Anime 42249 Tokyo Revengers Reviews

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 meet ... anyone’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.

Tokyo Revengers: the anime where 26-year-olds look like overgrown kids and kids look like they must have hit puberty right out the womb. Because yes, that's what most of our main characters are - kids. And they sure do act like it too.

If I had to describe my experience watching Tokyo Revengers every week in one sentence, all I can say is that it feels like such a chore. I can't be the only one who gets reminded of dramatic Indian soap operas watching a bunch of testosterone-jacked dudes overreacting every few scenes or so. Then why, if it annoys me so much, do I ... continue to suffer every Saturday? Well, it's in the hopes of finally seeing some mind-blowing unraveling that every fan seems to rave about. But 7 episodes in and this show is full of snail-like pacing, poor attempts at inciting emotions, misplaced humor and one of the most aggravating, useless MC's.

The first problem with Tokyo Revengers lies in its unbelievable representation of middle schoolers. You just can't look me in the eye and say these guys are meant to be 14-15 year olds - Draken, Osanai, Pah, Kiyomizu and a majority of the gangs would be better suited to play their characters' dads here. Of course, inaccurate age depictions are no stranger in the world of anime, but this is one of the worst cases I've seen of it by far because its existence constantly detracts from my enjoyment of the plot. I can imagine the story playing out so much better in the context of high school "yankii" instead, with the potential to go even darker, albeit more realistically.

Sadly, it doesn't stop there. The second biggest problem that holds this show back is its ridiculous premise to begin with. The unique concept of time travel portrayed here deserves some praise, but it fails to be interesting when our two genius protagonists, Takemichi and Naoto, go out of their way to pick the most complex solution to their problem. One can conjure up numerous better ways to save Hinata, but no, the stakes must forced to be unneccesarily high or where would our entire plot and character development be? Speaking of the latter, it's pretty clear from the start that Takemichi's goal as a character is to learn from his regrets and become a better person but damn, if we haven't seen that one before. There is absolutely no redeeming factor or quality to keep me invested in his character (rather difficult when the MC just cries every episode) or anything that happens to anyone around him, really. And NO, to anyone claiming this is a good example of a "multidimensional emotionally in touch with himself" character, please go watch some josei to see what that looks like. Simply put, it's all just so BORING and predictable. Yes, even the "plot twists" which is where the dramatic soap opera vibes come in. Also, has no one stopped to question how fucking weird it is for someone who's mentally 26 to be crushing on a 14-year old girl? As someone who's normally a sucker for romances, this just isn't it.

If all of that wasn't already enough to put me off, we have our final cherry on top: the art style. For a lot of anime that suffer from poor storylines and characters, the animation is something to fall back to as its saving grace. Not the case here at all. From the very first episode, there's just something about the cartoonish character designs that turns me off, regardless of the warped sense of age. What's worse is that it had the potential to be so much better; the manga's art style is far superior here and perhaps, it is better off consumed in that medium. But hey, I guess we got a pretty decent OP and ED out of this adaptation at least?

It may not seem like it, but believe me when I say I really wanted to like this show. With all the hype it's been receiving since its release, my curiosity was piqued, but all that's left to be found here is an unrealistic, uninteresting and underwhelming story ft. aesthetically displeasing cardboard characters.

Such a boring show, typical time travelling, middle school gangs who look like adults, goofy mc, no emotion this show it the defenition of a hype train.

Or so a fool would say...

This spring season has been producing amazing and interesting shows but for me tokyo revengers takes the cake here. Our protagnist Takemitchi is on a mission to save Hina from her destined fate and has to work back in time solving events in order to stop the inevitable.

What intrests me the most about this show is the way our protagnists wants to protect his girlfriend but 8 episodes in and hes already growing bonds ... with others, I've grown attached to characters like Mikey and Draken for their badass persona and their flucating relationship always has me on the edge of my seat because you know at the back of your mind that there will be a domono effect on events.

The story is super compelling and has me intrested a few episodes in. The plot twists, turns and cliff hangers reminds me of watching attack on titan for the first time. We know that the main mission is to save Hina but boy oh boy are there some intresting obstacles that takemitchi has to execute almost perfectly.

The art is really nice and if im not mistaken this is a pretty new studio and has done an excellent job on creating vibrant colors especially shown in the intro. Aswell as this, this sound is absolutelty fitting and a pleasure to hear.

The characters are really likeable and were only 8 episodes in. Theyre really intresting to learn about and there are so many more which im eager to discover aswell as the roots of Toman gang. Also, they are almost representative of gangs (not for middle schoolers lol) and really shows the Japanese side of things which is always super cool to learn.

Overall, the enjoyment for this show is super high and always cant wait for it on saturdays after nagatoro, vivy, 86. and mha. I have high hopes for this show and cannot wait for ep 9.

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 annoying ... characters 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 hasn't even gone 1/2 of the way through its' runtime, and already the flawless 10/10 scores have come flooding in-- many of which are written by readers of the source material. As someone who's also read the manga, I further affirm that Tokyo Manji Revengers is a fantastic read that had me on the edge of my seat and my heart jumping out of my chest.
That being said, if you asked me if this anime adaption is equally entertaining, or an upgrade upon the source material? I would have to disappointedly tell you that, no, this animated version of the story does not ... make you cry or laugh quite the same as the black and white pages.
Now I'm going to go into a fair amount of detail about the exact reasons for my critique and score, but if you desire a summary/TL:DR I'll leave it right here:
Tokyo Revengers' anime adaptation features an amazing opening song, a captivating time-travel story, and does not do a disservice to the source material by staying true to the plot and making no deviations. Yet despite these good aspects: the cartoonish style of the anime compared to the realistic style of the manga, the abundance of still animation in action scenes and closeups, and the badly implemented soundtrack in otherwise emotional moments ruining the delivery makes Tokyo Revengers an extremely average adaption of an above average manga.

Art: Lets start with arguably the biggest problem with this animation: tone. From a dark and gritty story about criminal gangs-- to a slice-of-life shonen school story, a glance at the art of the Tokyo Revengers anime would make you assume the latter more than the former. A big reason for this is the more elaborate and realistic design of the manga not being adapted into the anime. While one features faces where eyelashes, noses and mouths are sometimes drawn in life-like detail, the other opts for a look that is more akin to Boku no Hero than Berserk. While, on paper, that isn't a huge problem, it tends to ruin the more gritty gut-wrenching moments. The other big problem is that the animation features a lot of stills. Characters don't move or have any dynamic actions; every anime has these; but, even in the action there is a disappointing abundance of still frames, where there is neither dynamic "camera movement" or character animation. In this aspect, I suppose you could ironically say that the anime is faithful to the manga, but simply coloring in manga panels and calling it animation is definitely a negative rather than a positive.

Sound: In this department I'd call it a draw. I both love and hate the sound related aspects of this anime.
Lets start with the positive sides: the opening and ending songs of the anime are beautifully done. Crybaby, the song by Hige Dandism is, I'd argue, the greatest highlight of this anime; it perfectly encapsulates the vibe and emotions of the protagonist into a song, it has elements of despair/desperation in the singer's strained vocals, but also a sense of redemption & determination in the drums/guitar & piano in the backdrop. It is also a plus that the voice-acting cast is well chosen, and all the characters are done perfectly by their respective seiyuus. Every character's voice feels like it belongs, and the emotions within their voices feel genuine and add to every scene. (as for the english-dub though, I might be wrong, as I have less experience there).
However, overshadowing the good, the sound-design throughout the anime is incredibly bland and does very little to elevate the emotions in the iconic scenes. The bigger sin, however, is that rather than failing to elevate the emotional impact of scenes, it actually takes away from the good work done on the voice-acting front. So far, scenes that left an impression on me from the manga have fallen so flat that I would sometimes feel like I missed the scene and have to play it back, only to realize that I simply was in denial that such emotion-filled drama could feel so drab when paired with the wrong music.

Story: This is perhaps the one thing that I think the anime did a great job on, the general pacing of the story is acceptable so far. There are no major story elements of the manga being removed, like with the case of The Promised Neverland Season 2, or changed like in the 2003 version of Fullmetal Alchemist. That being said, it's hard to say much more at this stage as to whether or not the story is executed well, as a story's quality should be based on the sum of it's parts. So as far as this area is involved, I cannot give a proper review until later, when the final episode is aired. For now, lets just say that the story is still fairly captivating, though the art & music for this show is decreasing my overall enjoyment of the plot as well.

Overall Enjoyment: From the standpoint of someone who faintly remembers the plot and is experiencing the story for the second time: the Tokyo Revengers anime is fairly underwhelming, the emotional highs and lows are not the same, and the general aesthetic of the show is inferior to the books. The show is, so far, a bit different to swallow, like a piece of steak that you've been trying to break apart but chewed all the flavor out of. That being said, that might not be the same for first time viewers, and whatever your experience of this fantastic story is, I highly suggest you give the manga a try, whether you pick it up at the end of the anime, or start from 0 or half way, it will surely give you a thrilling ride from start to finish.

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 lack ... of 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

The most overrated anime of the year and perhaps the decade, even though the pacing of the story is bad you could have enjoyed the story if they changed the main character he has absolutely 0 likable attributes and makes You hate the whole anime.

the author fails in explaining anything in regards of time travel and the trigger for it,

I have watched 9 episodes and there is 0 progress in the story and the main character development.
It feels like you are wasting your time by watching it, you could spend the time on other anime’s you missed or tv series’s

Okay, I was a little underwhelmed when first coming into this. But as the episodes played out one by one, The story just got better and better. I have seen people call this an Erased ripoff but what they fail to realize is how much they casually use this and it just becomes amazing as the plot progresses and each time Takemichi returns to the present, a new timeline unfolds and it just feels fresh instead of just repeating the cycle!

Though character designs might not be the best, the sound not be the one to please your ears but the overall storyline combined with ... the cliffhanger of each episode just makes you come back for more , and that just brings more hype for the next episode!

After all, this is definitely something to look out for this season!

Avoid this, if your 12 years old cousin, Virgil, is telling you that this anime is good, just tell him to get lost because this crap doesn't deserve your attention, dear sir, just go ahead and watch anything else, there are better movies about time traveling, better anime, better tv shows.
First of all, I would like to point out the lack of mature characters and authority figures in this anime... So puffed up 15-16 years old kids can do whatever they want in Tokyo without anyone telling them anything, they live in gangs, they fight to the death in parks, they have access to knives, ... pumps even motorcycles at 16 years old, you can just add this anime to the genre "fantasy" because that's kind of what it is a wannabe Craiova (NOTE: Craiova is the city from Romania, where people often fight over anything and sometimes not even the police can stop them, lots of murders happen there every year because of any stupid reason you can think of.).
Second of all, I have decided to drop this anime after 14 episodes because most of the characters are dreadful, boring, repetitive, there is always that character you suspect is behind everything bad that happens in the story, but he is not, and you keep on suspecting every new character evil-looking is behind the bad thing that had to happen to the main character. Shit repetitive twists like that make the story worse, and characters like Mikey and Draken lose their credibility when they refuse to side with our main character despite everything that he has done for them.
I would say that kids will probably enjoy this, that is thought so 14-15 years old kids will love it, but with all this blood I don't think Tokyo Revengers aim for the younger generation as their audience

Overall after 14 episodes watched I got to the conclusion that Tokyo Revengers is a reheated porridge that is served to us every week.

Tokyo Revengers is one of, if not the worst anime to air this year.
Had to quit this generic shitshow of an anime and picked up the manga to see if it actually improves but boy was I wrong, the manga is just as awful, maybe even worse. The Characters are super unlikeable & generic, like I have frickin seen this same set so many times in other works. Plus this is like a copy of other manga/anime meshed together; the likes of Erased+Steins;gate, but I wouldn't critique it for this, since maybe they come off as inspiration.

Anyway, Story: 1/10. This is a show about ... Juvenile Delinquents in middle school, bunch of teenage boys who come together to play gangster, fight and nearly beating each other to death. Where are the fucking adults is one thing that comes to mind, you never see the teachers or parents, ignore the fact that the MC is a fucking adult who goes back in time to his teenage years cause that's about all you get. These kids go on about as if they is in an anarchy system, all around organizing fights, and almost killing each other, sometimes someone ends up dead.

The plot has no originality whatsoever, the time travel isn't even explored or properly gotten into, heck the characters do not even seem too shocked about the whole time travel stuff. They just go on about it as if it's something normal, the reaction to the entire time travel thing is just sad. The anime doesn't get any better, Takemitchy the MC is as useless as they come, the biggest Crybaby you'd ever see, in every episode this guy is crying. Like Fucking Amano Yukiteru & that loser from gleipnir are much better characters, development & character wise. The story keeps circling over and over again with the littlest changes. Pretty much all the MC does is cry and vent about how fucking useless he is. Plot remains stagnant, doesn't go anywhere from starting point.

Art: 5/10. Mediocre art style, nothing unique. Not horrible & not even good. Well I don't got much to say about artstyle, I pretty much watch everything without criticizing the animation. But even I can identify great quality animation when I see one and appreciate.

Sound: same as art. The OP/Ed isn't my cup of tea. Find myself skipping both, nothing special honestly.

Characters: 1/10. I can't even stress the weakness of the characters in this anime. Most times the author goes for self-pity, yeah let's all pity this one guy & he's just being a shitty person for this and that reason bullshit. Oh yeah, in the upcoming bloody halloween arc, we get to meet one of the founders of the Toman gang, the reason for why he goes bad & turned against em is so fucking😂😂😂😂 I can't even, lemme nor spoil, see for yourselves.
Honestly the characters are bland, uninteresting and the MC is just the worst, a crybaby that never changes.

Enjoyment: 1/10. Literally forced myself into watching this, would've so quit at EP3, but a friend kept raving about how it gets better & bullshit. I don't regret picking this up, it is just so horrible, not good, not even a little.
Well I guess there's a target audience and I honestly can't comprehend how the score for it is so high lol.

Overall: 2/10. This is a dreadful anime for me, with horrible pacing and Toddler level writing.

some spoilers ig

TLDR: cliché, relationships of all kind are cliché, vocabulary is cliché, timing is cliché, animation is cliché, reactions are cliché, most characters are cliché. very good plot wasted.

appalling that's all i can say, 8 episodes in and only 1 ep was enjoyable the rest is quite literally soft torture, fighting through every minute because i like the plot. constantly overexplaining stuff(even tho time travel is poorly explained), always letting the watcher know whats happening way before the characters, which makes their reactions pathetic, random stupid tiny mistakes that are easy to spot(eg hina spots takemitchy after he spots her even tho hes half ... knocked out in ep8 18min), friendships are cringe, always smiling admiring each other caring constantly ab each other, with the power of friendship u can win over anything kind of anime, characters use very cartoon esq vocabulary, not realistic at all (tries to punch sm1, misses and goes flying across 10 meters), it just looks like it was made for kids that dont care ab all this stuff, but then the plot involves gangs, fighting, naked girls and romance, so really confusing anime.
love the plot i like the old school gang vibe, the fact that hes trying to help his childhood gf is p cool, the fact that hes falling in love with her again and then he probs wont be able to stay with her cuz he has to go back to the future is p cool (maybe he can decide between staying in the past or going back to future)the whole idea is lovely but very poorly portrayed into an anime.

ig ill have to read the manga if i want to enjoy the plot.

Time travel, a delinquent protagonist, and motorcycle gang fights? Sounds like a great concept, right? At least it does to me. That's what got me to start watching this show in the first place. After watching some episodes, I think that the score of this show is heavily inflated.

This show was set up to be great, but main one thing really drags it down. That thing is the main character himself, Takemichi. Messing up the protagonist is a grave storytelling sin in my opinion.

Takemichi is, to put it nicely, a bad character. His main role in the show is crying and getting beaten ... half to death. Being physically or mentally weak isn't an issue if character development comes as a result of what happens, but the development here is pretty slow if not nonexistent. What's the appeal to seeing a main character be repeatedly battered and generally useless?

The other characters of the main cast are better from what I've seen. If Takemichi develops any more, I might think more highly of this series.

The anime started off strong, but as I watch the latest episode I just think to myself; "where did it go wrong?" It started off strong but really just devolved into mediocrity, even worse because it seemed like it was going places. However as the anime goes on, stuff gets ass pulled and the plot just becomes "whatever."

I feel like in most time travel anime, the main character is smart enough to take that future knowledge and even be able enough, to improvise if things go different. However the MC is a failure by design, I'm sure this is the authors intention but I'm not ... going to wait around waiting for him to change and get good when it's been going downhill for 4 episodes already.

Lastly just because the manga might be good, (as I have not read it) that doesn't mean the anime will be good. Really not sure what all these other good rating reviewers are seeing in this that I'm not.

I really don't have anything else to say right now, maybe I'll come back to this review as I intend to finish it after getting this far. However I don't have any hopes that's for sure.

Final note: In the drop down menu 4 is 'Bad' but when writing this review a 4 is 'Decent' which this isn't. Therefore my rating dropped to '3' in line the appropriate description of 'Poor.'

“Both sides lose somebody. Somebody dies, somebody goes to jail.” --Kid Cudi

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA” --some goofy mf named mitch or something idk

Tokyo Revengers is an anime about middle school kids, but they’re actually RUFF N’ TUFF DUDES who spend most of their time punching people, riding motorcycles, and punching other people who also enjoy punching people and riding motorcycles. Given such a gritty subject matter that is rarely touched upon in shounen anime, it’s pretty clear to see why there’s so much hype for this series. And I certainly respect that.

But in reality, the display of violence and conflict in ToRev is comical, to put it ... nicely. To put it meanly, it’s a mafia anime for children. Every conflict in this series begins and ends with characters punching each other, and other characters scream so often that Ear Revengers would’ve been a more appropriate name.

A lot of the screaming is done by our boy Takemitchi. I wish he was Takenoutoftheshow. *pauses for pre-recorded studio laughter* His entire character is that he has regrets about things that happened in his current life (if that wording threw you off, we’ll get to it later), he gets scared by everything, is in constant disbelief at every element of his surroundings, and is constantly FUCKING SCREAMING. Many assume this MC has a special power of time travelling, but no. His power is yelling to draw attention to himself, where every other character in the show can only express confusion and then go along with it like a practical joke.

How anyone takes Takemitchi seriously is the biggest mystery in this anime. He yells at people to try and get his way, he’s too cowardly to hit anyone and too weak to deal any damage anyway, and whatever he does is motivated by time travel reasons, so nothing he does comes off as logical to other characters. Instead they just say “well he’s a nice guy I guess” and keep him around. If these middle school biker gangs were realistic, Takemitchi would be accepted into the gang as a joke, then have him go on a “secret mission” that ends with him getting raped by a beaver or something. No one in their right mind would actually give him the time of day, but I guess no one in the show is in their right mind because they get punched all the time lol

It’s Talk-no-Jutsu and Power of Friendship taken to incredible degrees, two of the most picked on tropes in shounen anime. These aren’t automatically bad tropes; a lot could be said about one’s way of reasoning and motivating others. Takemitchi doesn’t have the charisma or intelligence to do either of these things. At best, his screaming and whining is so childish that others get lifted up by thinking “Ha! What a dumbass!” Seldom does he have any real consequence on anything happening.

And not to mention, this dude has to express shock and disbelief at EVERYTHING in this series. Even twenty episodes in, when an all-out gang war has been set up for episodes--this being some days or weeks in anime time--he enters the battle like “Wow! I can’t believe this is actually happening!” It doesn’t help that when something occurs within his general vicinity, the camera has to keep cutting to Takemitchi’s look of surprise, as if we need a reminder as to how he feels about something.

While we’re at it, the other goofy shounen trope this anime has is the comically old-looking “middle schoolers”. Not that I really care, it’s just funny seeing some dudes be like “i had a rough childhood” bro you’re like 12 you ARE a child ☠️

But a bad main character can be made up for with a good supporting cast, right? To an extent I can see the potential Tokyo Gang:re has with its characters not named Takemitchi. The two that get the most screentime, Mikey and Draken, are practically the best characters by an objective margin. Mikey has a childlike demeanor that doesn’t go too far and stands out among the rest of the cast, and yet his goofiness doesn’t go too far for me. His calm presence mixed with some weird complexes he has are genuinely fun. His sidekick, Draken, comes off as genuinely tough compared to everyone else, with a strict personality that clashes wonderfully with Mikey. Plus his design is the one in this series that properly rides the line between cool and ridiculous and I actually like it.

Others are just acceptable, albeit forgettable, save for Hina Tachibana--nice to see she’s doing well after everyone fucking hated her in Domestic Girlfriend--who goes slightly above and beyond the token gf that need protecc. Her sweet, innocent and girly character is fine enough for a boys’ series, but the moments where she stands up against danger and acts like a bad bitch were surprisingly good.

It’s likely thanks to these characters that Tokyo Revengers doesn’t end up being completely miserable to watch. As eye-rolling as some parts of it may be, little of it was particularly disastrous. Perhaps the key to enjoying this anime fully is embracing Takemitchi, like how people say Black Clover is good because Asta has character development or something. Is that a good comparison? Do y’all like Black Clover? I’m out of touch with this generation, I’ve been too busy listening to obscure music artists like Hideki Naganuma and Lil Nas X like a fucking asshole.

But now we’ve finally come to the Snorlax in the road. Because it’s TIME!!!! to TRAVEL!!!!!!!!!! Into the section where we talk about time travel in this anime. It’s a very straightforward concept: Takemitchi returns twelve years into the past, but can travel forward back to the present day by shaking hands with some dude. What’s interesting is that time moves forward in both timelines simultaneously, but unfortunately there’s not anything done with this concept so far, other than seeing the present day change as a result of what Takemitchi does in the past. Honestly I don’t care too much about the time travel because, at least in this stage of the story, it doesn’t seem like much of a story concept.

Maybe I could be more harsh about that, but the only qualm I have for now is that, like seemingly any time travel series that isn’t actually sci-fi, the TT isn’t used smartly. Since time moves forward in both timelines simultaneously, it would make sense for Takemitchi to be in the past during the day, then check the present day overnight so that he can consistently live both lives. It’s a notable drawback that his life in the timeline he’s not present in is run on autopilot, so maximizing the time between both makes the most amount of sense to me. But like I said, Revengers isn’t really here to impress with any of its high concepts, just to have dudes punch the shit out of each other.

The real Snorlax on the road, or rather, the colossal 800-pound dump it just took, is how Tokyo Revengers is presented. I’m sure some will defend this lovely adaptation by saying “well it looks better than Ex-Arm!” as if we give humans accomplishments for having ten fingers. Bad art and animation can often be summarized with buzzwords like “cheap” and “low-effort” (sorry to you folks at Lidensfilms who probably made like 200 yen off this whole show), and my buzzword for this art style is: lifeless. Dead. Unresponsive. Shots often linger uncomfortably long, a problem that’s exacerbated by an unhealthy amount of still-frames. Body animation is often stiff and awkward, a death knell for an action-heavy series. When characters hit each other, the animation is slow and lacks weight, like moving around a couple of layers in Photoshop, or they just have a still-frame of someone getting hit and then slowly sliding across the screen in one direction. Then, they’re further marred by gross and sometimes excessively-loud noises of flesh splashing. Characters have un-detailed faces that often look deadpan and unemotive, and the designs aren’t much to write home about either. Even the background art lacks any personality when there could be potential for some of the rugged settings of some episodes, such as the junkyard in the Bloody Halloween arc. All of these problems run deep and go beyond what one would normally blame on “budget”. Who really knows what happened, but sometimes, things just suck.

Occasionally the OST has some highlights, but a lot of the best songs are played over, and over, and over again, like there can only exist one song for an emotionally uplifting scene, one for intense action scenes, and so on. Maybe it wasn’t as repetitive as I remember and more of the general style of hard rock-driven orchestration blurred everything together. Who knows. Either way, it wasn’t bad, but it didn’t leave too much of an impression. The OP is okay. The vocals have a nice singalong melody throughout the whole song, but nothing else about the song interests me. I fuck with both the ED’s, though. The first ED is kinda like a smooth mixture of soul and city pop that cools you down like a good ED typically would, but then some amped guitars crank up the energy to get you hyped at the end. It’s hella good. The second ED sounds like Silversun Pickups but if they weren’t fucking shit. I wish the drums and bass, or really just the entire instrumentation lol, was louder because it kinda sounds like a weird moany dude groaning over fuzz. But it’s a cool song anyway.

Anyway, usually I end reviews with some sort of summary but generally speaking I write these things on the spot and have no idea what I’m doing so I don’t know what I just wrote actually. Tokyo Revengers Not Good I guess. Tell you what, I’ll come back and fix this section in twelve years. Now for a joke, what happened to the swastika in the title of the manga? They removed it so that you could not see it.

Story: 4/10
Art: 2/10
Sound: 5/10
Characters: 4/10
Enjoyment: 4/10
Overall: 4/10, ranging anywhere from a light 3 to a strong 4.

Tokyo Revengers is a very hilariously bad anime with quite a strong initial appeal but bafflingly weak execution. I really wanted to stop by episode 4; I held on to the endearing old school flair, but soon realized it's just a poor form of nostalgia bait that other anime have done and incorporated better.

But being the special officially first dropped anime in my catalog as a MAL user, I feel compelled to at least put down my thoughts as to why I grew to just... be disconnected with it.

Tokyo Revengers has laughably bad dialogue, very cheesy, very cliche, very predictable - all of which makes ... for a horribly slow pace that drawls on the screen. Initial appeal of the characters are solid and even charming, but the way the dialogue pretty much butchered the weight of their interactions just made the anime feel like a try-hard clownery.
And hey, I also have to add how terribly amusing the time travel concept here in all the worst ways. I cannot for the life of me think how other people can see the time travel concept here as anything but a convenient plot device leaning on BS. If the anime wanted it to be a tribute to the old school atmosphere that it wanted to borrow, it could have at least done a decent job or handled things in a humorous self-aware notion... but it didn't. It clearly wants to be something grand in its presentation.

No. It's bad. Laughably bad that grew to be amusing out of spite. It was fun to feel the atmosphere it wanted to portray. Other than that, no. This is one of the worst hyped anime I've ever seen in recent seasons. Give it to other more deserving anime.

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 well ... as 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.

I went into Tokoyo Revengers for the delinquents. I wanted to see the intricacies and inner perspectives of being a gang member. I wanted to see how they think and operate. Well, it’s safe to say that I only got crumbs of it. Instead, what I got from this anime is about a 26-year-old man in the body of a middle school kid running around crying and whining about his incapabilities and lamenting for a girl he dumped long ago. To that, I couldn’t care less.

Welcome to Tokyo Revengers. A 26-year-old who got his life fucked up from his times of being a delinquent ... now lying in his squalid apartment eating chips and working in a shop to clean the dust off the shelves as a job. On his way back to his filthy apartment, he was pushed off of the train station, practically murdered, and got transported 12 years into the past. It is here where he’s tasked to save Hinata, the girl he dumped, from being killed 12 years into the future. The biggest obstacle to this task is to stop Toman, the gang he was part of, from going evil. And the sole trigger of Toman turning into a pure violent and cruel faction is the eventual installment of Tetta Kisaki, who was the catalyst for corrupting Mikey.

The problem with this narrative is that Kisaki is presented horribly as a threat to the series. He’s first shown as this cruel-looking delinquent with a ton of experience and knows how to manipulate others to his will. When we first met him, the narrative made us believe he had already devised his evil deeds. That Kisaki will slowly unravel the intricacies of turning Toman evil. That Kisaki will provide the needed tension for the series. But the series does none of that. Kisaki was forgotten as soon as he was introduced. Instead, what we got from Kisaki is that he’s just another edgy and angsty teenager like so many others in Tokyo Revengers. This becomes even more ludicrous to see when the narrative kept insisting on the importance of Kisaki even after the first arc, where he isn’t even prevalent anymore.

Another issue with the writing is Takemichi. He isn’t the type of protagonist that pushes the story. He’s just there. If he’s given a task, he’ll do it. If he’s caught in a horrible situation, he falls into this pathetic state of inner monologuing about how bad his current situation is instead of using his head. If things went south, he charges straight at the problem like an idiot. There are no steps of planning and executing his desired goals. It doesn’t help when he also whines about every bad thing that has ever happened to him. There’s nothing that makes Takemichi grounded to reality. There’s nothing that makes him likable as a character. There’s no progression to his way of thinking and how he adapts. But what bothered me the most was how the characters in the show touted Takemichi for his minuscule contributions. The series assumes that the viewers won’t see through the obvious problems of Takemichi and, by having others praising the main protagonist would be enough to sell his hard will. Takemichi is written worst than a shounen protagonist that we have seen. And frankly, he’s just uninspiring to watch as a character.

Because the series doesn’t delve anything more profound into the world of delinquents, Toman as a gang feels shallow. It’s just a group made of high look-alike kids following equally uninteresting, unimpressive kids that looks cool. Mikey and Draken are, to put simply, bland--just like the rest of the cast. Mikey looks cool. He has a kind heart and is capable of turning evil when the right buttons are clicked. However, when Mikey does turn evil in the future, as Takemichi has supposedly stopped it from happening, we don’t get to see the process. He’s just evil. All this is to play up the drama that feels empty. There’s nothing to take away from Tokoyo Revengers. The series doesn’t have any particular subject that it wants to tell and express that could’ve made itself stand out.

There’s no animation in Tokyo Revengers. The studio behind Tokyo Revengers anime simply took the manga panels, colored them, and called it a day. Fights and certain character moments that were supposed to have brought out emotions to the viewers were left unsatisfied due to stillness and jarring animation. When watching the anime, there’s also a noticeable amount of camera shots that pan away from the scenes that took place. The Tokyo Revengers’ plot and its involvement of delinquent lured people in. The first episode sold people because of how the show presented itself: A brutal, cool, and aspiring show. However, as the series progressed, it became bluntly clear that Tokyo Revengers was made to be edgy due to a lack of appealing writing and its lousy direction and animation.

Score: 4/10

I'll be honest, maybe I expected too much of Tokyo Revengers. I saw some reviews praising it to high heavens, when at the time the anime was at about 6 episodes at most. Naturally, I grew curious to just how good it could be, when not even half of its runtime has aired yet. As of right now, the show is at 15 episodes.

This, without a doubt, is one of the most disappointing anime series of this year.
Perhaps it's my fault, I got my hopes up after seeing all the praise it got. I mean, a long awaited adaptation of a gritty time travel ... shonen manga, with a simple premise, but a promising story? I thought I was in for another Steins;Gate.

I'll start with the visuals: even for a relatively new studio, its mediocre at best. Not once did I think to myself "wow, they mustve spent a lot of time on this scene/frame", in fact, most of the time I was outright distracted by some of the character designs (especially the MC, with his stupid Great Teacher Onizuka-wannabe facial expressions), and the animation was quite lazy aswell on some occasions.

It may surprise you though that the visuals and the artstyle of this show is probably its highest point (apart from the opening, which is quite nice tbh). The premise is so simple, yet so full of potential: girl dies, boy travels back in time to save her, you know the drill. But the execution is downright dreadful, its nonsensical, filled with plotholes, and the pacing is incredibly slow. Im talking Naruto levels of slow (which Tokyo Revengers reminded me of quite a lot), I watched an episode at 1.5x speed because it was THAT bad. I kept screaming to myself "JUST GET TO THE POINT ALREADY". There wasnt any balance between the humourous and emotional scenes, it was just bouncing from one to the other like a metronome, and it felt incredibly weird and off-putting after the third "funni pervert touch boob" joke.
It's such a shame because there were so many ways the story could've been better, the time travel aspect especially is super under-utilized. I took a quick look at the manga for comparison, and -as another review put it- the anime really turned a gritty, realistic story into a generic slice of life shonen.

Also, while we're at Naruto, let's discuss our main protagonist for a second. Takemichi-kun is a 26 year old adult male in his former, 14 year old self's body; keep this in mind. His character is probably the most painfully idiotic, and no doubt the most unlikeable out of the entire cast. I saw many people praising his development, and I cant really blame them: the anime does make you feel like he's going through some sort of character development, but you would sort of expect that, seeing as he literally travels back into his child self AS AN ADULT. There was so much potential for him to learn from his own mistakes, and handle everything in a more serious, adult like manner, making him stand out of all the kids around him. But instead, this Johnny Test lookin-ass wimp is an annoying, weak, infantile moron, who pretends like he's the saviour of the day, when in reality he's little more than a passive observer.

I was so dumbfounded by this, because throughout the series, his girlfriend kept mentioning how uncharacteristically mature he is. Like WHEN?? When he wasn't just standing in the background and narrating what is happening, this snub-nosed prick had the shit beaten out of him every episode, without him even as much as defending himself, (seriously, does no one in this damn universe know how to BLOCK?) and kept crying ever 10 minutes. And dont give me that "but he's a crybaby on purpose, to show he has a soft heart, its even in the OP" bullshit, I dare you to take a shot every time he starts bawling his eyes out, and I promise you, you'll follow his example soon enough.

But just as I thought he was finally about to grow some balls, stand up for himself and protect his friends, the anime says NOPE, and he gets beaten, stomped into the mud, and left on his own -yet again-, only for his girlfriend (whom he's meant to save) to show up outta nowhere and show her only purpose in the entire plot: help him back up and reassure him that "its okay to be a crybaby" -yet again-, while he cries over an emotional piano backing track under the pouring rain; yet again.
This was the moment where I hit pause, quit my browser, and dropped this piece of garbage at Episode 8. I realized that there is no character development. Its all an illusion. Even the MC says it himself: he only "thought" he was strong...

Maybe this show has more to offer? Maybe the manga is amazing? Maybe "It GeTs BeTtEr AfTeR ePiSoDe 200"?
Yeah, maybe. But I dont care. And to be honest, neither should you.

Watch Steins;Gate instead.

The character design has a huge problem
A grown-up MC would look exactly the same as he was in his high school years.
But, a high-school mob character would look like they are in their middle age.
Also, most of the characters have an extremely long neck which is kinda weird honestly.

The time travel aspect of this anime is weak. It literally took 2 minutes for the characters to figure out what triggers the time travel that they did.
Instead of spending time exploring how and why they time travel. this anime shows 0 effort in the time travel aspect.

I know this is an anime about gangsters but ... I just can't help but wonder if the police, teachers, and their parents exist in the first place. I think most people have been to school at some point of their life and we can all relate to gangsterism in one way or another. But this is as far as what we have seen in reality. The "gangster" student seem to do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted

overall not a very good anime IMO, there are always much better options

Most overrated bullshit of 2021, with trash story and cliched garbage characters.

[MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS]

First of all, the story. Guy goes back in time 12 years back from the present. After doing so, does gang fights to change the future & prevent the death of his gf. Not original, but if done right I might enjoy it. But guess what, I didn't.

The show is repetitive. Every time a stronger and bigger gang members gang up the MC, all he does is cry about how weak of a person he is, waiting for someone to save his ass. The MC cries EVERY EPISODE, like every no ... exaggeration. Heck, even the concept of time travel isn't even well-explored. There's also so many times where Takemichi hints to other characters that he knows the future, but they act as if it were normal. This doesn't make any sense. It seemed like the author forgot/did not care to add elements of realism towards the show.

The characters are cliched and generic. MC is your typical crybaby shounen protagonist, and some might say that's okay as long as there's development. But guess what, no development. Throughout the entire season, Takemichi went from crybaby to crybaby. But the worst written character in this show would be Kazutora, his reasoning for him to hate Mikey was utterly bull shit. Like tf? he was the one who murdered people yet blames Mikey for it? LOL? And the other characters are just either bland & generic or retarded.

Art & Animation:
It seems like the art & animation time traveled back in time too.
1. Some scenes had deformed characters.
2. Slideshow animations
But then again, art is just personal preference.

Sound:
Average, nothing memorable.

I didn't enjoy the anime, forced myself to finish it; just because people were saying that it's "one of the best anime of 2021". Which clearly isn't.


Overall: Steins;gate with crybaby MC, average generic unlikeable characters, trash plot. 3/10

I have come to the conclusion that most of the shows (most, NOT ALL) nowadays that are rated high, are overrated. Seems like the people who rate these kinds of shows high are just the normies who've just started watching anime during quarantine.