Honō no Tenkōsei

Honō no Tenkōsei
	First tankōbon volume cover, featuring Noboru Takizawa
炎の転校生
Genre	Comedy, parody, sports
Manga
Written by	Kazuhiko Shimamoto
Published by	Shogakukan
Imprint	Shōnen Sunday Comics
Magazine	Weekly Shōnen Sunday
Demographic	Shōnen
Original run	July 20, 1983 – November 13, 1985
Volumes	12
Original video animation
Directed by	Katsuhiko Nishijima
Produced by	Shouji Murahama
Written by	Toshio Okada
Music by	Kohei Tanaka
Studio	Gainax
Released	May 21, 1991
Runtime	25 minutes
Episodes	2
Television drama
Blazing Transfer Students
Directed by	Toshio Lee
Written by	Yuko Kawabe
Music by	Toshihiko Sahashi
Original network	Netflix
Original run	November 10, 2017
Episodes	8

Honō no Tenkōsei (炎の転校生, "Blazing Transfer Student") is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Kazuhiko Shimamoto. It was serialized in the Shogakukan manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Sunday from 1983 to 1985. Honō no Tenkōsei was adapted into a two-episode original video animation (OVA) anime series in 1991 by Gainax. A live-action series, titled Blazing Transfer Students, premiered on Netflix in 2017.

Plot

Noboru Takizawa transfers to a school where all disputes are settled through fighting. He quickly runs afoul of the school bully, Saburō Ibuki, who has a boxing match with "God's Hall Monitor", Kōichi Jōnouchi, to determine who will date the lovely Yukari. Takizawa is enraptured with Yukari, and decides to intervene in the fight which Ibuki won by bending the rules. Takizawa loses the fight in the first OVA to Ibuki's deadly finishing punch, but in the second OVA Takizawa develops his own finishing punch and eventually wins the day.

Characters

Noboru Takizawa (滝沢昇, Takizawa Noboru): Voiced by: Toshihiko Seki
Yukari Takamura (高村友花里, Takamura Yukari): Voiced by: Noriko Hidaka
Saburō Ibuki (伊吹三郎, Ibuki Saburō): Voiced by: Tesshō Genda
Kōichi Jōnouchi (城之内考一, Jōnouchi Kōichi): Voiced by: Shō Hayami
Chiaki Takano (高野千明, Takano Chiaki): Voiced by: Toshiyuki Morikawa (credited as Schoolboy A)
Jun Namekata (行方純, Namekata Jun): Voiced by: Shin-ichiro Miki (credited as Schoolboy C)

Media

Manga

Honō no Tenkōsei, written and illustrated by Kazuhiko Shimamoto, was serialized in the Shogakukan magazine Weekly Shōnen Sunday from July 20, 1983, to November 13, 1985.^[2]^[3] The individual chapters were collected in twelve tankōbon volumes, released from February 18, 1984, to January 18, 1986.^[4]^[5]

OVA

Honō no Tenkōsei was adapted into a two-episode original video animation (OVA) anime produced by Gainax. The anime reunites director Katsuhiko Nishijima and character designer Yuji Moriyama of the original Project A-ko and features storyboards by Sumio Watanabe.^[1] The OVA features an opening vocal theme written by Shimamoto Kazuhiko, arranged by Kohei Tanaka, and performed by Toshihiko Seki. The ending theme, Yumemiru Ki Mo Chi Dreaming Heart (夢みるキ・モ・チ〜Dreaming Heart〜), was composed and arranged by Tanaka and performed by Noriko Hidaka. The Honō no Tenkōsei OVA parodies anime of the 1970s, particularly Tomorrow's Joe, and is complete with intentionally jerky animation, dirty-looking cels, thick black lines, and retro character designs, much like Shimamoto's drawing style.^[1]

According to Chris Beveridge of The Fandom Post Honō no Tenkōsei was released on both VHS and laserdisc, but not DVD.^[6] It was released on Blu-ray by Pony Canyon on March 19, 2014.^[7]^[8]

Live-action series

A Netflix original live-action series called Blazing Transfer Students^[9] or Honō no Tenkōsei REBORN was released as a sequel set years after the original story. The story revolves around seven students all named Kakeru who transfer into the school.^[10] It was released on November 10, 2017, and was directed by Toshio Lee.

Reception

As of March 2017, the manga had over 1.6 million copies in circulation.^[11]

Anime News Network's Justin Sevakis, commenting on the anime, said that "while the animation has that slightly soft shot-on-film look, the heightened contrast and angular designs that were meant to evoke the past have instead kept it looking modern."^[1]