Review of Tokyo Revengers

I love time travel sort of shows and media, I really do. Despite how I already know that the protagonist is at a massive advantage, it’s always so satisfying to see them try to manipulate important events towards their favor. Reverend Insanity, Reincarnator, Emperor of Solo Play, Trash of the Count’s Family, etc are all fun novels where the protagonist knows future events and leverages it to their advantage, especially when they were unsuccessful in the future. Sounds pretty familiar to Tokyo Revengers, right. Wrong. Note how none of the series I mentioned so far are Japanese. That’s because Japanese time leap shows are incoherentmesses that don’t really make a lot of sense, including Tokyo Revengers. Steins Gate and like...Orange are the only two shows I can think off the top of my head that are shows that have time leap as their entire story. Both..aren’t really that good, but at least it focuses on the topic. Future Diary and Suzumiyah Haruhi both feature time travel, but it’s more of a small portion of the story than the focus, so despite both being good, time travel was not the reason why they were good.
What am I even rambling on about this for? Essentially, all I’m trying to say is that Tokyo Revengers, despite it being a show all about time travel on the surface, the more you delve deep into the story, the more you realize that this story could have been done without the mechanic. Sure, Stein’s Gate’s plot would not function without time travel. But what about Tokyo Revengers. Could Takemichi have done the stuff that he did in the past that would have not been possible if not for the fact that he knew what was going to happen? Not really, right? All he does is have a vague idea of what happened in the past, formulates little to no plans about preventing such a past from happening, and his actions are more like a person fumbling around with no idea what the chain of events are going to happen, kind of like... a regular, non-time traveling middle schooler. The only “leverage” he uses from the future is just understanding that “Oh no, person X is going to die, I’ve got to save him!” But really now, he does not really take any actions out of the ordinary that would actually save said person. He just...tries to protect them with no game plan.
Need I even explain how bad of a time traveler Takemichi is? His “gateway” towards a better future is really jump started by him having an extremely fortuitous encounter with the boss of the gang. Sure, I guess he only got the encounter because he “showed conviction and didn’t back down from a fight,” but that’s really nothing that he could not have done in the past, and the encounter is something straight out of shounen manga. And that’s the thing. This plot screams shounen. Again, Takemichi is basically a shounen protagonist with good luck rather than a guy who knows future events and uses them to his advantage. He gathers little to no information about the future and some of the information is even just wrong. His interviews with people in the future about past events always never give him enough or any information that he desperately needs, and he basically does not use any of the information to his advantage, with what little he got and gathered. He just does some crying, makes people sympathize, agree with him, or something of the sort, and he barely manages to create the worst chain of events from happening. That’s...nothing that a non-time traveling person could not do. He starts off with getting a foothold with Toman through a coincidental series of events that had little to nothing to do with his time travel powers, and he keeps on getting fortuitous encounters that do not have anything related to his abilities. Most of the time actually, when he needs to foster a relationship with someone or do something, the person in question comes to HIM, not the other way around. Or, someone who conveniently has the same goal as him approaches him and they’re the one carrying the weight, allowing Takemichi to gain a bit more of an understanding of the situation at hand. It’s pretty ironic that Takemichi is a guy who does not even have the most information about the series of events that are going to happen, and it’s always other people that do. It’s not like the people in the know are smart or anything, they just have the bare minimum information that Takemichi never has. Takemichi never has the initiative despite the fact that he should have all of it. Even if he does not have super accurate information, he could at least have a few collaborators in which he shares his secret to other than Naoto. But no, that’d be too smart of a move. A move of that type only works a single time and cannot be used again. I could think of a lot of different ways that he could do something effective, but I think you get the idea, right?

EVEN so. I’m invested. Emotionally speaking, of course. Looking at this show at a logical level and criticizing the plot holes is something that I could do for a long time. It’s structurally speaking, an awful show. However, the anime is dumb fun. It is. I want to know what happens in the next events. Just as Takemichi barely has any idea of what’s going to happen other than a vague thought, you, the viewer, share his perspective and also do not know. We’re all in the dark, and it’s basically just a shounen show. Not bad at all. Characters are fun, relationships with them are decent, and it’s an enjoyable experience as long as you set the expectations not too high.
Yes, there’s a small amount of fanservice like “whoopsie, grabbed a boob” despite Takemichi having a girlfriend that he apparently loves more than anyone else. I do like the fact that Takemichi’s girlfriend was a pre-established plot point rather than having Takemichi try to create a relationship with her. This, I will praise. Rather than creating a romance blooming from 4 lines of dialogue like in Odd Taxi, the fact that both parties like each other already means that the show can focus on something else while also having a relatively convincing relationship for the amount invested in it.
Other than that, you can tell that there’s basically no slice of life components to this show. I think it’s really important to show the day to day activities of Takemichi and his friends since he’s a time traveler. At the very least, that would set the mood for his brooding about what to do, and explore all the opportunities he tries to pursue. Instead, we just get a bunch of time skips in which we learn about an event coming up, Takemichi worries about it, and then the event starts. I mean seriously, we don’t even know what Takemichi’s room really looks like, let alone his day to day activities or anything else. I wouldn’t really worry about the future events that Takemichi does. The future scenes are all basically just an elaborate plot device that enables Takemichi to have a small stream of information flow into him without having to do any work. Compounding this with other people coming to him and events happening to HIM, the story is able to progress.
Overall, just ditch the time travel mechanic. You really do not need it. If Takemichi’s not going to take advantage of his, by the way, very OP time travel ability, you might as well not incorporate it into the story as well, rather than have a time travel ability that’s used only when convenient to the plot and story. Don't bother with trying to make sense of the plot, just let the narrative that the author wants to paint just get expressed to you. It doesn't make sense in the least bit, but at least it's interesting. Don't set the bar too high, this is dumb fun with a classic shounen plot.