Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

There are definitely times in Tokyo Revengers – like when Chifuyu asks if baka Takemitchy really has a 26 year-old brain inside him – where I wonder if Wakui Ken is taking the piss.  I’ve noted this before with TMR, and it’s kind of fascinating to wonder just how much self-awareness an author has about his characters – and thus, how we’re supposed to take what we read or see.  Maybe that’s one reason why (for me at least) Takemichi is never as annoying  as he should be on paper and in fact always maintains a sort of likability – he is what he is.  In a battle of wits against the likes of Kisaki he’s fighting with both hands tied behind his back, but he keeps coming back for more, and always tries to do the right thing.

I don’t know what Kisaki is up to here, of course.  But any time he and Hanma (another former head of Moebius, if you’re keeping score) is involved, even at this early date, treachery seems a given.  It all stems from Hakkai’s situation, of course.  Takashi’s game is not to keep Hakkai from joining Black Dragon, but to extract a promise from Taiju to “release” Yuzuha in exchange for Hakkai joining B.D..  Taiju ends up agreeing in what amounts to a truce, but Hakkai knows all too well that Taiju’s promises have the approximate value of used toilet paper.

The problem is that having negotiated a truce with Black Dragon, Takashi has effectively tied Takemitchy’s hands – and anyone else who’d care to move against Taiju (like Chifuyu).  They can’t do anything until Taiju is proven to have violated the pact (which he will, surely).  The question of what to do next for Takemitchy amounts to deciding whether to go back to the future.  In point of fact it wasn’t he who changed anything here, but Takashi, so if he goes back to an unchanged future he’s stuck there – in prison, unable to reach Naoto’s hand (as Chifuyu points out).  He also has no idea if what happened here will actually change Hakkai killing his brother or not.

Knowing all this Takemitchy decides to stick around and take down Black Dragon, and Chifuyu being almost as big a baka is all for it.  But again, his hands are tied – and nobody in the Toman leadership team is willing to break Takashi’s truce until Taiju does.  That is, until Kisaki comes and offers his services after the meeting.  Takemitchy and Chifuyu at least have the sense to be suspicious as hell, but they also don’t have a lot of options.  And Kisaki wanting to seize a chance to take down a powerful rival like Black Dragon might not be totally out of character for him (or Hanma, who follows in his wake).

I’m not ready to make any assumptions about that karaoke parlor meeting, which starts with Kisaki’s soon to be late informant inside Black Dragon and ends with BD’s Kokonoi agreeing to sell out Taiju himself for 100 grand (in Yen).  Maybe Kokonoi is looking for a chance to take over.  Maybe he’s in league with Kisaki and Hanma and the whole thing was a charade.  But it does confirm the title of the series, and establishes that Taiju is a Christian who goes to pray alone every Christmas.  If this is all on the level, does that mean they’re going to fight him in a church?