Finally the tournament to decide who holds power in the next school year begins but the hidden war may be to determine the fate of so much more.
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Oh!Great
Translation/Adaptation: Christine Dashiell
What They Say
The final matches of the Imperial Tournament are on and it’s time to throw down! Everyone with a stake in the outcome is ready to pursue their destiny. The Executive Council, the Takayanagi family, Sohaku and the Juken Club enter a swirl of traps and conspiracies. Aya finds herself facing the supernatural powers and experience of the 15th head of the Kabane family. Then the stage is set for a massive matchup two years in the making – an all-out battle between Mitsuomi and Bunshichi! It’s a supercharged smackdown between old friends that only one of them is going to walk away from!
Content: (please note that content portions of review may contain spoilers):
The battle for the reigns of the Executive Committee is finally under way but for the Juken Club the road to this moment has already taken a severe cost as they are absent their leader who is lying in a state where her body is alive but her soul may not be. To try to tip the scales even if only minutely in Maya’s favor Aya has given up the sword Reiki in the hopes that the connection it shares with her older sister can serve to bring her spirit back to the world but this desperate gamble brings a price with it as the lack of the sword will seriously limit Aya’s ability to use her Dragon Eyes, a decision which may come back to haunt her and the other members in the upcoming conflicts.
Much like the shadowy history that has lead to this showdown of fate however there are still many people with their own plots moving to try to accomplish their own goals, some of which may end the Juken Club’s chances before they begin and some of which may aid them but the most dangerous plot may actually destroy the balance of power throughout the entire tournament when one of the people with supernatural powers finally makes her move and brings her style of witchcraft to the front- a style which will feed off the strongest fighters in the tournament and use their own strengths to lead to their demise.
The only hope that the Juken Club has is to be found in the least likely source as the team’s only non-powered fighting member, the somewhat shifty and less than reliable Kagesada Sugano –or “Dirt Bag” as even some of his own teammates refer him in a less than complementary fashion- must decide if he is going to try to live up to the dream he had when he became one of the Juken Club’s founding members or if he is going to instead run from a situation that few, if any, would blame him from fleeing. And while he makes his decision Aya will be facing the puppet master behind this event but Aya may discover that she has bitten off more than she can chew when a new player with his own ties to the tragic fate of the past takes the field. With the tide seemingly going against them is the Juken Club going to be able to fight the force of destiny or will its powerful pull drag them under its mighty waves and force them into places to serve its purpose and that of the person who initiated this long and cruel path of destiny?
Since the beginning of the series Tengo Tenge has been building to this tournament but one could easily be forgiven for having forgotten that given some of the twists, turns and outright detours it seemed to make as the author suddenly dropped new plot points and a “destiny” theme that tied into the past which was probably intended to add scope and weight to the tale but the execution of which did more to muddle the plot that add gravitas to it. Fortunately the series has returned to the “present” and the launching of the Executive Council tournament allows for the events to become a bit more focused on the cast that the reader has (presumably) grown to care about over the course of the series run and perhaps even provide a surprise or two about a character they have come to maybe dislike more than a little along the way and it feels like the manga has finally returned to the path that was established with its earliest chapters that provided action and some special powers but which didn’t seem to be playing with trying to re-write history and create some conflict with implications for the whole world.
The return to the tournament setup isn’t perfect however as in order to introduce his new threat the author has to try to set them up at this late date but the lack of developing some of the characters that he is going to be using to do so leaves a couple of the chapters stretched rather thin early on in this volume as inserting a character that has the ability to shake everything up with little time or space to fully develop them or the others they will be controlling feels like a sudden inspiration by an author to play with an idea that serves almost as well to undercut the flow of events by adding the odd angle at this juncture. Oddly though this introduction, even when at its weakest, allows for one of the less focused on members of the Juken Club to shine and even if the mechanics are a bit less than ideal the opportunity pays off in spades with the depth the story is able to mine out of him as well as setting up Aya for a major encounter…though some of the time she gets to grow and expand her abilities does come at the expense of Sugano’s time to shine so there is some give and take even here as the author seems to be at war with just how to highlight which character and when.
Then again the idea of Oh!Great having issues with his characters and the proper developing and framing some of them isn’t really going to come as a shock to anyone still reading the manga at this point as Soichiro’s role continues to be one that is frustrating as the initial set up means that Aya is still obsessed with him but he has done almost nothing to appear as little more than a supporting cast member in some time and even the few moments he gets here don’t raise him back to the role of lead that it looked like the author originally intended for him. This is probably the hidden sore thumb that most impacts the overall presentation of things as the attempt to keep Soichiro involved and his hanging plot relevant is serving as a drag on time that could be spent on characters who have become more interesting in the vacuum that has been created since the start but given that this is nothing new the improvement that has come to the story with the return to the initial focus really succeeds in bringing the series back to a strong and rewarding level that it kind of had drifted away from for a time.
In Summary
The tournament to decide the next year’s Executive Council has begun and for the Juken Club the fight has more even meaning as they possess an idea of the scope of what is at stake which reaches far beyond their school and even Japan as centuries old machinations start to come into focus in addition to the personal motivations to match up with the current Executive Council. Unfortunately they are entering at about the worse position possible as their captain is hospitalized, their strongest current fighter is without the key to unlocking her power and the guy she loves has his own issues going on as his body isn’t entirely his own- and just for fun a screw up by one member means the Club’s most stable guy may not make the fight in time. All of this may just be another day for the Club but when a formidable user of special powers appears the table may be completely slanted against everyone unless the most ordinary member of the Juken Club can read the tide of the future and overcome his own feelings of cowardice and insecurity to grasp victory from the jaws of defeat…so no pressure or anything. With its return to a more modern setting the series manages to get its feet set back under it after a somewhat rocky previous couple of volumes and while the volume may not be perfect in fixing the flaws that have been showing up as the events raveled it certainly brings as much fight to the table as it ever did and does so in a rather spectacular fashion as the road to the future is going to paved with the sweat and blood of the youths giving their all.
Content Grade: B+
Art Grade: A
Packaging Grade: A-
Text/Translation Grade: B
Age Rating: 17+
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: October 16th, 2012
MSRP: $17.99
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