Tenjho Tenge

(CMX, 2005-2007)
™ and © 1997 Oh! great
Read right to left; graphic novel; b&w.

In a school that must have recruiters from Street Fighter and Tekken prowling their halls, spiky–haired Souichiriou and biracial Bob announce they’re taking over. Ready to stop them are sisters Maya (whose kung fu somehow allows her to transform from an 8–year–old to an overripe femme fatale) and the super–strong Anya. Here’s another entry in the brutal, hyper–sexualized fight-school manga genre that exists in a moral vacuum where senseless violence is considered a virtue because it makes the combatants stronger. Souichiriou may be a thug, but it’s the “good guys” of the student council who punish the boys by engineering a vicious sexual assault on Bob’s girlfriend. It’s a harrowing scene actually made worse by the publisher’s edits, because it’s done in such a way that some readers may not understand she was raped. These attempts to make the material less objectionable by altering its excesses are misguided because they miss the point. Tenjho Tenge exists as a pretty but soulless exercise in sex and violence.

— S.A. Bennett

Jump to issue: