Honoo no Tenkousei

"The sky is blue."
- Noboru "Leeroy Jenkins" Takizawa, 1991.


I gotta say, this is easily without a doubt, the most thought-provoking and profound statement of the 20th Century. After that, I believe he won the Noble Prize for Literature in '91. Nadine Gordimer? She doesn't exist. I wish more anime were like this OVA. Don't let that score fool you, this anime is incredible. In fact, don't even look at it. You're going to look at it right after you read this review, aren't you? Well, there's a new transfer student and his name is Noboru Takizawa. At this school, students settle arguments and ... disputes not with their words, but with their fists. Boxing is a prominent sport at this school. Some students would use dirty tricks to win a match. Enter Saburo Ibuki. Saburo is a cheater who would do pretty much anything to win. Especially if love is on the line. He's madly in love with a young girl named, Yukari Takamura. A girl who is CLEARLY not into Saburo, but he's too dumb and oblivious to take a hint. Noboru can see that she's in distress and the only way to save her is to defeat Saburo. If he loses, Yukari will be stuck in a relationship with Saburo.
I've never watched an anime that engaged me and made emotional so quickly before. It's only fifty minutes long. That's impressive. This OVA through me back to when I first fell in love with Ashita no Joe. Tenkousei captures almost all the excitement I felt back then with a comedic twist to it. It felt nostalgic. I love the scruffiness and dark outlines of the character designs. Kazuhiko Shimamoto has the best character designs in all of anime. It pulls of the 70's anime aesthetic very well. There are some shots that do look Go Nagai-ish, not sure if that was intentional or not. The OP is this manly rollercoaster of a ride. When I hear, "MOERU FIRE! TATAKAI!" My pussy starts dripping like a faucet. Awesome visuals of Noboru beating up the student body and looking like a badass. He's even standing on top of cliffs with huge explosions going off in the background! What's not to love!? There isn't much to talk about because of the small amount of content, but this is most certainly a must-watch. It's not even an hour long. Go watch it! By the way, as I was writing this review, I read the entire Honno no Tenkousei manga. I decided to make a mini review connecting the OVA to the manga, because if I made a separate review the manga review would be a paragraph long. I have very little to say, but just enough to give it a quick mention. My scores for the OVA:

Story: 7/10 <---- Not the most original.
Art: 10/10
Sound: 10/10
Characters: 9/10
Enjoyment: 10/10
Overall: 10/10

Honno no Tenkousei (Manga)
999,999,999 people found this review helpful | overall rating: 7

Pros:
• Very strong first two arcs. (Volleyball and Boxing)
• Great artwork.

Con:
• Story takes a nosedive in the "Intrigue Department" after first two arcs.

That con is very unfair. I shouldn't hold that against the manga, but I'm keeping it in anyway. I think what made me love the OVA more than the manga is that the OVA adapts one of the two best arcs of the manga. The first arc is the Volleyball arc, which is just as fun and chaotic as the OVA. The second is the Boxing arc. I don't have to explain myself for that one. After that arc, the story starts to become more complicated and boring, which doesn't really fit this manga at all. It goes from this fun, hyperactive manga to this uninteresting and somewhat slow paced manga. The manga is still good overall, but those later arcs didn't engage me like the first two did. The Black Takizawa arc was especially lame. I always found the evil clone concept to be unoriginal and stupid. And the Go Nagai thing from earlier wasn't intentional. It's just a silly face characters make sometimes. That's all I had to say. 7 out of 10.

Well that was a decent fun watch.

Honoo to Tenkousei is a short serie who is both an homage and a parody to classic shōnen like Saint Seiya or other anime from the eighties.
Just from the opening, you can feel the love they put into this work: everything in those two episodes like the soundtrack, the characters design, the animation and the overall atmosphere are all a love-letter to those anime. And of course, they use every cliche in the book like the nonsensical romance, super attacks, the speaker for the fight, the rival who cheats, etc...

But what make this show works is that ... they know how and when to use their jokes: they don't overwhelm you with jokes every two seconds (like many bad "spoof" movies) which is a good thing. They know when to have jokes and when to have some so called "serious" moments; to the point that I was, for a few moment, legitimately into the story. I even was rooting for the main character at some point which is impressive since he is a massive idiot. I actually wish we had more episodes to see the other vilains the opening showed us and to spend more time with the serie...

Really it's the combination between being at both a parody and an homage that makes Honoo to Tenkousei work. It's not the best serie ever made, sure, but it's a fun watch and everyone should give it a shot!

This anime is decent but not great. One of the main reasons I watched it is because I am going through all of Gainax's older works. I really liked the art style, which had thick black lines and a dirty cel look. The animation was choppy but that was on purpose since they were trying to emulate the look of older fighting anime. The story is not very great, but it's not supposed to be since it is only two episodes. The ending was decent but was very predictable.

Overall, this is a decent anime to watch, especially if you want to watch some of ... Gainax's older anime, and see where the studio started.