Tokyo Revengers – 09 – Let’s Do This Shit!

The tender sweetness of the summer festival gives way to the vicious smashing of fists and feet into faces this week, as Tokyo Revengers hosts its first all-out, full-on brawl between Toman and the remnants of Moebius.

Takemichi tries to get to Draken before Peh-yan or Kiyomasa can kill him, but Peh-yan finds Draken first. After telling Emma to keep her distance (thakfully nothing happens to her here), Draken is ambushed by the tried-and-true cowardly tactic of sneaking up from behind with a baseball bat.

But by the time Takemichi and Mitsuya find a bloodied Draken, he’s not only still conscious and standing, but has already amassed a pile of fallen Moebius wannabe badasses.

Peh-yan has somehow managed to muster a full one hundred members of Moebius against just Draken, Mitsuya, and Takemichi, but the distinctive exhaust sound of Mikey’s motorcycle heralds the coming of the cavalry. That’s when we meet Moebius’ new “temporary” commander, Hanma Shuuji.

Not only does Hanma come out of nowhere—Naoto never mentioned him to Takemichi in the present—he’s also able to successfully block Mikey’s kick, which is a dead giveaway that he’s not someone to be trifled with.

Fortunately, the 100-on-4 battle becomes much fairer when all the various divisions of Toman arrive en masse to back Mikey up. From there, things go full Gangs of New York, only in Tokyo, with a bunch of 13-to-15-year-olds.

Takemichi gingerly navigates the chaos of punches and kicks, trying to keep track of Draken and looking out for Kiyomasa, who stated his intention to murder Draken. He’s unsuccessful on both counts. By the time he spots Kiyomasa, the guy’s knife is already stained with blood.

By the time he finds Draken, he’s lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood. If Draken does indeed die, it will make Takemichi’s life—and his mission to save Hina and Akkun—much more difficult. I’m just surprised that expected big bad Kisaki Tetta still has yet to reveal himself.

Tokyo Revengers – 08 – The Ecstacy and the Agony

It’s neither Takemitchy’s rage nor passion nor pathetic attempts to score a blow that shake Mikey and Draken out of their latest spat. Nope, it’s a big ol’ turd, which ends up nested in Takemichi’s hair when he goes flying into a pile of garbage. Mikey and Draken run off laughing, scared of the shit coming to get them, and his four friends follow suit. It’s a rare reminder that despite their pretensions otherwise, these are still a bunch of stupid kids.

Takemichi’s antics may have helped Mikey and Draken forget what they were fighting about, but since he’s the only real adult among them, Takemichi realizes what the problem was: Mikey wanted to free his friend Pah, while Draken wanted to respect Pah’s wishes to turn himself in; neither felt they could budge from their positions. Thank goodness for poop!

After washing his hair, Takemichi joins the made-up pair and his four friends. Hina shows up with Emma, who has come to ensure Hina properly asks Takemichi out to the summer festival on August 3rd. As Emma predicted, of course Takemichi says yes—Hina is his girlfriend after all—while she is bowled over that Draken and Mikey are on good terms again.

Takemichi, meanwhile, seeing everything coming up aces, celebrates having changed history by stopping the Mikey/Draken feud before it got too bad. Now Draken won’t be killed and Akkun and Hina will be saved, right? Before returning to the present where he’ll surely face a rude awakening, he decides to reward himself by going on a double date with Hina, Draken and Emma.

It’s really good to see the old Hina again, and to also learn that she and Emma have become friends owing to Emma being a genuinely pure and lovely person. Hina’s forgiven her friend for “going off the deep end” due to her intense love of Draken, and while she hasn’t quite yet forgiven Takemichi, she gives him a relatively easy out: shoot the special prize.

While the game is rigged, the fact Takemichi puts in such a serious effort is more than enough for Hina, which is why when it starts to pour and they get separated from the other couple, Hina not only forgives him, but wants him to hold her and is ready for him to kiss her. Alas, Takemichi is interrupted by a phone call from Yamagishi, saying Mikey’s rank-and-file aren’t satisfied with their reconciliation and are still going after Draken.

Cursing himself for letting young love drop his guard so completely, Takemichi runs into the rain in search of Draken, since this is August 3rd, the day he’s supposed to be murdered. What seems to have changed is who exactly will do it. Kiyomasa has joined forces with Moebius with the intent to kill Draken as revenge for shutting down his fight club.

Takemichi does an awful job staying hidden, and when Kiyomasa and the others start beating on him, he realizes that despite befriending Mikey and Draken, without them around he’s just as weak and pathetic as he’s always been. They tape him up and leave him in the dirt and cold rain, but fortunately Hina finds him well after the thugs have departed (had they used him as bait to ambush her, I might well have been done with this show).

Instead, Hina removes the tape from Takemichi’s mouth, and he laments that the best he could do wasn’t good enough, and he hasn’t been able to save anyone, and is nothing but a complete and utter failure. Hina responds by giving Takemichi her first kiss. She gives it to him because he’s special to her, and because it’s because he breaks down and cries for the sake of others that no one is cooler than him in her eyes.

It’s just the motivation Takemichi needs to buck up and get back to his mission, because she reminded him that no matter how pathetic he looks, failure is not an option. So he heads back out and runs into Mikey’s driver Mitsuya, who tells Takemichi that everyone agreed to put the Pah-chin thing behind them…except for Peh-yan, on whom the episode ends as he’s about to pull a knife on Draken…with Emma right beside him.

It’s a good thing Takemichi didn’t head back to the present thinking he’d fixed everything. He can’t rest on his poopy laurels—there’s a lot more to be done before victory can be declared.

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.

Tokyo Revengers – 06 –Part of His Plan

Takemichi is still watching Draken from the shadows as Mikey is chauffeured away from the hospital. I kept waiting for Draken to tell him to come out because he’s doing a shitty job masking his presence. Instead, we get Draken’s backstory.

His mom was a prostitute and he was raised and lived in a brothel. He got his head tattooed when he was in fifth grade, prompting the artist to predict he’ll be “one rotten adult”, the irony being he never comes close to even reaching 18.

But back then Draken still got his ass beat by middle schoolers, who made him escort Mikey over so they can teach him a lesson. Draken is bemused by this tiny weird kid, but when Mikey is the one teaching his tormentors a lesson, he suddenly gets it, while Mikey can tell Draken is friend material.

Surprisingly, Takemichi is back in the present with Naoto, tracking down the former leader of Moebius, Osenai, who is now even more of a pathetic loser than Takemichi had become. He’s still haunted by the August 3rd battle between Moebius and Toman that led to Draken’s death, but makes it clear the battle was part of a larger plan by someone to create a rift within Toman.

Why neither Naoto nor Takemichi mention Kisaki Tetta’s name, considering he’s the prime candidate for the identity of the puppetmaster, I have no idea. But Takemichi zaps back to his past self, who thankfully isn’t under a girl this time. Instead, he’s on the back of Akkun’s bike.

Takemichi can’t contain his joy upon seeing his friend alive again, and wastes no time getting all sentimental. While not as perceptive as Hina that this is a “different” Takemichi, when asked what his dream is, a blushing Akkun earnestly tells him he wants to be a hairdresser. Takemichi tells him to make that dream come true, and he’ll have his back all the way.

His heart-to-heart with Akkun once again impressed the urgency of Takemichi’s mission. He must save Hina, Draken, and Akkun, and he’s pretty sure that can’t happen if Toman fights Moebius. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a plan any better than barging in on a secret meeting of the Toman brass and demanding they call off the fight.

Mikey pulls rank here, saying he’s already made up his mind. When Takemichi endures a beating from Pah-chin and still stands his ground, Draken suggests they look into Moebius, but Mikey sees this as Draken going against Toman (i.e., him).

For all of Takemichi’s talk of it being unthinkable that these two would fight, it happens right here before his eyes: a tiny crack that could quickly turn into a yawning chasm of pent-up bad vibes that are inevitable in any power structure—particularly one run by literal frikkin’ adolescents.

If that isn’t enough, Prime Osanai arrives, resplendent in his embroidered red shirt and matching pants. He heard Toman was looking for a fight, and so he brought it to them, bringing dozens of his soldiers and setting up a seemingly hopeless mismatch…until you remember that Mikey and Draken have superhuman strength and Takemichi is virtually indestructible.

Tokyo Revengers – 05 – Babes and Bikes

When Takemichi, whom I maintain looks way too babyfaced for a dead-end adult, is unceremoniously fired, he returns to Naoto, because it’s not like he has anything else going on in this life. He asks if he could just ask tell Past Hina everything, but Naoto says he only believed him because he was into the occult at the time. He worries Hina might think Takemichi is insane and stop liking him. I was internally yelling at Naoto “So?”

Wouldn’t it be worth a shot for Takemichi to break things off with Hina in the past, thus severing her connection to the gangs altogether? Then again, perhaps too much happened in the time between Takemichi and Hina breaking up for that to work. In any case, Naoto has found articles about a scuffle at the Mushashi shrine on August 3rd (two weeks from now) of 12 years ago between the Mikey and Draken crews of the Toman Gang, resulting in Draken’s death.

Takemichi can’t believe how the articles say it was a fight between two people he observed to be closer than brothers, but regardless of if and how things got that way, his new mission is to save Draken from dying. If he does that, he may be able to save Hina and Akkun. He and Naoto shake hands, and he finds himself in a very compromising position with a beautiful blonde in nothing but her underwear in a karaoke booth.

Completely disoriented and freaked out, Takemichi runs…almost directly into Hina, who’d just been walking home from cram school. Hina’s sharp enough to know when Takemichi is being a “kid” and when he’s being an “adult”. Lately he’d been a kid, and cold and distant towards her. Now, however, he’s considerably kinder. Then Draken calls, and Hina insists on tagging along.

Takemichi’s in no position to argue: since time moves at the same rate in past and present, Past Takemichi has been inadvertently complicating his future self’s mission by being a youthful, impulsive little shit. Takemichi and Hina arrive at the Musashi Shrine and are ambushed by bikers, but it turns out to be a big meeting of all the Toman divisions.

Draken greets Hina warmly and the two exchange apologies, then Draken asks his girlfriend Emma to take care of Hina while they talk. Emma, as it turns out, is the lovely young lady ready to go all the way (sans kissing) with Takemichi at Karaoke. Takemichi has no coherent defense (though he’s not lying when he says he doesn’t remember how he ended up that way).

Hina dispenses swift punishment, beating bloody the same kid she was so worried about always getting into scraps. Aside from still being around when the Toman meeting is over, that’s all we get of Hina, which was a bit frustrating, since so much between her and Takemichi is left up in the air.

As for Emma, she tells Takemichi she’s not actually into him, she just wanted to “grow up faster”, sleeping with him in hopes of making Draken, whom she is into, jealous, and lamenting that all he cares about is “Mikey, bikes, and fighting.”

As for the big Toman meeting, Takemichi is impressed by Mikey’s ability to command and inspire his troops. When the third division’s captain and vice-captain—Pah and Peh—come to him with a problem, they have Mikey’s full attention. A friend of Pah’s got into it with Osanai, leader of the Moebius gang, over “something stupid”. The friend got the shit beat out of him, and the friend’s girlfriend was raped and beaten.

Moebius may be two generations older than Toman and may control Shinjuku, but when Pah says he demands satisfaction nonetheless, Mikey asks if anyone objects, and no one does, which means there’s going to be a battle between Toman and Moebius, and it’s going to take place…on August 3.

That’s news to Takemichi, since the news articles Naoto had said the fight was between Mikey and Draken’s crews. Did the reporter just mix up the names and groups involved, or did the particulars of the conflict change because Takemichi went back in time again?

He doesn’t know either, but one thing he does know is that he has to save Draken. But when he approaches him the next day volunteering to be his bodyguard, Draken curtly declines. Takemichi doesn’t give up right there, however, and decides to follow Draken as he goes about his day.

Unsurprisingly, most of that day is filled with Mikey, whom Takemichi gets to see in a wildly different light than when he’s commanding his crew. For one thing, he’s upset his Kids Meal doesn’t come with a flag, but Draken happens to have one, and Mikey’s spirits are immediately raised.

Draken and Mikey’s day shifts from comedy to drama when Draken takes Mikey to the hospital, where Pah’s friend’s girlfriend has been lying in the ICU with a coma for the last few days. Her parents confront them and her dad levels all manner of curses at them. Mikey is upset because he didn’t do anything, but Draken bows deeply in apology and makes Mikey do the same.

He impresses upon Mikey the need to minimize collateral harm to innocent people, including the friends and family of his crew. Mikey may have nothing to lose, but that doesn’t go for everyone he commands. Draken tells Mikey to always “have a heart that cares for others” while conducting Toman business.

That exchange clinches it for Takemichi: Draken isn’t just Mikey’s muscle,  piggyback ride, or consigliere. He’s all of those things too, but most importantly, he’s Mikey’s heart; his conscience. Which explains why Mikey turns bad when Draken dies. Conspicuous in his absence throughout this episode was Kisaki Tetta, who filled the void left by Draken, a relationship eventually leading to Hina’s death and Akkun’s suicide. It feels like Kisaki is a wild card in the scheduled August 3 battle with Moebius.

Space Dandy – 10

Sket Dance was a typically very goofy, loopy show where anything goes that also happened to be really good at serious episodes when it felt like doing them. Space Dandy has been the same way; whether it’s the elderly ramen alien, Adelie, it’s those deeply emotional episodes with a message—even if the message isn’t all that complicated or original—we’ve enjoyed the most.

This week Space Dandy aims to transform its lazy, dirty doofus that is Meow into a more well-rounded, sympathetic, real character by having the Aloha Oe touch down on his home planet of Betelgeuse for repairs. His small, unexceptional hometown that has seen better days, his chaotic but relatively warm family, and a snapshot of the life he left to explore space, all of it is efficiently rendered within a day.

Then that day becomes another day, and another after that, all exactly the same, and suddenly we’re in a Space Dandy version of Groundhog Day, one of our favorite films. Obviously, that makes us a bit biased towards this story, but we love time loops in general, from TNG’s “Cause and Effect”, all the way to “Endless Eight” and Natsuiro Kiseki’s finale. Like Groundhog Day, once Meow realizes tomorow isn’t coming, he makes use of the loops to improve himself and explore the life he left behind.

When he learns his high school crush is a lesbian, he scours the internet for a fix, and it turns out the calendar itself the camera always fixes on in the beginning of each loop is the key; the source of the Moebius loop created by the energy discharge of an imploded superweapon Dr. Gel insisted wasn’t ready yet but Perry deployed anyway. The resolution is beautiful, requiring the precision metalworking skills of Meow’s blue-collar dad to free the stuck page from the calendar.

We had been thinking it would have involved machining the part needed for the Aloha Oe, that “piece of a certain appliance” that Meow won an award in school for constructing. The last comment about the lives Meow, Dandy, and QT are returning to are usually pretty monotonous, but as QT said, there’s a huge difference between “pretty much” the same day and the exact same day over and over.

There were a ton of details in the episode we loved: the diverse range of siblings Meow had and all their little quirks; the dad’s unashamed love of boobies and routine of going to the bar after work for a couple; the Countach poster on Meow’s wall; the sheer ridiculousness of Dandy picking a fight with an inanimate wall calendar and losing. But most of all, we liked how it took Meow and really elevated him to a new level. It makes us hope origin stories for QT and Dandy are down the road.

Rating: 9 (Superior)