English Dub Review: Tokyo Revengers: “No Pain, No Gain”

Overview: Takemichi (AJ Beckles) meets Valhalla bigwig, Hanemiya Kazutora, who also has a history with Toman as well. Later he confronts Baji (Lucien Dodge) as the former Manji member makes his allegiance to Hanma (Zeno Robinson) and his group. 

Our Take: Other than Akkun, Hanagaki’s friends seem to have gone down the unfortunate path I feared that they would go down. Which is becoming nothing more than exposition mouth pieces only becoming relevant when the plot requires it. If that was just part of their character I could deal, but unfortunately the great rapport between the group that was present in the first episode seems to only appear in small bursts. The show just doesn’t seem interested in exploring any of them outside of Akkun. It’s not as if there needs to be in-depth character development for each one but at the very least some more screen time and/or focus for each would go a long way in making Takemichi’s friendship with them feel more genuine.

Eventually, Yamagishi’s analytic breakdown of Toman’s infrastructure (that somehow has knowledge that Takemichi wasn’t even aware of but why question it) leads to the introduction of a Toman founder and Valhalla’s third in command, Hanemiya Kazutora. One thing that Tokyo Revengers likes to do is give us eccentric division captains and/or founders no matter what gang they hail from. As far as over-the-top personalities go, Kazutora feels right at home. He’s reminiscent of Mikey in his calm and cool demeanor but less juvenile and a bit more vicious. These little subtleties are a good way to diversify him amongst the cast but also make him feel inherently unique.  

Eventually when Hanagaki makes his way to Valhalla base along with Kazutora, he finds quite the predicament in Baji beating the absolute tar out of Chifuyu Matsuno, the 1st division captain of Toman. This brings me to the important question that is likely on most minds along with mine: Who’s side is Baji really on? He is obviously putting on a very convincing performance to prove his allegiance to Hanma and Valhalla as a whole and disapprove of it for his “God” Mikey. But the part of this that smells really fishy is who he is knocking the daylights of specifically. Matsuno has barely been touched on up to this point and it would be a smart way to implement him to have him going along with their charade to prove their mole, Baji, and so called loyalty. Another reason for this theory is in Matsuno’s presence alone. Would Matsuno really be so easily overpowered and deceived? All the captains supposedly have capable combat ability and/or intelligence to some degree so it stands to reason he wouldn’t be so incapacitated so effortlessly, right? 

Unfortunately, this episode drags along a bit without a ton of major developments outside of Kazutora being a founding member of the Tokyo Manji Gang. A lot of teasing but not a hell of a lot of showing. Almost as if a dog bone is being dangled in front of us to lure us in the backyard so we can pee on the grass, which in this show’s case is the next episode with hopefully the sweet release of all the story revelations we’ve been waiting for.