Time travel and Thick-skulled Protagonists
By Niharika Narayanan V
Tokyo Revengers pulled me out of a long, personal-anime-drought with the same aggressive determination that is exemplified by its lead character, Takemichi Hanagaki.
The story follows Takemichi, a 26-year-old part time worker at a grocery store. Takemichi is quite the stereotypical loser. He feels as if he’s wasted his whole life and not achieved anything of substance. He had peaked in middle school, when he was dating a girl for the first and only time in his life. He learns that this girl, Tachibana Hinata, had died in an incident involving a crime syndicate in Tokyo called the Tokyo Manji Gang. As he drags himself through his mundane, uninteresting life, he is shoved off of a railway platform. But instead of dying, he is transported back in time to middle school. He now has this new lease on life, an opportunity to save the only girl he’s ever loved.
Tokyo Revengers was adapted from the manga by Ken Wakui. The anime adaptation, directed by Koichi Hatsumi, was produced by Liden Films, the same production company that made the 2016 version of Berserk. Since I hadn’t watched any anime adaptation of Berserk, I didn’t have any strong thoughts about Liden Films. So I went into this quite blind. The animation might not have blown me away at any point, but it never pulled me out of the story. The soundtrack by Hiroaki Tsutsumi was pretty good as well. I especially loved the opening theme, ‘Cry Baby’ (by the pop band Official Hige Dandism) which in my humble opinion, is quite the bop. There were some choices in animating clothes in certain ways that seemed odd at first (what’s up with those baggy pants that all the characters in the past seem to wear?). But most of these choices seemed to be made quite intentionally and served to generate the atmosphere of the place and time the story was set in.
Time travel is one of those concepts that when dealt with poorly, can make it difficult to enjoy a piece of otherwise first-rate fiction. Thankfully in this case, time travel was not really central to the plot of Tokyo Revengers. In terms of world building, it was sufficient to show that Takemichi could travel to the past by shaking hands with Naoto (Hinata’s brother, more on him later) and that this action would transport the former to exactly the same day 10 years back in the past. Of course, with any piece of fiction involving time travel, there is always the potential for one to be distracted by the urge to dissect its time travel system. At every point of time, are there simultaneously two Takemichis? There are so many different time lines where things change as a result of something present Takemichi did in the past that changes present Takemichi. When Takemichi travels to the present, there are literally situations where he just opens his eyes and finds himself in the middle of doing his job in the grocery store. Who does his job when he’s out there in the past? All that wibbly-wobbly timey wimey stuff my poor sleep deprived head couldn’t make sense of. But the story was gripping enough for me to not dwell on the time travel as much. I didn’t catch any major time travel faux pas’.
As a character, Takemichi follows the trope of some protagonists in mainstream anime- sincere but devoid of ability, enthusiastic and passionate, but without the talent or intellect to channel that energy in a way so as to make the best use of it. He is thick-skulled figuratively in that his approach to solving a problem is to yell and charge straight at it, but also physically (as in how is this guy still alive?). He is one of those stubborn shounen protagonists that just seem indestructible and can’t be dissuaded no matter what. Naoto, Hinata’s brother and Takemichi’s comrade in this mission to save her serves as a calmer counterweight to him, ensuring there was some thought put into their strategy. But at the end of the day, Takemichi’s plans all lead up to trying to save his girlfriend through sheer force of will. From an emotional standpoint, I think the series succeeds in pushing the right buttons to elicit an emotional connection with Takemichi as the protagonist. I’m not a jaded enough anime viewer to not be inspired and moved by Takemichi’s grit and determination. Other characters from the Tokyo Manji Gang that we’re introduced to like Mikey and Drakken are really interesting and complex, they embody the kind of wonderful character construction and development that anime is often so good at executing. During the times when I was frustrated with Takemichi, they did a lot of the heavy lifting and made me stick with the show.
The plot can get a little repetitive. I think I could say this safely without verging on spoiler territory that it’s usually some combination of ‘This is how I’m going to stop her death,’ followed by some variation of a street fight where Takemichi is once again beat senseless (I wonder whether his personality trait is being able to take a hit?). Then he rejoices because he succeeds in executing his strategy, but that strategy doesn’t usually lead him to his actual goal- preventing Hinata’s death (and the deaths of some others I won’t mention). This pattern can get predictable, but it isn’t even the show’s most unforgivable crime- that would be the maddening cliff-hanger at the end of the season. So for those people who don’t have the upper-body strength to hold onto the cliff high up in ‘Tokyo Revenger’s’ hill, you have been warned.
I came out of this experience with my love for anime quite rejuvenated. I didn’t need Tokyo Revengers to be the best thing I’d ever watched, what it did for me was to just transport me momentarily, provide me with that tiny bit of warmth I needed to get through the day. Overall, if you’re looking for some comfort, something to hold you through your assignments and stress, I wouldn’t rule out Tokyo Revengers.
