Anime Reviews: Tokyo Revengers

Don’t worry. It’s spoiler free.

I always try to stay up date with the new animes each season. When I see people raving online about a new show, I always have to check it out. (Maybe I have a little FOMO.)

I saw a lot of posts about Tokyo Revengers, but I initially put it off watching it- since I’m not a huge fan of shows about kids. After reading a handful of reviews, I finally decided to try it out, and I hate to admit I binged all 24 episodes in a weekend.

I will preface my slightly bad review by saying I am well aware there are hundreds of chapters of the manga left, and it may just take the entire series to complete important character arcs. Which really is okay. Slow growth is realistic, but it still didn’t stop the initial unsettled feeling i had at the end of season one.

Plot Rating: 4/5. This show grabs you right out of the gate, and most episodes end with a cliffhanger (Hence the binging.)

At the surface level, the story is about a very dangerous gang that is tearing apart the city.

Our protagonist, Takemichi is 26 years old and is travelling home from work, when he is pushed off a train platform and gets hit by a train. At that moment he doesn’t die, but instead goes back in time to when he was in middle school, and the gang in question was just being formed. With the help of a friend, he works hard to change the effect of the gang in the city by repeatedly traveling to the past to try to fix the timeline so he can protect the ones he loves in the future.

There is some excellent dialogue, realistic choices, good people doing bad things and bad people doing good things.  There were some edge-of-your-seat moments that made me so anxious I had to force myself to watch the next episode since I was so anxious about what would happen next!

Overall, the plot was good. The preface is very exciting and mysterious but had some holes for me, for example, small events the protaganist changed in the past would most likely have had bigger reprocussions in the future (the smallest thing can change a timeline, always.) Not only would some of these events change the future of the gang, but of relationships, future occupations, friendships, and so on. Also, if Takemichi changed the past, shouldn’t he have memories of these events, since he lived them?

These are all basic questions and situations that come up in any time travel movie, similar to the grandfather paradox (if you go back in time and kill your grandpa, would you have still been born, and been able to kill him?) Overall I didn’t have any major qualms. The storyline itself was interesting, so the plot holes weren’t a huge deal.

Character Rating: 3/5. The protagonist was awful. Sorry Takemichi. At the very beginning of the show he was 26, and a whiny, depressed coward, and in the last episode, after all he went through with his experiences travelling through time, and fighting to save those he loved, he was somehow, exactly the same whiny coward. Character arcs and development are super important to me- and I felt like Takemichi had no growth. He had been given the opportunity to change the future, save his friends and make a better world for everyone. Although he had some heroic moments, he continuously reverted back to ‘oh no, i cant do anything everyone is going to die.’ He had been granted the opportunity to stop disaster before it started, and he should have done everything possible to ensure that he changed the future. Instead, the majority of his time was spent crying and telling himself what a loser he was.

The protagonist aside- the show had a lot of likeable characters, each with different motives, backstories, and personalities. These were fun to watch develop, and it was a great ensemble anime, which are my favorite. However, for the first time I can think of, of I was much more drawn to the villas in Tokyo Revengers.

Let’s talk about Hanma and Kisaki for a moment. Kisaki is the perfect villian. He’s smart, he’s crafty, and even as a young man in the past- he knew exactly what he wanted and how to get it. He’s a force to be reckoned with. Unlike other characters that are considered “strong” because they are good at fighting, Kisaki is strong because of his intelligence, manipulation, and being the onely one in this show who clearly had a vision of what he wanted and how to get there. He is excellently written, and it feels so good to hate him, as he is a foe that will not be beaten easily.

Hanma is a fun recurring antagonist. He’s was sort of  “around” the whole time but still we dont know much about him. He’s mysterious. He’s funny. He always has that little smile like he is the only person actually enjoying the chain of events that they set up. He’s a total dirtbag. But I love him.

There are great side characters as well. Mikey and Draken are an excellent pair. Baji and Kazutora’s backstory is dark and makes their relationship interesting and unique. The characters in the Tokyo Mangi gang really were good and each had their own particular story that made them different.

Intro/Outro: 5/5. No complaints. The intro song was super catchy and I love it. 

Genre: Action? 5/5. It was very action packed. Psychological Thriller? 4/5.

Overall score: 3.5/5. i rated this so low because, as I stated earlier, to me the protagonist was nearly unwatchable. I spent the vast majority of his scenes screaming “Get it together,Takemichi!’ At the screen. (True story). Characters need to grow and fight through obstacles, and I had a hard time watching his terrible thought process and moments of being unbearably pathetic. I think this would have been okay, if his moments of fear and helplessness had been occurring in actual time- like when he was 14.  However, since Takemichi went back in time, he was  a 26 year old in the body of a 14 year old, so he should have matured much more and been able to use critical thinking skills and be able to understand how important his tasks were. Maybe I am being to hard on him and I am used to watching great development arcs, like the Attack on Titan and Jujitsu Kaisen characters.

Did you watch Tokyo Revengers? What did you think?