Tokyo Revengers: A good series with an annoying protagonist

Tokyo Revengers is a good series, but Takemichi is one of the most annoying protagonists ever.

I know I’ve said before that I prefer using the AJnet Anime Club to talk about lesser known anime since everyone and their mother is already talking about the popular stuff.

While that still stands true, today I’m going to bend that rule just a little bit and talk about an anime that was fairly popular when it first came out but has since fallen out of fame.

Today, I’m going to talk about Tokyo Revengers.

I’d heard of Tokyo Revengers, Crunchyroll was constantly pushing the show onto me when it first dropped in April of 2021. I didn’t bother to look into it though, since I was busy watching other series like Attack on Titan and Way of the Househusband. But in the back of my mind I kept a mental note to one day possibly see what this series was about.

Last month I reviewed The Fable, a series about a hitman working for the yakuza. I mentioned that I’m a fan of yakuza-related stuff and I’m always looking for a yakuza-themed anime to scratch that itch. During my search for other anime related to the yakuza, somehow Tokyo Revengers got thrown into the mix as a suggestion, so I finally gave it a watch.

I’m glad I did.

While it’s not quite about the yakuza, Tokyo Revengers comes pretty close in its depiction of the teenage biker gangs (called “Bōsōzoku”) that once plagued Japan. These gangs of delinquent teens would cause all kinds of mayhem, and even do dirty work for the yakuza. Bōsōzoku culture is pretty much dead in modern day Japan, but from the 1950’s through the early 2000’s it was thriving. As such, most of the series takes place in 2005.

Tokyo Revengers is about a young man named Takemichi Hanagaki, a 26 year old loser who lives alone and works a dead end part-time job at a video store. One evening Takemichi is watching the news and learns that his ex-girlfriend from middle school, Hinata, along with her brother Naoto, have been killed by a gang called the Tokyo Manji Gang (called “Toman” for short). Takemichi laments that middle school was the best time in his life, and that Hinata was his only girlfriend.

On the way home from work the following day, Takemichi is shoved in front of an oncoming train. Instead of dying though, Takemichi wakes up back in 2005 in his middle school body while retaining his memories from 2017. After saving Naoto’s life by warning him of his future and subsequently realizing that he can travel back and forth through time 12 years by shaking Naoto’s hand, Takemichi vows to do whatever it takes to stop the Tokyo Manji Gang from killing Hinata. This in turn leads to him befriending the gang’s leaders, two delinquents named Mikey and Drakken, and ultimately joining the gang. Takemichi also learns that a guy named Tetta Kisaki is the main person responsible for Hinata’s death, and sets out to get him kicked out of Toman.

In a way, the plot is reminiscent of Steins;Gate, with the protagonist utilizing time travel in an attempt to save someone he cares about while fate itself appears to be resistant to that change. But unlike Steins;Gate, sci-fi isn’t the prevalent theme of Tokyo Revengers. Sure, it’s used as a plot device, and even plays an important part in the story, but that’s about as sci-fi as this series gets. No technobabble or distorted laws of physics to justify the power, just some simple rules on how it works and what Takemichi can do with it.

The central plot point is Takemichi’s struggle to create a future where Hinata doesn’t die. To do this, Takemichi works with Naoto in 2017, who has become a police detective working the gang beat. Naoto tells Takemichi of various important events in Toman’s history that lead to Kisaki taking control of the gang, and ultimately killing Hinata. Using this knowledge, Takemichi goes back to 2005 and tries to prevent the events from happening. While he usually succeeds, each time he returns to 2017 Takemichi learns that yet another event has occurred, and Hinata still dies. While Kisaki may appear to be the main antagonist of the series, it seems like fate itself is Takemichi’s biggest enemy.

This is a great series with a great story, but it has one major problem. That problem is the main character himself, Takemichi.

Takemichi is quite possibly one of the most whiny and annoying anime protagonists I’ve ever seen. Throughout Tokyo Revengers, Takemichi does nothing but get his ass kicked and try to use talk no jutsu. I wasn’t expecting him to turn into some Goku-level fighter or something, but I was certainly expecting him to do a little more than consistently get his face battered by literally fucking everyone. Even Hinata beats his ass once or twice.

I get it, the point is that Takemichi keeps fighting even after getting the shit knocked out of him over and over, and his resilience is what’s supposed to make him a good protagonist. This would be okay, except he still continues to whine and cry whenever things don’t go his way. He never learns to actually analyze a situation, he never tries to become a better fighter, he just keeps throwing himself blindly at stronger opponents while trying to talk sense into them as they beat him to a pulp. People give Midoria from My Hero Academia shit, but at least he grows smarter and stronger over the course of the series (the One for All past quirk shenanigans not withstanding). Takemichi remains virtually the same throughout Tokyo Revengers.

And, for God’s sake, where the hell are this kid’s parents?! How is Takemichi coming home every single day with his face and body busted up and his parents don’t ask any questions? If a young AJ ever came home beaten to shit wearing a gang uniform there would have been questions, ass-whoopings, and groundings. Aren’t Asian parents supposed to be super-strict? This seemingly minor plot hole irks the hell out of me.

Annoying protagonist and minor plot hole aside, Tokyo Revengers is actually a pretty good series with a solid story, decent characters, and well-done fights. It’s a story about gangs and friendship with a very small dash of sci-fi sprinkled on top, you really can’t go wrong here. The series is available on Crunchyroll, but in this case I’d definitely recommend pirating it from Nyaa, since its use of the Buddhist swastika (the manji) has led to multiple scenes being censored and cut.

Tokyo Revengers gets an 8/10 from me. This is an all-around entertaining anime that I think most people would enjoy.

Angry_Jerk

Adam “The Angry Jerk” Baker is the CEO of The AJnet Organization and Editor-in-Chief of AJnet Magazine. A grizzled internet veteran of over 20 years, he writes about politics, culture, and whatever else manages to annoy him that day.

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