Tokyo Revengers

Even if you ignore the snail’s pace, the five minute recaps, and the shitty slide-show animation, this show is just dumb and bad. Spoilers ahead. Fans of shounen anime do themselves and their favorite new seasonal show a huge disservice when they label it as being “different” or unique, because when this ignorant praise catches the attention of anyone who has seen more than a few dozen anime, those people are immediately disappointed the second they see it. It’s often said the worst thing you can do to a series is overhype it, because when it inevitably turns out to be utterly mediocre, it won’t meetanyone’s expectations. Tokyo Revengers is not only unexceptional, but it’s painfully generic and boring as sin, and since its production values are shoddy as shit, you’ll never be able to pull a Demon Slayer and use cool fights to excuse bad writing, because it usually just looks like garbage. Nothing about its plot or characters can stand up to other shows in the same genre which outdo it in every way, because there are better anime with delinquents, time travel, or somewhat retro designs. The character designs are not only hideous, but they just don’t make any sense. Our twenty six year old protagonist looks no different than his middle school self, and his middle school peers look twice as old as he did when he was twenty six. And, yes. I didn’t mean to so quickly brush past something that ridiculous, but this really is a show about time-traveling middle-school delinquents. If you’ve hung around the anime community long enough, you should be quite familiar with the wannabe intellectuals who’ve taken upon themselves a mighty crusade against shows like Steins;Gate which they deem to be less intelligent than the average viewers does. I use Steins:Gate as an example because it’s about time travel, and shows about time travel are the number one target for people like this because, just in case you didn’t know, time travel doesn’t actually exists in real life. With enough theoretical pseudoscience on their side, your average keyboard warrior can dismantle even the most carefully constructed piece of fiction centered around time travel. The planning of Steins;Gate is shockingly thorough, and the concepts it uses to excuse its scientific elements which may not make perfect sense in real life is seriously well-researched, but since it is ultimately grounded in theory, anyone with enough contrarian spirit shouldn’t have too much trouble poking holes in its plot. Tokyo Revengers makes this effort look like a complete joke. The series makes no attempt to be logically comprehensive or take into account the timeline or butterfly effect, and when it first introduced its time travel mechanics, I could’ve sworn it was trying to be funny and parody Erased. But no. It’s actually taking itself seriously, and that’s fucking sad. It’s quite a common thing to complain about whinny, wimpy protagonists in anime. From the classics like Shinji Ikari to the modern horrors like Izuku Midoriya, anime made for teenage boys is filled to the brim with crybaby losers who you just want to shut up and do the thing, but in the case of shows which are actually well-written, the main character’s awful attitude is typically corrected, and they soon learn to grow up. The show which immediately comes to my mind when talking about this is Eureka Seven. Renton Thurston was universally hated at the time that show was airing, and to this day, people are still getting fed up with his bullshit and dropping that show early on. However, Renton undergoes an incredible character arc in that show, and by the end, he is a truly capable, respectable young man. I would argue Eureka Seven is still a bad show for different reasons, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is: character development makes a story worthwhile. In Tokyo Revengers, any praiseworthiness shown by Takemichi is impermanent. It’s an anime based on an incomplete shounen manga which is built to go on forever, getting dragged out until people stop buying it, and while I’m sure it’ll end with Takemichi being somewhat less of a pathetic little bitch, that is not the case by the end of these torturous twenty four episodes. The setting, despite being the real world, is absurd. I’m not the first person to point this out, but nobody looks or acts like they’re realistically supposed to. These kids are supposed to be fourteen years old, and yet they look and act like professional mobsters. Anime is notorious for never showing parents, but this show takes that meme to the next level. Both the teachers and the police are presented—if at all—as being completely unable to stop a bunch of little boys from wrecking havoc. Remember how the setting of Kill la Kill was built around satirizing highschool anime, and how the students ran the city whilst the adults operated completely at the behest of the student council? At times, this show feels like that, only it’s not satire. It takes itself 100% seriously and expects you to do the same. Any attempt to make the story feel grounded is squandered by the characters’ goofy costumes, haircuts, and tattoos, and any attempt at high-stakes drama is laughable. The Power of Friendship; Talk no Jutsu; using Kirito’s “sheer willpower” to overcome the impossible; constant deus ex machina; WAITING FOR YOUR DYING FRIEND TO FINISH MONOLOGUING INSTEAD OF CALLING A FUCKING AMBULANCE; this series contains every awful shounen trope you can imagine, and watching it all unfold is as cringeworthy as you can imagine. Thank you for reading.

Time travel, the most overworked setting of every sci-fi show to ever come out. It’s such a simple concept on paper yet extremely difficult to execute properly in any medium. Most time travel shows follow two paths. They either shine brightly and is remembered by people as a revolutionary piece of media such as Terminator or Back to the Future, or is over hyped and falls into the pit of mediocrity and is forgotten by most people. Tokyo Revengers unfortunately follows the latter of these two paths. If the word “Overhyped” had a picture, it would be the Tokyo Revengers poster. A show filled with annoyingcharacters and a story with enough plot holes to make a sponge seem like a plain surface. The story follows our mc travelling back in time to save his girlfriend from her demise. It’s your classic cliché romance setting with a time travel aspect, which if explained carefully and presented properly, could be a hit of a show. Unfortunately it fails in both regards. It starts off pretty strong but pretty quickly loses its focus. The initial problem is the time travelling aspect in this show which isn’t explained properly. The mcs actions while time travelling has serious consequences on the very people he is trying to save, but the seriousness of that is barely expressed as you see him make abhorrent and ridiculous decisions. The time travelling aspect is barely touched upon and nothing is properly explained. The story also plays out safe, it kills off characters meant to be killed off, and doesn’t force the mc to make a difficult choice. There’s no sacrifice that has to be made. It ventures in a straight, risk less line towards its goal, which doesn’t work as the whole point of time traveling is to create conflicts due to changing events of the past to the established future. We have barely any information on the time aspect, which leaves the story with too many plot holes. If the main theme remains convoluted, then the story is on a fast track to failure. The risks of infiltrating and living a delinquent lifestyle, mixed with the perils of constant time travelling could have been an extremely intriguing plot, filled with suspense and tension if executed properly. Unfortunately the mcs the most unlikable person to ever exist since Kirito. The plot holes gets you more and more disjointed from the story the further you watch. The show drags out a lot in the closing arcs, the pacing gets rough as some scenes that required more details are tossed aside. Characters make ridiculous and extremely stupid decisions which doesn’t make sense. “Appointing a member of the gang you just fought with as your captain” the thought itself should be enough to make you realize it’s a bad decision. The romance in this show just doesn’t work. We have Emma, she’s bland as flour. There’s nothing about her that makes Takemichis efforts in saving her worthwhile. She’s established as your classic, super likeable waifu character. In the show we rarely see her coming out of her shell or showing any signs of development. Her delusion towards Takemichi is unjustifiable. We get no coherent reasoning as to why she’s so accepting of him, even after all the shit he does. In the future she says how Takemichi hurt her, but then proceeds to express her love for him like bruhhh that isn’t how shit works. It goes vice versa too. Takemichi was an adult when Hinata died. Why is he this envious in saving the girls life whom he hasn’t interacted with for years? A mentally 26 year old guy crushing over a 14 year old is creepy to begin with, even without that, his whole dilemma towards her makes no sense. The romance in this show is horrible, super cliché and bland, with characters taking and doing ridiculous stunts in the name of “love”. There’s nothing to appreciate about these characters, let alone putting this much effort in saving them. In the later arcs of the show, we see a lot and I mean a lot of unneeded conflicts and fights. Now don’t get me wrong, that’s probably the most enjoyable aspect of the show, but it’s so unnecessary and completely splits away from the main goal of the show. We see some unneeded conflicts arise due to a lot of really stupid decisions. Some conflicts could have been solved if the mc was efficient enough in using his brain as he is using his fist. It’s really messy plot wise, but super entertaining otherwise. The ending couple of episodes is honestly the most entertaining mess I’ve watched recently. Now let’s get to the worst part of the show, the MC. Pathetic, whiny, displeasing, and aggravating. Every synonym of the word annoying can be used to describe him. He to me is like the modern day Kirito, annoying for a completely different reason. The whole aspect of going back to the past to change the future is complicated, and one needs to be intelligent and make the right decisions. Unfortunately our mc does none of those. He cries, uses himself like a punching bag, and has the most action over words type of attitude I’ve seen. He is extremely unlikable. He goes against every trope of a shounen protagonist. There’s no redeeming factors about him. He is meant to be a kid, but he plays that role a bit too well, so much so that there’s not even a hint of maturity coming from him. His whole persona revolves around making big goals then failing to fulfill them. Id honestly prefer a mute, personality less hentai mc than blonde crybaby Kirito. Onto the good characters. Draken and Mikey. There probably the most likeable aspects of the show. They go against every trope you think of when you see the word “Gang member”. We see this initially when they apologies to the mother of a girl who was a victim of a gang violence. It sets them apart from your classic gang member ideology, and the more time passes, the more you see these two characters come out of their shells. Definitely the most entertaining and likeable characters from the show. Other characters such as Kazutora, Chifuyu and Baji each have their roles to play, especially in the ending arcs of the anime. You don’t get as attached to them as Mikey or Draken due to their arguably short screen time, but they’re entertaining to watch nonetheless. Kazutora and his dive into insanity is intriguing. He choreographs his plan to kill Mikey as a scapegoat to justify the actions of him committing murder in his past, is super stereotypical yet really entertaining. His actions leads to the ending arc of the anime being something out of the Yakuza games. Fight after fights, completely unnecessary but extremely entertaining. Other characters like Naota, Hinata, and Emma gets left unexplored or paid much attention too. Naota’s meant to be a super smart cop and shit, but has the least impact in the show in any ways. The first half of the story revolves heavily around Hinata, but she herself doesn’t contribute much to the story itself. Her character doesn’t go against the basic anime waifu tropes. She simultaneously feels like a person and a robot. These characters could have been integral to the story, but were unused and unexplored which made them pretty forgettable and sometimes extremely redundant when it came to having an impact on the story. Coming to the art aspect of the show, it’s extremely mediocre. It’s visually eye-catching, but the more you get into the plot, the more the art style starts getting almost painful to watch. The characters look like they’re going through a mid-life crisis in their teens. The art style cannot clearly depict the characters ages at all. Adults look like overgrown children, and the actual children look like they hit puberty in their mother’s womb. The blood and gore in the uncensored version looks comical, and honestly less intimidating and more hilarious. The art in this show starts off as a high, but gets mediocre as you start relating it with the plots. It’s not enough to go bleach your eyes, but enough to reconsider putting your eyes through the pain of watching this lobotomites in every episode. The animation is no saving grace either, it’s definitely no Jujutsu Kaisen, and pretty sub-par often times, with enough still frames to give food wars a run for their money. But considering it’s a pretty new studios, it has done average with what resources they had. All in all, Tokyo Revengers was the Cyberpunk 2077 of anime, extremely hyped up and disappointing results. Now, is Tokyo Revengers a bad show? Objectively, Yes Personally, Fuck No The series being a big ball of messy plot, weird looking characters and unnecessary action makes this show fun. Just like how Cyberpunk was fun cause of its glitches, TR is fun cause of its convoluted plot and absolute abhorrent looking characters. It’s entertaining watching the cliché filled romance of the show. You realize that it’s stupid as shit and boring but that’s what’s entertaining. The last arc for me was amazing. I barely understood anything, I just enjoyed the constant beating up, blood gushing out of everyone while they give a friendship speech, and it was entertaining as hell. I can only describe it as the visual representation of Jamie Vardy’s “Chat shit get banged” tweet. It was an entertaining experience for me for a completely different reason. I do wish that the show would have been a lot more leaning towards conflicts being solved with proper decision making. This show is pure brainless fun. Apart from the mc being annoying enough to make you want to tear out your eardrums, every flawed aspect of the story was extremely amusing for me, and added more amusement to the show. Definitely would implore you to give this a shot if you’re bored. The show will make you scratch your head while simultaneously entertaining you with its awful yet entertaining, super convoluted, overtly dramatic, disproportional looking characters, and boy I enjoyed every second of it.

Tokyo Revengers is a decadent shallow manufactured collection of frames. Featuring one of the most abhorrent main anime characters that I had the displeasure to watch, the series is an aggravating disrespect to the viewer from beginning to end, without any sense of connection to anything resembling human behavior set in a world where the latest update of human intellect didn’t hit yet to let a set of pathetic intent of emotional baits flow. Born from the delusion of what coolness and edginess could fare in the human reality, the anime hits you throughout all its runtime with an extravagant spice of dishonesty and lackof care to provide anything more meaningful than hormonal screaming. *During this review I will use spoilers because of two reasons. The first is that to illustrate the dishonesty and disrespect I need to use them, the second is because I don’t see any purpose of watching this. * To start to understand why this anime fits all the description above, I will explain a little the premise of it. The anime starts in a seemingly similar form to other stories that have been done in the past, with a loser guy that gets transferred to the past after being broken by the news about her ex-girlfriend. This character was strangely incapable of believing her eyes, which is normal, I wouldn’t either. And then, after a series of events, he had an epiphany, to change the past to save his most loved ones with the help of a friend, which leads him to learn more about the background of gangs and the characters involved in them. This seemingly straightforward and easy to manage formula to propel drama and action in a delinquent setting started to evolve episode after episode into a pathetic excuse of disjointed highlights and impactful moments that could make an impression in the viewer, not setting anything else as a substance that could redeem the lacking execution, creativeness, and power of them. The set of shallow cardboard characters that started to interact with our MC that have been integrated sequentially through the plot and the convenience of our hero are nothing but an excuse to create more of these apex of excitement, to generate a twitter clip with a cap saying “RT if you cried to this”, or to show the stylistically pleasing characters in a badass moment that would serve well as the profile picture of a rebellious teenager after being scolded by her mother because of his falling grades in math. Arc after arc the fellow manga readers hyped what would happen next, and my dumbass trusting them got underwhelmed every time. The anime and story itself don’t serve any other purpose but virality through a mix between straightforward stupid and over the top drama, low quality action and scenes that could grant the ever-growing society of solitude screenshots of the most intense moment to post in a page. And honestly, just honestly with the deep of my heart, I have no problem with that. I have watched plenty of anime that are meant to be nothing more than a product that can sell correctly, I have even given good scores to some of them because they are self-aware of it, which is then the problem with this? The problem of this is that everything around it is as pestilent as a garbage dump, as pointless as an anime review, as worthless as the Venezuelan currency. To explain the motivations about the claims above I would divide the review in four points that construct such argument. The first point that I would attack is the coherency and consistency of the characters, or, in this case, how many times the decisions of the characters have no other reason but pushing forward the hype, trending topic moments instead of giving us texture of their psychological statement and decision-making, instead of telling us who they are. In this case I would gladly say something positive, Takemitchy should be awarded with something, Takemitchy should be recognized by everyone for a single feat, and it is being the dumbest and most useless time traveler in the history of media. While watching this a colossal annoying amount of question marks starts to pop. How, a person that is fighting continuously against a strange force, could have the same proactivity as the western governments during the pandemic. How, a person that is 12 years older than his own body, could act with the same level of reasoning as some full of hormones teenagers that have no foreshadowing about the consequences of their actions. How, a person that is 12 years older than his own body, didn’t learn a single thing through those years and can’t even manipulate a teenager into doing something. How, a person that is 12 years older than his own body, can’t come up with a plan to get above kids that are also pretty much the bottom barrel of human intellect by default, and probably into mental disorders because of the amount of head trauma that they have suffered. How, a person that have a literal detective working with him, can’t do anything but the most straightforward in the box planning that could one ever imagine, a plan that not even a pre-teen would think that could work correctly based on all the antecedents that the own anime presents us. All these questions could only lead to one answer, the only reason that could justify the set of incoherent decisions that our beloved MC and his buddy Naoto take. The truth is that Takemitchy and Naoto are pretending to care about Hina, but they secretly want to write a biography about Takemitchy that could be a best seller in Japan, so they need to act dumb to provide more action and insight about the youth gangs. This line of thinking is motivated by the fact that there is no way that an adult wouldn’t involve the cops or any third party in this conflict, there is no way that an adult can’t convince a group of people about his judgements by having knowledge of things that would happen next, there is no way that an alternative plan that doesn’t involve fights can’t be done by their perspective, even using money to do such. Can’t they see the future events? Why do you need to risk everything to the last second? Why would you plan something that have a potentially deadly outcome, while also knowing that you are a useless piece of crap that doesn’t do anything but cry the moment you hit the conflict and narrate what is going on to the spectator? Are you just forcing yourself to create a believable and interesting character development instead of solving the conflict? This incoherency could be overlooked, fine, but it is just a telling about how disrespectful this anime is towards the people who watch it. The behavior is then just justifiable if you don’t trust and respect the capability of the viewer to be able to fill realistic alternatives and understand basic human behavior. Anyways, continue, this alone doesn’t deserve a 1. The second issue is that not only the characters actions are incoherent and have no resemble of basic human behavior, but the worldbuilding and the apparent rules that are subject to each of them are also as incoherent. To exemplify this, lets remember that certain character for some reason survived several hits to the head that could pretty much kill you or leave you unconscious in any kind of semi-realistic setting, like the one presented, let’s remember that this happened two episodes AFTER another character died because of one hit that didn’t even have the same level of momentum. Is it then to believe that some characters are not subject to the constraints of human body? Is strength linked to the hardness of our skull? I guess that we can’t really tell with the things that have been shown as of now, but I highly doubt so, I don’t just highly doubt so but, like the incoherency of the characters decisions, incoherency about the rules of the universe of the anime are just there because of disrespect, laziness, and the search for hype, virality, drama, misery, and thrill, and they are the norm of this anime. The same could be said about the time travelling mechanic, which is nothing but a device to propel drama and misery to the main character through retroactively reminding how worthless he is. Nothing more than a device to kick the story and create moments that would just create tears in highly gullible people. My reasoning about time-traveling being anything a cheap device to create drama and conflict come from two facts. The first is that the main character can’t take advantage of the mechanic because he is as dumb as a bag of rocks, the second is that the time travelling itself is just nonsense in terms of consequences related to the actions of the main character in the past and completely incoherent to the present. And why do I say that there is no way that the mechanic is coherent? In the first episode our dear main character said that his life completely changed after being humiliated by Kiyomizu, he supposedly left the town because of such event after graduating, which is kind of sad, right? Life altering circumstance, I would have killed myself. Shake hands with the next worst detective of Japan, came back, Naoto next to him, his life should be as miserable because the affair wasn’t resolved yet, we can trust such thing happening honestly. Then, we get to him solving the affair, he didn’t have to deal with the consequences of Kiyomizu being above him, he shouldn’t have left the city after graduating because there is no reason for that, his relationships dynamics changed completely because he is now involved with some shady guys, and he came back. To the same exact point. Ok. Naoto remembers the apparent changed past too. Ok. No problem, we can deal with this with some mental gymnastics, like two different timelines collapsing to Naoto conscience and Takemitchy travelling between those timelines. Remember that in both cases he was unconscious during the time travel in his current timeline, so there is an apparent real time present change. Then, his life change even more, now he is buddy big buddy of Mickey, he came back to the present, and the point of respawn changed to his workplace, his life was completely the same as before, but Naoto wasn’t there, same work, same life, but he wasn’t unconscious. Same life as before as he solved the affair with Kiyomizu, same life as before he was friends with Mickey, same exact life as before he saved Draken. I hope that you can follow what I meant to say by this. The three time-travel events can’t coexist in the same universe. You can always generate a line between two points, but if the other point is in the other side of the plane you must completely bend the function. And this is the case here, one event contradicts the other by default, should we accept such with a happy face? That is what people told me, but I’m clearly not happy with that. All this inconsequential storytelling, these contradictions that build bigger and bigger episode after episode could just go through your own capability of being ashamed if you don’t trust and respect the capability of the viewer of watching critically what is going through the screen. Anyways, continue, this is not enough to give this anime a 1. Intellectually offensive, but can something else be going on, right? The third point that makes this highly chaotical, barely correlated anime a piece of garbage is how every event that happens is presented, the abhorrent execution. As we can tell, Takemitchy is a bitch, a coward, a good for nothing, a weakling, a chicken, a yellow-belly crybaby. He doesn’t do anything; he is a worthless piece of crap that doesn’t deserve our pity, he even tried to cheat on her girlfriend and kissed a minor. The plot doesn’t even respect or build its own rules and it is heavily disconnected from human behavior. Ok. That could still provide something decent, right? We could have moments where everything flows together, intense sequence of events that link each other to don’t let our eyes get out from the screen. No, it isn’t the case, it isn’t the case because every single plot point, every single event is complemented with some mental asylum level of expositions or over the top predictability. That exposition could came from Takemitchy narrating what is literally happening on our screen every single fight scene, that exposition could be that dumbass Kazutora reminding us that the writer doesn’t even pretend to make a psychologically broken and delusional character and instead made a Pokemon-like dialogue so people who didn’t receive enough oxygen in their birth could understand that his head is twisted and make dumb memes about it, that exposition could be Naoto explaining what literally happened in the past to the MC because he can’t even deduce how to change his pants after getting them dirty with pre-ejaculate fluid from kissing a minor with his 26 years old virgin brain. All these events are nothing but disrespect to the capability of the viewer to get the plot, nothing but the intent to appeal to the lower common denominator and creating something as wide as possible while highly decorating these flaws through bombastic trash to watch fights, incoherent shouting, and hype badassery with guys without shirts, dyed hairs and tattoos. And it sucks to watch, it sucks to watch because it converts a lot of time into white noise that could have been easily prevented, it sucks to watch because it is made for people who are scrolling through their friends instragram stories while watching this, it sucks to watch because it just reminds me of those cheap soap operas that you watch while cooking some high-level spaghettis with ketchup. Fights and points that could pretty much be summed up in 5 minutes are prolonged to 20 minutes just because they don’t trust and respect the capability of the viewer to understand the shallow mess of the plot that have been presented. The fourth and last point is also maybe the one that offends me the most because it talks volume about the people who watch the medium and the respect to the creators, the main offender for how it has been defended by the ones who love this anime because of their low standards and nonsensical overly positive thinking, and this is the animation and art. I will tell you no false truths, the animation sucks. The animation is subpar, below the average that have been the norm in anime of even low budget studios, and it also doesn’t try to innovate in anything. Hell, we don’t ever have to go that far in the past to get a point of comparison, Super Cub is an anime made from a small studio that was pleasing to watch just because they did what they could, the story is meh, the direction, fantastic. Kageki Shoujo is an anime that is pleasant to watch because the motions are correctly executed when it is needed, the design is not KyoAni levels, the fluidity is not of the level of Shaft or MAPPA, but it is beautiful to watch because they poured their hearts on it. This is not the case here, not at all. The animation of this anime is horrendous to watch and a complete disservice to the overall experience too, and rabid manga readers accept such too, which should tell volumes about the amount of copium that some people must take to defend this. Static backgrounds of people in fights, character motions that are extremely choppy if they are not the same one-dimension directional motion that they do all the time, deformed facial structures and body figures, use and abuse of the same face angles, lifeless color palette, use and abuse of slideshow like montages, use and abuse of translational camera movements. We could excuse some of them in the lack of resources and time, but then, why would you create a storyboard that can show all this flaws? They do because they don’t trust and respect the capability of the viewer of discerning those flaws. Because they can get away with this because of the morbid mentality that equals criticism with attacks. Critical thinking is what moves everything forward, you are doing no favor if you don’t give feedback. Now, those four points are enough for me to call this a 1. I didn’t learn anything from this anime, the anime didn’t provide anything new that I haven’t watched before, the anime didn’t have any positive message that haven’t been told to the infinity and beyond in other anime, the anime didn’t try to go deep into anything, the anime didn’t explore anything of substance, the anime didn’t provoke anything human on me. The anime is just a collection of moments, a set of scenes that could be packed into a set of TikToks every Saturday to get thousands of likes, the anime is just delusion, a violence glamorizing fantasy. The anime could pretty much be a parody of its own genre, and then maybe it could work. Takemitchy could pretty much be a parody of the most pathetic MCs that are present in the medium, and then maybe it could work. The time traveling nonsense could pretty much be some next level irony about how most of the time there are big holes when they implement such mechanic, and then maybe it could work. The problem is that the anime is always serious about his own self, it is not an anime that works in disrespect to itself that could portray a critique to the medium. It is an anime that works in disrespect to the viewer, to our capability to think and critique, that explores the possibilities of mediocrity and how much it can get away with while being successful. And maybe they did their experiment right because this was highly successful with all its downfalls. And maybe they did their experiment right because people who defend this anime tells those who critique to not think, do they deserve respect then? The question would be, why should I care then? Why would I waste my time explaining the lame point of view of someone who didn’t turn his brain off while watching this, who for some reason believed the always wrong source readers and expected to see something that deserves my attention? I think that the issue with this mediocrity is that it leaves space to more mediocrity. I think that the issue to not entice thinking is that it promotes less thinking. I think that the issue with shallowness is that it promotes a vapid culture. And I think that what we should strive for is to get away from that, to get pieces that could stand the time because their inherent value is there and deserve so, that could serve even without the social trending, without the viral phenomenon, that could exist and prolong themselves in the future and when the next generation of people watch these shows they won’t think “Damn, those fuckers had such bad taste”. Tokyo Revengers hype will decay, people will forget about it, but the overall mentality will perdure, and that is what I meant to portray here. What I meant to do by giving this a 1 and writing this review is just to call out this behavior, to tell them that fun things are not meant to be also dumb and incoherent, that there is always an underlying message, intention, emotion behind the frames that are given to us through the media player, because they have been done by a human, by one of us, and to capture what they wanted to do is the most beautiful aspect of consuming what the others do. That incoherence and disrespect to the audience should then have no place to stand, because it is dishonest, and to my belief dishonesty is one of the ugliest concepts that one could face, one of the ugliest because it emerges from the sense of getting away of consequences, from the sense of mutual understanding and respect, from love to the ones that are out there, from community. And you shouldn’t get confused, when I meant that it is dishonest, I don’t mean that anyone involved is completely at fault of every sense of dishonesty here. The animators and the ones that do the production are not at fault at anything but the fact that they were given conditions that couldn’t suffice a good production, the writer is not at fault at anything but his own incapability to make something better, I can’t attribute malice to anyone individually because it would be dumb to do so, I don’t know any of them, but I can do it as a whole, as the entity called Tokyo Revengers, because when they saw this and they said “Hmm, it is alright, keep doing it” an act of dishonesty was conceived, because I can’t really think that people who dedicate their own lives to the medium would think that this is correct. Human emotions transcend through honesty and attachment to reality while the exposure of time kills the essence of virality Peace, Gween

Honestly this would have been a really solid series if the protagonist wasn't so painfully unlikeable. Story wise it's fascinating. A person with a limited ability to time travel using that ability to change past events to protect loved ones in the modern day is a great concept when used correctly. The tight limitations of Takemichi's abilities are brilliant in terms of drama as there's no "reset button", if he fails in what he sets out to do then there's no do over which makes the sense of danger feel far more genuine. The gang warfare elements are also well done. The tensions between organisations as wellas personal loyalties and relationships are fairly well established. Though some story elements do fall a little flat, some animosities carrying more weight than seems necessery. The majority of characters are interesting. Mikey and the founding members of Toman are probably the strongest in terms of characterisation and it is really difficult to not sympathise with these kids. Takemichi's friends could have been developed a little better and Hina, Naoto, and Akkun honestly feel like they only exist as plot devises with no real substance. It's a shame but it's not really that easy to care about these characters but I'm going to assume that's due to the number of major characters making it difficult to build on every one of them. Takemichi, our protagonist, is probably the worst character in it, though. Where other characters may not make much of an impact due to simply not being built upon much, Takemichi is just simply unlikeable. He comes off as obnoxious and kind of gross to an extent. He's a 26 year old man who ends up back as his 15 year old self and is probably the most immature of the teen era characters. His obsession with being a virgin is just annoying and it genuinely feels like he doesn't really bring anything to the plot. Most of the time he stands there screaming and something or someone else steps in to deal with the situation then Takemichi gets all the praise for doing absolutely nothing. A lot of the comic relief moments feel kind of lazy,relying on crude humour or misunderstandings which overall aren't that funny to me personally but humour is subjective so that's not that big a deal. The animation style is decent. If the show was just a gang story that focussed on Mikey and Draken it'd probably be more to my tastes personally but you can't win them all.

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