when a fight is getting serious. Seriously, when Maya wants to get series her breasts go "fwomph," she grows some spiky nipples, and her butt becomes rounder then a basketball. She easily defeats her enemy and then goes back to her chibi state (I'm not sure why this happens, seeing as how if I were the author, I would draw Maya as her Playboy model all the time). While these may not be noble goals in life, within the context of the series itself this all leads to some pretty funny (if not totally ludicrous) situations. So why are people singing praises of "Tenjho Tenge" then? Well, more likely than not, it's because "Tenjho Tenge" has been heavily censored for the American market. Yes, the series has been censored. At the moment this is common knowledge to anyone who reads manga, but this is worth noting just in case someone reads this review seven years later, and doesn't remember that this series was censored (maybe it will be uncut in the future?). So what has been censored? Um...pretty much everything. Over thirty edits to be precise. And judging by how much more violent and explicate this series becomes in later volumes, some people are starting to suspect that whole CHAPTERS will have to be cut in order for CMX to retain the Teen rating they so desperately want! This is actually the biggest problem with this release. "Tenjho Tenge" in itself is not a terrible series...per se.

Granted, it's silly and trite (it really is, and don't let anyone else tell you otherwise), but it's still a fun read when you are in a silly mood...or, better yet, drunk (I've had friends tell me this series seems like pure genius when they are feeling a little light headed). It's best to acknowledge "Tenjho Tenge" for what it is, and that is nothing more then a silly but fun fighting manga. However thanks to this unneeded censorship, the series is being hailed as some sort of work of art that should be seen in all it's glory. "Tenjho Tenge" isn't a masterpiece, but now that the series is being censored, it's officially a masterpiece until an uncut version of the series is released. The campaign to get this series released uncut is so big, is building up so much hype, that there is no way an eventual uncut release could live up to expectations. Ignoring the hype that has been built up because of the censorship though, the editing that has been done to the American release is still sever, and not to be taken lightly. While I do think that the 'situation' (as it were) has caused people to give more credit to the book than is warranted, you can't ignore the fact that what is changed is brutal, and some scene's meanings are totally different because of the editing. For example, in the Japanese book one of the characters is rapped. However the rape scene is changed so that it is nothing more than a beating in the American release. I may not be in front of the line to want to see a girl being rapped, but the meaning of the scene, a scene that is a major turning point in this characters life (one of the few important scene's of such magnitude in this series), is completely changed, and so is the character herself.

Countless other things are also changed, and I'm sure a lesbian relationship (complete with graphic sex scene) will most likely be cut in a future volume (I can already hear all you teenage boys crying in agony). In fact, even though there are over thirty edits to this release, the American version of "Tenjho Tenge" STILL isn't suitable for anyone under the ages of 16 or so, which makes all of this editing seem even more pointless! If CMX had released the uncut, uncensored version of "Tenjho Tenge" right off the bat, then the grade would have been either C+ or B- depending on how the translation was (maybe a B if there was some great extras thrown in the mix), but the current release is a joke, plain and simple as that. This isn't even the same series Oh! great created, so I wouldn't even call it "Tenjho Tenge" at all (much like I wouldn't consider "Warriors of The Wind" to be "Nausicaa: Vally of the Wind"). However in defense of CMX (and trust me, this is as much defense as they are getting from me), there a note at the back of the book replacing their "100% manga" paragraph pointing out that "Tenjho Tenge" has had some changes made to it with the author's permission, so why people are claiming that CMX is advertising this as the real deal I don't know, but they aren't. They also included a beautiful color foldout of Aya that is pretty darn nice, but the extra just feels like a cheap apology at this point. Regardless of all that though, the American release of "Tenjho Tenge" is a disgrace to the manga fans, and the editing is so sever, that I'm going to give this release my lowest grade. Sorry CMX.

Update: 5/29/2020

Would you believe back in the day that the review up there garnered over 10,000 clicks on my old website?!  Well, it appears that many of my predictions I wrote about ten years ago did in fact come true.  We DID get a proper uncut release of "Tenjo Tenge" (as it's spelled these days)!  Originally, it appeared that CMX might be the ones to release it themselves.  As the series went on, it became painfully obvious to the powers-that-be that the Teen rating was a liability, and so CMX started editing it less.  Eventually, the rating got bumped to Older Teen (16+) but there were still edits.  Finally, it got to the point where the Mature (17+) rating was fully embraced (oddly enough, there were still minor edits in the series).  It's reported that CMX editors eventually admitted that censoring the manga was a huge mistake and they should have never done it.  Why they didn't come to this realization before the book was released (given the outcry) I will never know.

Since then, Viz Media (who ironically has a history of censoring many of their own titles) saved the license and re-released it in America as "Tenjo Tenge: Full Contact Edition."  Aside from getting a general re-release after DC Comics folded CMX, the new edition comes in bigger books, contains extras such as color pages, includes two books in one, and (most importantly) is 100% uncut (as far as we know)!  I mean, even with Viz's history of censorship they HAD to release this one uncut!  To not do so would defeat the entire purpose of re-releasing it at all.  Since we do have the uncensored version now, is it an improvement?  Well, let's put it this way: If you like violence and naked women, then yes, it is a MAJOR improvement!  If you like reading manga with great stories and characters though, this is a little more than fluff.  For that matter, the world has changed so much since the #MeToo movement, I wonder if the censorship would have been welcomed had the CMX situation played out today?

It truly is a specific title for a specific audience.  When I was younger I probably would have eaten this up, but now that I'm older, married, and a little wiser all around, I look at this "mature" title for what it truly is: A teen shonen series masquerading as an adult book.  The storytelling has so many cliches that only the truly young would be won in by them, but the book itself is so wildly inappropriate for kids that I can only come to the conclusion that (much like Playboy) no one is reading this for anything that is actually written on the pages.  This is an eye candy for a lonely mind, and I find I just don't have it in me to ever go back to it.  The artwork is good and if you enjoy what it's selling you are unlikely to regret your purchase (at the moment), but I don't think this is going to hold up well for most.  It's nice to finally have "Tenjo Tenge" uncut and uncensored.  It feels like a major wrong was righted in doing so.  It's ultimately never as good as we built it up to be though, and had it gone out in this form from the beginning I doubt the title would have planted a flag in the anime community at all.

CMX Grade: Z

Full Contact Edition: C

Your Comic Book Guy - Kevin

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