Review of Tokyo Revengers

I'm gonna be honest here and say that my giving Tokyo Revengers an 8 is generous. The reason I've decided to rate it the way I have is because there were some elements to Tokyo Revengers that were genuinely brilliant. However, the unfortunate fact of this anime is that it's riddled with holes, from beginning to end, and it would rather tell its story through attempts at shock value, rather than with substance. I know this has quickly become a beloved series, and in many ways, it is deserving of it. For me, though, it wasn't all that it could've been. I will discuss thisvaguely, so as not to spoil anything, but please be aware that this review will still allude to various things in Tokyo Revengers.

First, let's start off with the issues I had with this anime. Tokyo Revengers is based on time travel, right? It's the central feature of this story, so you'd expect it to be a feature that fires on all cylinders, so to speak. In reality, I felt that Tokyo Revengers handled the time travel aspect of its plot quite poorly. Not only did it miss countless opportunities to explore vastly different timelines and characters, it ignored its own rules about time travel. It became really frustrating to watch certain things that were being changed in the past not affect the future at all, while others completely changed it. Even when the future was changed, though, it was never anything significant. Nothing the main character did seemed to have any weight; in fact, it seemed like the plot was being extended for the sole purpose of having more content--not new content that furthered the plot, either. Just repetitive, nonessential content. In addition to that, there were a lot of plot holes because of the time travel. The plot would say "If A, then B," but then when A happened, B would only partly happen or wouldn't happen at all. Only the big plot points were ever properly addressed.

Beyond that, you've got a main character with ridiculously shallow motivations to lead this entire story. Things can happen that are amazing in the past or the future, but the main character is the one holding both ends of the story together--and his part in it always feels lacking. The connective tissue of Tokyo Revengers was frail, and that was so unfortunate. Yes, there were periods within this season that he came off like a brilliant character, but for the most part, he almost felt like he was in the way, more times than not. Especially when he was simply making observations about things that the viewer had already figured out episodes ago. Though, I guess that's down to a predictable plot, more than anything else. But then, the plot isn't entirely predictable, either, because events led to later events in a domino effect that had no logical path. As you can tell Tokyo Revengers became a hodgepodge of confused plot lines, a nearly useless main character, and a collection of terrible character motivations.

Despite the two previous paragraphs of me ripping Tokyo Revengers to shreds, I do want to acknowledge that it had its moments of absolute brilliance. If you isolate the events of the past or the events of the future and ignore the link between them, Tokyo Revengers could have been really well done. That's the most frustrating aspect about the whole experience. The horror you see in the future, or present day, timeline is absolutely amazing, and the raw emotion you feel watching the events of the past is, probably, the best part of the whole anime. Tokyo Revengers can do emotion so well, though it doesn't always. It can elicit such strong reactions from the audience when it does it right. The problem is that the main character is never the one eliciting those emotions. Regardless of the quality of the plot itself, the other main and supporting characters are the pieces of this anime that keep people coming back. They're what's worth watching this anime before because you feel connected to them. There are plenty of characters that isn't true for, but for the best characters in Tokyo Revengers, it is. You're invested in them, you want to know what happens to them, you want to see how they change as the timeline does, and that's been Tokyo Revenger's biggest success.

At the end of the day, when I come back to a future Tokyo Revengers season, I won't come back to find out what happens to the story. I'll come back to see what happens to the characters. Somehow, despite me finding holes in it every episode, I still want to know more about how these characters relate to one another. So, make your own decisions about whether you want to watch it or not. I can't tell you with any degree of certainty whether this anime will end up being a classic or a flop. Clearly most people find it incredible, and maybe it will be one day. For now, we'll just have to wait.