Welcome to This Week in Shonen Jump, our weekly check in on Viz’s various Shonen Jump series. Viz has recently changed their release format, but our format will mostly remain the same. We will still review the newest chapters of one title a week, now with even more options at our disposal. The big change for our readers is that, even without a Shonen Jump subscription, you can read these most recent chapters for free at Viz.com or using their app.
This week, Brian checks in with “Tenmaku Cinema.” If you have thoughts on this or any other current Shonen Jump titles, please let us know in the comments!
Tenmaku Cinema Scene One: The First Movie
Written by Yuto Tsukada
Illustrated by Shun Saeki
Translated by Camellia Nieh
Lettered by Phil Christie
Reviewed by Brian Salvatore
Hajime is a middle school student obsessed with films which, in terms of manga protagonists, is a pretty relatable start to a new story. When he’s possessed by the ghost of a dead screenwriter, things go a little off the rails, but this manga by Yuto Tsukada and Shun Saeki manages to keep one foot in the relatively grounded realism of junior high, while not selling out on the grander concept. The result is a thoroughly pleasant, if somewhat predictable tale.
The trope of a sickly kid who finds friendship and comfort from the refuge of the movies is a common one, and “Tenmaku Cinema” doesn’t really add anything new to that piece of the story. The beautiful girl at school suddenly taking an interest in the nerdy protagonist? Same. The spirit needing to complete a task in order to ‘move on’? Check. Hilarity ensuing when the spirit makes the host do all sorts of crazy stuff to the confusion of their peers? Yup.
You get the point: a lot of these elements are recycled from all over pop culture. That’s not inherently a problem, especially as Tsukada’s story keeps things moving in interesting directions. The scene where the spirit, Takihiko, gets addicted to a streaming service and needs Hajime to keep pressing play on different movies was a very fun one, and there is a lot of good physical humor rendered by Saeki. All 65 pages of this inaugural chapter flew by with a breezy, fun style. The story, by the end of the chapter, is pretty well lined up for the first arc and, potentially, beyond.
It’s not all fantastic, however. The over-sexualizing of a middle school girl is always going to cast a shadow over the rest of the story. Hajime is not a particularly likable character early on, and the ‘I’m acting like a weirdo due to my possession’ stuff is not played in particularly interesting ways just yet. Saeki’s artwork, however, does a lot of the heavy lifting by bringing in some truly creepy elements to a story that looks pretty issue shonen manga most of the time. And, despite my reaction to how Himeki is drawn, this is nowhere near the worst of the horn-dog manga out there. Saeki does really nice work here that pushes the story beyond its familiar roots.
Final Verdict: 6.8 – “Tenmaku Cinema” successfully mashes up a number of shonen staples into something fun, if not exactly unique.
