Tenkuu Shinpan is a conflicting manga, it never particularly reaches into the realm of being particularly good but I was consistently entertaining up until it's final act; at which point the manga collapses in on itself due to it's very glaring issue of little planning towards the stories conclusion.
The manga's introduction was certainly interesting, it has a strong hook that immediately introduces several core mysteries to the story that, for the first good chunk of the manga, I think it does a decent job of increasing the intrigue around. Those mysteries being:
"What is this realm?"
"How did Yuri get here?"
"What are the masks?"
"How does she leave?"
Now, while Miura does continue to iterate and add layers onto these questions (continuing to add more like, what's that huge ass spire? what's going on with the rail gun? or blank masks? or...?), every time we get an answer to one of them; it's always rather unsatisfying due to how clumsily it's handled. The parameters around the masks are never particularly concrete, instead of the rules defining the behavior of the masks- and the characters have to work around them, there's always a rule added, or an ability unique to a character that's able to operate around them; WHICH wouldn't be an issue, if it was framed like they were actually finding exploits within the system and taking advantage of them, but instead it's merely convenience.
Granted, these issues aren't egregious, the real problems stem from the Administrator and Supervisor; one an antagonist introduced late in the game, kills off the only mildly interesting antagonist (setting up quite genuinely one of the worst antagonist reveals I've experienced, in Juo) and the latest stage asspull I've ever seen, introducing another Deity figure who actually REALLY rules over the system. While certainly being implied, seeing this entity was emblematic of the lack of narrative planning and cohesion. It's trying to be some sort of interesting death game scenario, with all of the potential commentary on life and existence, being overtaken by the dominant story of rebelling against the administrator and rules of the game. It COULD work, but it starts shifting into this narrative about becoming God to kill God, and how each of our tortured protagonists have to shoulder the burden of destroying this realm, or pass on their grandiose philosophy on what it means to change the world, or whatever. None of the characters philosophies are meaningful, they feel like shallower representations of genuine feelings- it comes off as comedic parody, and sometimes tries to frame it like that, but simultaneously tries to pain them as genuine and worth taking seriously. Again, something that COULD work if the writing was up to snuff, but it never is.
This extends into the character writing, they're all fairly flat- all changes are minor and immediate as they have to adjust to their new environments. Yuri Honjo's moral struggle is pretty immediately addressed, and done fairly well- and while it continues to posit that her belief in other people is wrong and continuously tries to frame her beliefs as being wrong, she never *really* suffers any consequences for her choosing mercy in this cruel world. It REALLY wants to, but nobody of real importance to Yuri dies, or is ever in legitimate danger (even in the hostage scenario, anyone reading it knew Aikawa planned on keeping Rika alive). Character developments are used as more of a joke, see Okihara becoming a comedic villain, or Yoshida's utterly embarrassing fumble near the end. Mayukos feelings for Yuri never get developed, there's a single moment where it attempts to address it and then instantly drops it- playing it off as yuri bait more than anything.
Time to bring up my least favorite part about this work, and it's going to be brief. Juo fucking sucks. He's introduced out of nowhere as the "real" ""final"" antagonist, gives several exposition dumps (and functions as a means to have some) has a mediocre fight that ends in a tie, gets kidnapped, and then kills himself out of spite to try and nail his philosophy in the coffin as being right, that his belief as humans being nothing but dirty, selfish, rotten evil beings that do nothing but self serve. And then he dies a truly forgettable death. Yippee.
Next is all the shit relating to the Admin and Supervisor, and honestly it's not that interesting. The admin wants to become God and thinks it's unfair he's the only one in the realm that's not allowed to, so he's been cheating this whole time and is looking for any justification to the Admin that *technically* everything he did was totally in the parameters, and is justified because he killed the person closest to becoming God (a phrase tossed around so much it means quite literally nothing) so he should become God. Despite the Admin blatantly interfering with the games, cheating constantly, and breaking rules; something explicitly stated that if the Admin were to ever be discovered doing, he'd be terminated, and obviously never was. Despite blatantly cheating. And in Yuri's case, someone who was cheating back (not really though, since every ability she acquired was something innate to the masks, but they just said "You can't use because house rules") and would solely target her over. A position where commentary could be done, obviously missed, and just kind of plays it off as "Yuri is an evil bitch and is ruining the game more than the admin is, and I don't really give a shit about the rules since the admin was cheating the entire game. Also if you lose to the cheating admin who is comedically evil he's going to win and turn the world into hell, but you're still more evil.".
And then it ends. Everyone is still stuck in the realm, the admin is dead, the supervisor has suspended the game until further notice and they're all stuck there. the end :)
Tenkuu Shinpan's only actual saving grace is the art. With it's mixture of super detailed firearms, expressive and entertaining combat and gunfights (before characters turn into Super Saiyans), and is able to express tension pretty well sometimes. The biggest draw is, obviously, the mask designs. They're fucking sick. Sniper kamen, Great kamen, Gambler Kamen, all of them are so cool looking. Their posture and posing always reflects their character, and displays an understanding of the character and subtle characterization. Even the emotionless masks stilted motions and neutral postures reflect this, and I think Oba did a really stellar job in this sense. I enjoyed most of the main casts look too, Yuri and Mayukos school girl motif contrasting the environments brutality is never an unappreciated inclusion, and I think they look pretty cool! Rika is slightly forgettable, but I think it works- with Kuons edging him out. The other human characters though all sorta blend into the forgettable. But the masks? They're edgy, they're slick, and they look sweet. The outfits are really stylized and reflect a lot of the characters personalities, their fighting style, etc. it's sort of an interesting observation ultimately, as I always found the masks to be far more interesting than the human characters. Whether it be personality, their expressiveness, or dialogue, they always carried more of an impact on the story than Yoshida, or Juo ever could. Even the Idol masks had more going on with them in the like three chapters they had, than the fifteen or so Juo got, or like 40 something Aikawa got.
The end result of Tenkuu Shinpan is a really messy, anemic work that hastily concludes it's story with a nothing-ending. You witness a series of flat, not particularly interesting characters murder-fest their way through a series of high-rises to be conflicted with shallow representations of a characters ideologies, kills them, and moves on. While some questions that get introduced, and iterated upon get answered- ultimately there's still so much that we don't actually know. Like, for instance, why the railgun? Like literally, what's he purpose? it's cool, but it gets used four times, one of which was the ACTUAL purpose of it, which was to receive a God's code. Which is just such a waste. The only other interesting time it's used is to deal with the Great Angel. It's posted as one of the most important things in the realm, but it's purpose ultimately gets reduced to "it's got a code on the bullet. That's the only reason it's here.". Tangent over, it's indicative of the entire story. I wouldn't recommend this manga, really at all. If you want something to turn your brain off, and flick pages through some brutal gore and sweet gunfights for a while, it's worth it. But there's little, if any reason to commit to the story- since I don't think the author did much either.
