Honoo no Tenkousei

To begin with, I'd like to say that this show is only a 10/10 if you know anything about Fist of the North Star and the shows of Go Nagai.

If you have, or know anything about fighting anime in general, you'll love this. Because it's a total love letter to them all. There is basically no plot, just two episodes of lots of punching, shouting, sideburns and jokes.

The art-style is a Go Nagai-esque heavy lined style, very much like an animated manga. The music is full of heroic themes, and a rock OP reminiscent of Ai Wo Torimodose (as is fitting.)

What the show ... does well is compress into two episodes every fighting show cliche it can, from ludicrously named finishers to the devoted girlfriend and the school violence which provides the backdrop for things like the Getter Robo manga. There are unsubtle VA jokes, and no pretence of a fourth wall.

It's because of this that Honoo no Tenkousei is so fun. It's nice to have a show that's only two episodes of breakneck-paced action every once in a while, and the jokes really hit the spot.

There's not really much more to say - HnT is a love letter to the fighting anime genre which pokes fun at it while employing all the cliches in a competent way, and really can't be recommended enough if you like that sort of thing.

Blazing Transfer Student originally caught my eye because it was brought up a lot by People In The Know as something Kill la Kill was heavily inspired by. It’s an old Gainax OVA from 1991 in which a mysterious transfer student arrives at his new school and immediately gets into battles with the leaders at the school. The school runs entirely on student power and whoever beats someone else in a fight can claim whatever the loser owned. The influence is fairly clear, albeit made stranger by the fact the original Blazing Transfer Student manga was itself intended as a parody of old 70s fighting ... manga like Tomorrow’s Joe. We’ve human centipeded our way through anime history where nothing is original anymore and parodies are turned straight.

The story is all very flimsy in Blazing Transfer Student. This punk ass dude has ‘won’ a girl from another guy and now she’s forced to be his girlfriend. But then in comes our transfer student bent on rescuing the girl because if he does she will totally put out and this is oh so romantic. The two of them get into a hastily constructed boxing ring on the school grounds and fight for her heart, with the fights being decided largely by who can say the name of their death-punch faster. Well that, and a pair of vultures who land on the person they deem to be worthy of laying a nest on. Since it’s a mock-up of 70s manga it follows the same aesthetic with big thick lines and poofy hairdos. I’d heard a bit of fuss made over the animation since it was the Project A-Ko team together. It’s generally pretty well animated and dynamically presented by early 90s OVA standards, but it did remind me how glad I am we have moved past the period where much of the episode is repeated animation.

It’s largely all gags, which is why it’s a little disappointing that many of the gags miss rather than hit. Pulling perv faces, yelling loudly or hitting someone make up many of the gags. Thankfully there’s enough good ones to make it worthwhile. The original back and forth of rhetorical warfare when the transfer student enters the school originally is brilliant, and the whole layer of self-parody makes it funny. On some level I would have preferred it be much wilder, but that may have been me spoiled by Kill la Kill and its giant flying speakers shooting recorder missiles, and it wouldn’t necessarily fit with the tone it was going for. It treads close enough to the real thing that it’s extra funny when battles are decided by someone saying the name of their death punch faster. It’s fun, but a total trifle that you’ll forget the exact details of a week later.

Overall this Ova is a fantastic representation of the manga. The characters are portrayed better then expected each bringing over there comedy to the ova so well that if you aren't laughing I'm shocked.

The fighting in this serious is well brought over as the manga doesn't really follow any tradional martial arts but instead an all out crazy system especially in the beginning with an winners takes all system.

Overall amazing well done worth watching only a couple of episodes long and still this ova will produce a bunch of laughs and fighting enjoyment.

Downsides are that the manga is a much longer and In dept story ... including a number of characters that sadly won't be seen here and a lot more insane fighting scenes. Overall just quite generally sad that no full anime was made for this series so deserved it.

"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!