What promises to be a very big year for Lidenfilms kicks off with Tokyo Revengers Seiya Kessen-hen. It comes on the heels of a strong year for them, too – they were the only studio to place two series on my Top 10 list. They’re busy, generally, and are producing two series of considerable interest to me (Kimi wa Houkago Insomnia and Rurouni Kenshin 2023, one already scheduled for spring and the other very likely to follow). But Tokyo Revengers surely represents their signature franchise – it’s the biggest commercial hit to premiere since Jujutsu Kaisen.
I wonder if Lidenfilms is going the way of MAPPA to an extent. They’re certainly taking on a lot of work, and grabbing more big name properties. They’re also improving quite a bit in the visuals department to my eye. The odd thing, though, is that Tokyo Revengers is not a particularly impressive series in terms of production values. That may change now that the production committee knows going in that they’re dealing with a kaiju, though to be honest there’s not much evidence of that in the premiere. It’s kind of in that same “fine” category that most of the first season fell under.
It’s only been 15 months since the first season ended, but I did have to go back and check my old posts several times to bring back people and events. I guess that says the show didn’t make a huge impression on me. I mostly enjoyed it – I finished it, which is more than I can say of JJK or Kimetsu no Yaiba (though I did go back to that one). That said, once the first few minutes has past I slid back into the mythology pretty smoothly. TR was always a series I appreciated more than I could justify intellectually – a series I liked with a lot of “in spite ofs” needing to be overcome.
The biggest one of those for me, probably (although it’s also sort of fascinating in a semi-comedic way) is the series’ attitude towards Toman and Mikey. Like in the S1 finale, when Takemitchy bemoans that “Toman is going to become evil”. Or this episode, where Kazutora talks of Mikey becoming “corrupted”. Does Wakui Ken get that this makes no sense and he’s just being ironic, or does he really buy into this nonsense? This is a criminal gang, and Mikey is a thug. Occasional blathering on about high ideals does nothing to change that. Trying to figure out the answer to that question is one of the things that keeps me strung along with Tokyo Revengers, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.
This is the fundamental illogic of the story for me. It makes perfect sense that Takemichi’s repeated attempts to “reform” Toman keep failing, because Toman being corrupted isn’t the problem. Toman existing and people like Takemitchy being part of it is the problem. What happened to Hina happened because the people close to her played with fire and got burned – when you pal around with violent criminals, you’re never far from the line of fire. Takemichi isn’t the brightest bulb in the lamp and naive as fuck besides, so I accept that he doesn’t get that. But you’d think at some point Naoto would wise up. Instead of these Byzantine plans to reform Toman, the logical way to save Hinata would be for Takemitchy – her connection to the people that will eventually murder her – to get as far away from Toman as possible as early as possible.
But then, if that happened I suppose we wouldn’t have a story. And that story is certainly fun in its pulpy way. As we rejoin it Takemichi is about to be offed by Kisaki (he’s the real problem, you know) but the lights go out and he wakes up in the company of old frenemy Kazutora-kun. After he got out of prison Chifuyu recruited him in a plan to take down Kisaki and bring Mikey back to his senses, but as we know Chifuyu didn’t make the cut. Kazutora intends to carry on the fight and recruit Takemichi to join him, but unbeknownst to him his secret ally Naoto has an ulterior motive in wanting to meet Takemichi.
I don’t blame Takemichi for being fed up and exhausted with all this. He’s not an exceptionally strong or clever guy to start with, and this whole time leap thing is proving to be an increasingly brutal experience. He considers himself responsible for Hinata’s death in this timeline. It’s ironic that Naoto argues that Takemitchy was just manipulated, because that’s exactly what Naoto has been doing all along. Takemichi is a valuable weapon in pursuit of his personal obsession, and he’s not going to loosen his claws until he gets what he wants.
Joshua
January 9, 2023 at 12:05 amTR’s existence and its popularity weren’t what annoyed me about it. It was more how cynical the entire marketing initiative was for this series because it was clear that Kodansha desperately wanted a shonen hit that could compete with the shonen juggernauts that Shueisha was pumping out. So what we have here involved accelerating the manga in circulation, releasing a low-effort anime adaptation, releasing a live-action movie and trying to dominate the discourse as much as possible in order to manufacture a hit on par with the Jump hits because most casual audiences who watch shonen were going to eat it up anyways. And they’re going to try to do it again this year with not only this season, but two live-action films shot back to back, and trying to ride off the manga’s continued popularity (which I think may be fading due to the poorly received manga finale, it sucked that hard).
This series has all of the markings of one that burns out quickly. Made all the worse that Disney effectively locked up all rights to streaming for this season for the sake of trying to make people use D+ instead of Netflix, Amazon (or Crunchyroll in the West). I doubt they’re gonna use their money to actually improve things unlike Netflix. They’re more obsessed with control.
Guardian Enzo
January 9, 2023 at 12:27 amIf it were that easy, everyone would do it.
Joshua
January 9, 2023 at 1:58 amI just feel that this series’ popularity was entirely manufactured by Kodansha (and Disney) for the sake of a KnY-sized hit. It’s not the kind of series that’s going to last long in the public memory compared to all the Jump heavyhitters; one that burns bright but fizzles very quickly
Guardian Enzo
January 9, 2023 at 9:27 amThat’s a valid theory, but I personally disagree that commercial success to this level in animanga can be purely manufactured. As I said if it were that easy everyone would do it – series like this make a ton of money. Marketing is fine and certainly a part of it, but you have to be backing the right horse. And I don’t personally find TR to be any less exceptional than JJK or Kimetsu – I think they’re all comparably average, but each possesses some qualities that allowed them to be kaiju (even if I don’t fully grasp what they are).
Joshua
January 9, 2023 at 11:34 amBut that’s the thing, Kodansha knew going in that this series was going to have crossover appeal with the same audiences who ate up KnY and JJK in droves. People were going to eat it up anyways as long as it also had the following to guarantee a success (i.e. fujo demographic, OP/ED by popular artist, high profile seiyuus, lots of action and “hype”, a Tanjiro-level “relatable” protagonist). It’s just that they chose to put in less effort into this adaptation than Aniplex/ufotable or Toho/MAPPA did, picked the studio who could do it the cheapest, and got a director who showed himself to be a hack (let’s not kid ourselves, Deadman Wonderland got by solely through shock value and Gangsta was a fluke).
It’s a very cynical adaptation in a nutshell: no need to expend much in the way of effort because the shonen audiences are going to flock to this one anyways due to the crossover appeal (and spend money on the manga volumes at that). I mean, you could tell just how little they cared when many episodes are prefaced with lengthy recaps of the previous episode like they have so little confidence in their audience.
tony
January 11, 2023 at 8:42 amthe show has an interesting concept ruined by the fact the protagonist is an idiot and if he wasnt so dumb like most of the plot points in the manga wouldnt happen. Also im tired of the crying in almost every episode and how almost every character admires him when he accomplishes nothing like Baji death is technically his fault since him and chifuyu never told Mikey about kisaki being the shadow leader. Just like he never told draken kiyomasa had a knife and was looking to stab him. He never does anything but cry and it really starting to annoy me i dont get why anime fans seem to constantly like pathetic male protagonists.
Guardian Enzo
January 11, 2023 at 9:26 amI don’t get the sense that Takemichi’s eponymous nickname “crybaby hero” is affectionate in most cases.