Tokyo Revengers – 07 – The True Puzzle

It often feels like Takemichi is butting up against the breakers, with just as much success as any of us would have against the ceaseless power of the sea. Tempers are hot, Moebius has arrived in force (no less than fifty in number), and a fight resulting in Draken’s death seems as inevitable as the tides.

Takemichi makes the first mistake of starring too long at Osanai, but he cant be blamed; after all, how the hell did this brute end up so defeated and pathetic in the future? Osanai seems to sense this brat is looking down on him and starts to rain blows upon him, but Takemichi is saved by Pah, not because Pah likes him, but because Osanai is his opponent.

Unfortunately, the already battered Pah is no match for Osanai’s boxing skills, and is soon barely conscious on his feet. Mikey insists the fight go on, even as Takemichi calls it nothing but cruel torture. However, once Pah slumps onto Mikey’s shoulder, essentially tagging him in, we witness just how much of a damn Osanai’s fancy suits and staggering numbers matter against Mikey-kun.

Specifically, none whatsoever. With one precise and devastating kick to the side of Osanai’s head, he’s down. When he gets back up to rush Mikey with a broken bottle, Draken stops him and puts him in a lock—without getting stabbed by said bottle, as Takemichi feared. With Moebius’ commander soundly defeated, Mikey declares that they’re all part of Toman now.

Then police sirens ring out, and as everyone starts to scatter, Pah plunges a pocketknife into Osanai’s midsection. Pah then decides to stay behind and turn himself in, while Draken drags Mikey away. As Takemichi flees with them, he suddenly loses consciousness, demonstrating he’s not so indestructable after all.

Takemichi wakes up in a hospital bed, and upon stretching accidentally gropes Emma, who Draken called to retrieve him and waited by his bedside. Emma reports that Draken and Mikey got in a fight over leaving Pah behind, and its looking bad. She slumps over and cries into Takemichi’s lap just as Hina arrives and pulls back the curtain, seeing something that’s not at all what it looks like.

If I have a gripe about this episode, it’s that this is all we get of Hina, with the implication she hits him again in response to seeing him with Emma, despite him being laid up in the hospital. I really wish they’d get back to the Emma of previous episodes who wasn’t being portrayed as a jealous, violent shrew. Why harp on a love triangle that isn’t really a thing when Emma still likes Draken?

Instead, Takemichi ends up at home convalescing while the situation between Toman’s top two deteriorates. Akkun and his other friends visit him, but after giving him a scare, assure him that those two fight all the time and it will resolve itself in time. But when Draken shows up with a watermelon to see how Takemichy is doing, he seems done with Mikey, and thinks Toman just might be done for.

When Takemichi brings up Mikey, Draken destroys a 2,500-piece puzzle he’d spent three days working on without sleep. Then Mikey shows up to see Takemichy just when Draken is leaving, and the two end up in a scrap that leads to all of Takemichi’s cherished possessions being destroyed one by one.

Even then, the two are still not done sizing each other up and getting ready for a real brawl, but seeing all of the irreplaceable treasures of his formative years seems to light a fire within (and visually, behind) Takemichi.

His eyes glow white with fury as he orders Draken and Mikey to “CUT THE SHIT!” Maybe, just maybe, with him conscious, fired up, and standing between them, he can stop them from doing something that can’t be undone. After all, he considers them both friends.

86 – 07 – Nobody Comes Back

86’s structure returns to more of a mix of the processors’ and Lena’s perspectives rather than being split evenly, starting with the unit launching fireworks on the anniversary of the Republic’s Great Revolution. Some are playing with sparklers, Anju is finally crying, and Kurena watches Shin off by himself talking to Lena.

Lena is the one who sent them the “special ammunition”, emptying her wallet to bribe the quartermaster. It’s a small gesture, but she can do it, so she does, and it also highlights her increasing disillusionment with the shallow material world she lives in. If it can soothe the hearts of those soldiers for just a few moments, it’s worth all the money she has.

The superb juxtaposition of the fantasy world she inhabits with the realities of how it’s maintained continues as Lena walks alone in a bustling plaza. Celebrating Alba citizens are stuffing their faces with fine food and wine and couples are whispering sweet nothings, and little kids are crying about something as little as tripping and falling (something Lena herself does in front of subordinates earlier, so nervous she was about the fireworks).

All the while, Lena is on her Para-RAID, listening to Kuren describe in unsparing detail all of the horrors processor see every day.  Compared to watching their friends lose limbs, get their faces shredded, their bodies burned, their guts ripped open, and screaming in pain as they die, the voices of the long dead are nothing.

Because Lena is a kind and virtuous person, she never stops requesting reinforcements from the surrounding units, even “overstepping herself” in the eyes of her Uncle Jerome to complain directly to him about the lack of progress in her request. He assures her “the resupply and Processor replacement plans for the Eastern Theater are a settled matter.”

She takes that to mean resupply reinforcements are on their way to Spearhead, and Jerome pointedly doesn’t dispel that misconception. Despite what she takes as good news, she obeys the letter of her uncle’s order to attend the Revolution gala in an “appropriate dress”—which for Lena, can only be mourning black.

When the time she usually contacts Shin passes, he ends up calling her, which may just be a first, and she’s clearly thankful to be called away from the boring festivities. She heads out into the courtyard to watch the city’s fireworks display, marred by light pollution, almost letting slip that she wishes she could watch the fireworks she sent with Shin, modifying her hope that all of them can watch them together when the war is over.

Lena knows Shin once watched fireworks with his brother, and Shin is happy Lena remembered her brother when he was still his brother, something he can’t do anymore. Shin also reports Anju was finally able to cry, making the fireworks a unique opportunity for 86 to have a memorial gun salute. When asked if she’ll remember them all, Lena says she will, but before that, she won’t let anyone else die.

Rewinding a bit to the morning Shin received the delivery of fireworks, Anju and Kurena, the last two girls left in Spearhead, discuss whether they should “tell” Lena a secret they still carry, now that it’s clear she’s a good person. Anju warns that Shin and Raiden probably aren’t telling her because she’s a good person they don’t want to hurt more than they need to.

We also learn Anju has words scarred into her back, and while she grew her hair out to hide them, Daiya thought she did it because her hair was so pretty. Now that it’s just her and Kurena, and Daiya is gone, she sees no reason to hide it anymore. As for Kurena, she knows when they die “their Reaper” Shin will make sure they’re properly sent off. What she fears most is when he’s the only one of them left…who will carry his heart?

Two days after the fireworks and Lena’s vow not to let anyone else to die, Spearhead attacks the forward base knowing full well it’s a trap, and are then assaulted by a new ultra-long range Legion artillery cannon. Within seconds, four more soldiers are killed. Hopefully they died instantly, because Shin obeys Lena’s retreat order, knowing if they stay they could be wiped out entirely.

When they manage to shake off their Legion pursuers, Lena launches into a diatribe about reinforcements and how it simply “doesn’t make sense” that a unit as important as Spearhead hasn’t received any in all the time she’s been their Handler. That’s when Shin asks the others if it’s okay to “tell her”, and they all agree. She’s earned enough trust to learn yet another horrible truth.

Shin, Raiden, Theo, Anju, and Kurena all take turns telling Lena that nothing she does will change a single thing, ever. They’re going to get wiped out, because they’re supposed to get wiped out. The “replacements” Jerome told her about are the Processors that come after them, but they won’t come until every last one of them is dead. Nobody ever leaves the 86th District. The five-years thing is a lie…of course it is.

The higher-ups are able to determine which Eighty-Six are smart by how long they survive, and place them in increasingly dangerous positions until finally they arrive at the Spearhead. They’re not in an elite squad because they’re the best at fighting the Legion. They’re there to be killed off so no strong strategic or tactical Eighty-Six minds will ever be able to lead a rebellion against the Alba.

Now that she knows replacements won’t come until all of them are dead, Lena doesn’t want to believe it, but she believes them anyway. When she asks why they don’t simply run, or let the Legion through, it’s for many reasons. First, to honor those lost before them. Second: just as not all 86 are good, not all Alba are scum.

An Alba woman raised Raiden. Shin was raised by an Alba priest who refused to give up his land and was sent to the camps. Theo’s captain was an Alba. They knew some of the good Alba, while Kurena and Anju knew the very worst. They mention how Kaie was abused by other 86 for her skin color, while many of them have Alba blood.

Raiden says just because some of the Alba are scum who treat them like scum, doing the same doesn’t make them better. Even if they have no choice but to face the gallows, they can at least choose how they’ll climb up there. So they’ll keep surviving as long as they can. With increasingly advanced Legion—controlled by Shin’s brother’s brain—slowly advancing, that may not be long at all.

Now that Lena knows all of these things, simple gestures of kindness or little acts of resistance against her apathetic, hedonistic society probably won’t suffice anymore. All her hopes were riding on reinforcements that she now knows aren’t coming. And if Shin and the others are right, slaughtering their best frontline shoulders will eventually lead to the Legion invading the Alba districts.

So really, Lena can see the gallows in the distance as well. The difference is, she may still be do something other than merely decide how to climb up to them. With the help from what’s left of Spearhead, there’s a slight chance she can change all their fates.