Spawning from the pages of CMX's manga comes Tenjho Tenge. An anime series chock full of fan service, a strong story and awesome martial arts action as well as sharp line work and purdy colours synonymous with all of Madhouses forays.

Aya and Maya Natsume sisters and their Juuken Club battle two new students, Souichiro and Bob, at their school to maintain supremacy in the fighting club ladder. To make things even more complicated, younger sibling Aya is courting Souichiro by trying to feed him all sorts of home cooked goodies. Throw into the mix the Student Executive Council, a group that sends out "Executioners" to make sure all students are kept in line.



It would be rather easy for someone to mistake Tenjho for a cheap clone of Ikki Tousen where in fact these two series are like chalk and cheese. They may have the same motif, pretty ladies fighting for pride and supremacy in a high school. Thankfully, Tenjho takes it one step further by introducing interesting and well designed characters. Although the character design isn't the best I've ever seen, it's well and truly good enough to be able to differentiate the characters albeit while keeping faithful to the shoujo/shonen archetype.

Don't get too carried away with the wonderfully animated hip-hop inspired opening sequence, it is as good as the animation gets. That's not to say that the rest of the animation is sub-standard, it's just that the opening sequence is of better quality than the animation in the majority of series' out there.

Judging from volume one, Tenjho Tenje looks rather promising. The animation is great, the story is solid, the characters are put together well and the action is top notch.

Tenjho Tenge is available through the Comic Shop.