Tenmaku Cinema: Unedited Audio and Recording Notes

Manga Details

Writer: Yuuto Tsukuda

• Notable people they were an assistant for:
  • None known. BUT: Helped Yuki Tabata with his Golden Future Cup-winning one-shot Hungry Joker, as the two are pals who grew up together.
• Notable people they had as assistants:
  • Yusaku Shibata (ZIPMAN!!)
  • Atsushi Nakamura (AGRAVITY BOYS)
• Other works:
  • Some minor works but most notably: Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma which was also done with Shun Saeki (2012-2019, 36 vols, Weekly Shonen Jump) art by Shun Saeki
    • A foodgasm manga in the tradition of Yakitate!! Japan, taken to a logical extreme by Shun Saeki’s ero-manga history. Ran too long and ate up all its goodwill, but still achieved great success

Artist: Shun Saeki

• Notable people they were an assistant for:
  • Tadahiro Miura (Yuna & the Haunted Hot Springs)
• Notable people they had as assistants:
  • Ryoma Kitada (SUPER HxEROS)
• Other works:
  • A modest stack of hentai (2008-2011, 2 vols) under the pen-name tosh

Publishing

• Run Dates
  • April 10th, 2023 - September 11, 2023
• Chapters/Volumes:
  • 21 chapters + epilogue/3 volumes
• Series it replaced:
• Tokyo Demon Bride Story (4 vols, flop, Shonen Flop episode 77)
• Series that replaced it:
  • Kagurabachi [aka the meme manga] (ongoing)
• Series that started at the same time as it:
  • Kill Blue by Tadatoshi Fujimaki (Kuroko’s Basketball, Robot x Laserbeam) (1 vol+, ongoing)
  • Do Retry by Jun Kirarazaka (Bone Collection) (2 vols, flop) FLOP ELIGIBLE
  • Nue’s Exorcist by Kota Kawae (1 vol+, ongoing)

About the Manga

• Plot
  • Hajime Shinichi is the head of his highschool’s film review club which is just an excuse to watch a bunch of movies, which he is obsessed with. One day when he’s at a movie theater he gets possessed by Takahito Tenmaku, a ghost who used to be a screenwriting prodigy until he died at a young age. He was working with legendary filmmaker Ryu Shirakawa who is absolutely supposed to be Akira Kurasawa, and was about to give him the first draft of his masterpiece: The Fang, but then he died. And then 30 years passed by and Shirakawa is also dead. Tenmaku has no choice but to have Shinichi direct his scripts so that maybe he’ll be able to pass on to the next world. While at school, Tenmaku sees the obligatory school celebrity actress Himeki Karakui and quickly rushes home to write a script. He makes Hajime ask her if she’ll be in his movie and when Karakui reads the scripts she demands to be the lead actress in this movie which he will direct. Hajime eventually agrees to direct the movie and ropes the rest of the film review club into helping him.
  • 
    
  • Hajime and Karakui do location scouting to determine where the best places to shoot would be, requiring them to take into account things like pedestrians and the fact that they’re using their phones. Karakui talks to him about the importance of understanding Nagisa, the main character of the movie, so that she can better embody her by posing in a bikini because I had actually forgotten that this was written by the guy who made food wars. Karakui declares that they’re going to enter this movie called “The Shore” into a student film contest which, unlike the jump award, has actually resulted in success for its winners. The crew manage to just barely get good shots despite their lack of money and experience, and Karakui takes Hajime to see her film a professional movie. He meets the director who’s kind of a dick but is mostly just protective of Karakui. He respects Hajime as a filmmaker after all it’s not like he’s shooting a film with karakui in it… right? They go back to filming the movie and have to do a bunch of things like Hajime telling his friend not to act but tell the truth, rush to furnish a room so it looks like someone lives there, and the sound guy having to make the soundtrack because he’s in a band.
  • 
    
  • Just before their final shot however, Karakui’s evil CEO mother finds out she’s making a low budget movie and forbids her from doing it. The crew however manage to secretly communicate to her that they’re filming literally right over there so she escapes from her mom’s car and does her scene. Everything is finished and they show it to Karakui’s pro director. He calls out a bunch of amateurish shots and techniques but commends him for being able to get things out of Karakui that he had been unable to. The movie is then brought to the student film contest which Karakui’s mother helps judge, and Tenmaku is moved to discover that Hajime credited him as the writer. The two agree to keep teaming up for years and years to come. The Shore wins best script, best lead actress, and the judge’s special award, and then ten years later Hajime becomes a big famous director and his best movie ever is The Fang. That will now conclude my book report on Tenmaku Cinema please give me an A.
• Characters
  • Hajine shinichi
    • Movie buff
    • Rates things on a weard scale
    • Likes movies but I guess doesn't want to make them
    • He's kinda bland
  • Takihiko tenmaku
    • Ghost
    • Poseses hajine
    • Talk about a ghost writer
  • Himeki kuraku
    • Hs idol
    • Actress
    • Good actress wants her characters fully fleshed
    • Seems quite smart and dedicated
    • Got a bad mom

Why it failed

• There's a lot of telling and not showing
• Isn't this the plot to haru no go
• The mc seems afraid to let the plot happen it gets kind of annoying like you love movies dude
• Ultimately this has the trap where it can never show it's actual material because the author can't write it so it's a lot of telling us how to feel vs making us feel it
• I wish it had a better layout of what goes into a movie like an outline of what going to be covered as right now they're just throwing ideas at us
• The sexualization of himeki is quite distracting
• I'm confused by the mcs motivation he initially didn't want to do it but now he has to do it for his younger self?
• Could have used more gender diversity than just one female character in the gang it's 2023
• The ghost plot isn't really touched on like we don't even know if making the movie actually helps
• I feel hajine feels so empty as a character all he does is talk about movies

What it did well

• Some nice art
• I like the parallel between film reals and panels
• There's a lot of passion in this
• Actually teaches you about acting directing and writing
• Himeki is actually a character and not just a prop which is nice
• The side characters actually feel decently fleshed out and at least have some quirks
• Shows how everything ties together from a production standpoint
• I like the film real view that shows you when an important scene is going on

Where it could have gone

• Imagine the ghost was a more traditional writer and the mc was a wannabe director who finally is getting good material from him
• It really needed to show a full fat scene of the movie
• I think it needed to go through multiple projects like have the shore done by chapter 8 or so even if it doesn't go through as many projects

Misc Thoughts

• Kinda disappointed the cover pages aren't homages to famous movies  which is funny as I usually like covers that relate to the manga directly
• Using a ghost as a scout is clever
• Maxy Bee thoughts:
  • There’s a ton we don’t unfortunately have time to discuss but you can read Maxy’s full notes on our Patreon!
  • Ryu Shirakawa is Akira Kurosawa. It’s not subtle. I’ll list all the Tenmaku Titles™️ I recognised and their Kurosawa Equivalents™️ below:
    • July Requiem (Rhapsody in August)
    • Six Beasts (Seven Samurai)
    • Rain Gate (Rashomon)
    • White Beard (Red Beard)
    • The Hound (Stray Dog)
    • Endless Saturday (One Wonderful Sunday)
    • Mouiikai (Madadayo)
      • I’ll explain this one, just because I love it. It’s literally a back and forth. もういいかい (mouiikai) is asking “are you ready?” And まあだだよ(madadayo) is saying “not yet!”
  • Films mentioned/appearing in this series (excluding all the Kurosawa):
    • Cinema Paradiso (referred to as ‘New Cinema Paradise’)
    • The Sting
    • Tokyo Story
      • Despite being specifically mentioned under its real name, has a parody poster as ‘Osaka Story’ in chapter 13 (not to be confused with the ACTUAL Osaka Story)
    • The Godfather
    • Taxi Driver
    • The 400 Blows
    • Paris, Texas
    • Linda Linda Linda
    • The Shawshank Redemption
    • One Cut of the Dead (referred to by its original title ‘Don’t Stop The Camera!’)
    • Tangerine (the 2015 film shot entirely using phones, not named in-manga presumably due to its content)
    • Home Alone (chapter 7, film case)
    • Top Gun (chapter 7, chapter 8, flashback handshake)
    • The Promised Neverland (live-action)
    • The NeverEnding Story (chapter 12, flashback drawing)
    • Nobody Knows
  • ‘Master Tarkovski’ in chapter 15 is Andrei Tarkovsky, the Russian director. In his book about cinema, ‘Sculpting in Time’, Tarkovsky said:
    • “Above all, I feel that the sounds of this world are so beautiful in themselves that if only we could listen to them properly, cinema would have no need for music at all.”

Final Verdict

• Six Word summary
  • Community
    • Maxybee: Rated Ten out of Tenmaku Cinemas
    • AuraPaladin: Aimed for Cannes, ended up canned
    • blahmoomoo: Also watch Pompo: the Cinéphile y'all
    • ChemyChems: Kino-bros plus ghost equals few lows.
    • Chickenwarlord: Ace author apparition apes auteur adolescent
    • dackerson:
      • Supernatural
      • Low Stakes Videography
      • But Enjoyable
      • (6-word haiku!)
    • Diego (Phantom Seer): Cinephile, not time-paradox writer, Ghost
    • Digizi, the evil, sleepy A.I.: Making Motion magic in still frames
    • duderocks the earthchild stan: Dead twink forces cinephile into filmmaking
    • Flufflez: Movies. Ghosts. Yet no Ghostbusters jokes
    • Glornak Ironspawn: Amateur filmmaker's low budget short drama.
    • Grey the #1 Kagurabachi Stan: Oof oof oof oof oof oof
    • Isekai Sensei-Sama: George Lucas is a Japanese Teenager
    • Kpt.Kluless: Tonight's showing is a real blockbummer
    • LordAnubis, #1RedHoodFan/Mourner: To chaste for JUMP to handle
    • Loser: Movie making middle-schoolers mollify managerial mother
    • Luffy0321: Without enough fanservice, The Shore drowned
    • Meru (Francisco): Ghost Unyielding Neediness Depress Ambivalent Moviemaker
    • Portal man: and Quentin Tarantino is a ghost
    • Riel: The movie was literally ghost written
    • Riley: Paradoxically, a time displaced ghost writes
    • Sbubby: I can never escape Act-Age’s ghost
    • Scott: Highschoolers make what they think's peak.
    • Spike: Ghosted by the Food Wars fanbase
    • The Wolf The Wood The Trafalgar: Heartfelt love towards student film making
    • Tree: Movie was SO GOOD trust me
    • Tri-Attack Zach: Insert CinenaSins' "Ding!" Sound Effect Here
  • David: you got to shore don’t tell | too much tell not enough shore
  • Jordan: why is there even a ghost
  • Guest: Made movie but didn’t move me
• Flop or not
  • If flop, what they could read instead
  • If not, how it compares to Chainsaw Man
• Is this the best/worst series we’ve talked about