Tokyo Underground

Name: Tokyo Underground
Genre: Action, Adventure, Romance, Sci-Fi
Released: 2002-04-02T00:00:00+00:00
Rating: 6.59

東京アンダーグラウンド

6.59(12,384)

Rank#7010

#4482

TV26 ep.Finished Airing25 min per ep

Under the capital city of Tokyo, Japan, there exists a large, vast, and unknown world known as Underground. There, people known as Elemental Users exist; people who have the ability to control the elements: Fire, Water, Lightning, Magnetism, Freeze, etc. Meet Rumina Asagi and his best friend Ginnosuke Isuzu, two average high school freshmen who reside in Tokyo. When they meet Gravity User, Chelsea Rorec, and the Miko of Life, Ruri Sarasa, their whole lives change into one big adventure. (Source: ANN)

Synopsis

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Supporting

Reviews(5)

susonauta

November 21, 2007

Mixed Feelings

I enjoyed this series but lets face the reality this has already done before, and better so don't expect much, this is an average story about the adventure of a more or less average boy pushed forward by his feelings (I'm talking about love) to fight against all the obstacles. Actually the story isn't so bad but I get the feeling I've saw the same things happend to a boy inside the cockpit of a huge robot, welding a sword or following a dangerous path seeking revenge. Sound effects didn't grab my attention, and some parts of the plot aren't very convincing. May be the worstpart are the supporting caracters because they are too swallow with many cliches. So go ahead and spend good time; there is a small dose of humor, cuteness, courage, despair as the main character grows stronger, and defeats overconfident and too talkative enemies (yeah monologues really heat up fighting scenes).

kekekeKaj

December 5, 2012

"Tokyo Underground" is your typical mindless superpower action flick. A boy skilled at fighting encounters a mysterious girl one fine day. One thing leads to another; he soon discovers his inner superpowers, and ends up trying to protect the girl from the army of bad guys who wants her for their own evil purposes. Sounds pretty generic right? There can't possibly be much originality in this show, right? Right. There really isn't anything special going on here. The animation and action are bog standard, with everyone's superpower being elemental in nature; there's nothing that's not been seen many times before. Likewise, the sound and the voiceacting are also nothing out of the ordinary. The plot is fairly predictable and I have a feeling that the ending is pretty bad, even though I can't remember exactly what happens in it, such was the impression "Tokyo Underground" made on me. The character department represents both the best and the worst this anime has to offer. The main character belongs in a more uncommon class of shounen heroes - the ones who are actually accomplished fighters from the start, instead of one of those regular wimps with huge potential. The wimpy character archetype also appears in this anime in the form of the hero's sidekick, who is also the comic relief guy, a character who survives more on luck than anything else. He does surprisingly well in his role and is probably my favourite character in this anime (though that's not saying much). His persistent attempts to get another character to remember his name is probably the most amusing thing in this rather dull anime. Ironically, I also can't remember his name (nor anyone else's, for that matter). On the other hand, the anime also has some really contrived character interactions. In one such scene early on, two people, one of which is the protagonist, both got badly hurt trying to protect a third person, and for some reason, the person they were protecting got all distressed over the protagonist - who she barely knew at that point - and did not seem to care about the other badly injured protector, who was actually a close friend of hers. You can see what went wrong here: in an over-zealous attempt to involve the hero in an obligatory romance, the makers have neglected to make the interactions believable. The series had quite a few of this kind of scenes, so it's by no means an isolated case. All in all, "Tokyo Underground" isn't terribly bad; there were some entertaining moments, though nothing to get too excited about. It's a forgettable experience that's difficult to recommend due to its total lack of notable aspects and originality - why would you watch this when there are plenty of similar but superior shows out there does a far better job in every way? So move along; not much to see here.

Metazoxan

March 25, 2014

Not Recommended

Tokyo Underground feels like a lot of other shonen action series from around this point in time. You have a guy with short hair, average height, decent fighter, spirited, and a good heart. You also have the sweet maiden character who is completely useless or the tough but not really tomboyish girl. This one has both. Tokyo underground has all these things in common and more but it falls short in a few things making it actually lesser than a lot of the others. First of all in our main character. Even though he is supposed to be such a good fighter he never uses anyof those skills after he gets his power. In fact the only thing he EVER does is an air slash. It's the only attack he knows or uses and besides the rare occasion that he uses the wind to cushion a fall or guard it's the only time he ever uses his wind. They act like he gets stronger by the end but because it's still the same attack you can't see this besides the fact that his wind can now apparently blow back stronger opponents. But at no point during the series does he show any growth or change in the slightest. The rest of the cast isn't much better. Chelsea has more variety in her attacks but she never changes or gets stronger either. The nerdy kid gets a gun but uses it maybe 4 or 5 times throughout the entire series. I could go on but we'd be here all day. This leads to the second problem which is all the fights are fairly boring. Rumina just dodges attacks until he can launch his wind slash, Chealsea is a little cooler since she punches things but they aren't very impressive either, and the Nerd is just dead weight. Also none of the enemies put up a really impressive fight. The fights are done poorly and the enemies are almost all defeated with the heroes half trying. No one ever really seems to truly push them to their limit and thus there is no fear of them losing or excitement in watching it. The third problem with this series is the pacing. The plot has a habit of slowing down at points for the sake of establishing characters, plot points, etc and that's good but then it seems to speed through to the next slow point making things feel rushed especially near the end. Leading up to the last few episodes is a talk of the Obligatory fight tournament arc of shonen. Well they spend a few episodes gathering members and preparing for the tournament....which we never really see. All but one or two matches are just glanced over and then the tournament doesn't even finish in the end for spoiler reasons. I swear they spent more time talking about and preparing for this thing than they spent actually doing it. Because of this the pacing just feels choppy and unfocused a lot. Overall it's not a bad series exactly but it's only average at best and there are so many other shonen that at least do a better job with the characters, fighting, and pacing.

Unbe1ievable

August 9, 2012

Mixed Feelings

STORY - Personally I wanted this anime to have took place on the surface instead of Underground. I find that the whole Underground Idea was surprising at first because I thought it would actually look like another world but it was pretty lame mostly because of the walls and such. EMOTIONS - I find that some of the characters didn't show proper emotions. For example when Ruri was on the other side of the bridge and Rumina and the stupid girl came and then Rumina got hit by Pairon because the stupid girl came and she was all shocked. The thing is, that stupid girl never feltguilty, SHE TECHNICALLY KILLED RUMINA, and she never said one word about it after that except that she has doubts on Company now. So the emotions in this anime was a major problem to begin with. Also it didn't seem very convincing at first that Rumina had feelings for Ruri (In other words, why would Rumina save her if he doesn't know anything about her all) ARTWORK/ANIMATION/CHARACTER - The artwork, now, this wasn't that so bad because it was an OLD anime afterall. Then came the animation, this was kind of umm lame.. The main character Rumina looked pretty stupid, and not stupid in the way of that usual anime characters are when they are making jokes and such. When I mean he looked stupid I mean even when he was serious he had this stupid aura surrounding him lol. (Well that is what I think, it might not be the same for everyone, well of course all of this is my opinion Lolz) This also to do with the animation, the animation was also very stupid.. It made it look like everyone was 12 year old boys and girls fighting like little babies. Oh and one thing that disturbed me the MOST was that there was no blood in most of the fights EVEN THOUGH they show blood like when Rumina gets hurt on the bridge and he scratches Pairon's Retarded face.. uhh sorry I just had to add the adjective retarded over there.. idk why.. Anywhore, moving on to the good things because so far I have been complaining A LOT GOOD THINGS BECAUSE ALMOST EVERYTHING SUCKS - Now the anime itself wasn't bad because of the story-line and the character development. The way Rumina learned his Wind techniques was not bad and how he wanted to save Ruri really really bad was assuring at least. Well it was nice to see another anime where the boy gets his power from a crying girl (non sarcastic way) even though it is most common in animes, this one felt different. Rumina did seem childish but he was determined way more than Stupid Chelsea. OVERALL - This show wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The first few episodes made me think that this anime would have taken place above the surface both it was underground. I find that when it was above, it felt more relaxing but that is my opinion again. Sure the underground feeling and the whole another world feeling made it more adventurous. But the thing is the underground world itself didn't make the anime feel like an adventure because of the walls itself. What kind of adventure anime is full with walls. Now that's just.. retarded but oh well, it has been forgotten. After watching this series all you could about is - "wished the ending was better" like all animes. I would give it 6/10 but don't get me wrong, its because of the shitty animation, art and how the characters are which are all minor details compared to the good storyline, character developement and enjoyment of this anime. Tokyo Underground - 6/10 - Medium chance it may worth your time. - Your Welcome ~ Unbe1ievable~

Izaya

December 23, 2014

Not Recommended

While this show put the elemental motif's usage to its full potential, that's where everything that's good about this show stopped for me. I've never disliked an action anime before that accurately satisfies all the criteria and things I loved about anime until I watched this show. There's nothing interesting or likeable going on in this show at all. Everything in this show is just standard generic drivel. You have a generic male lead, who's still in K-12 school, meets a girl, discovers his inner abilities, female lead gets captured, guy goes to save him. But what makes that dislikeable is that the male lead saving the female leadis all that goes on FOR THE ENTIRE SHOW. And it's just...idk. There's too much to say and I don't care enough to go on. So yeah, if you're looking for an anime to rival the Big Three, protip: don't watch this one. You will be sorely disappointed.

Tokyo Underground

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Reviews(5)

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