English Dub Season Review: Tokyo Revengers Tenjiku Arc

Tokyo Revengers returns to finally dubbing its third season, with this batch covering its longest section: the Tenjiku Arc. If you’ve been following the anime thus far, you’re probably familiar with the patterns by now. Takemichi Hanagaki, given the ability to travel back and forth in time his high school days to save his first love Hina from a predestined death, joins the Tokyo Majin (“Toman”) Gang, whose growing power and influence in Japan is always inextricably linked to Hina’s death. With the help of Hina’s brother Naoto, Takemichi works to prevent certain events to hopefully change the future for the better, but time after time finds himself in a worse timeline than when he started. This time, he finds that Mikey, leader of the gang, has gone of the deep end and killed off every major member of Toman, and so must go back in time again to undo whatever makes thing go so wrong. Despite efforts in the previous arc to defeat the LAST previously unmentioned street gang with a single color jacket and connections to one of the Toman members, he learns that he must help Toman defeat ANOTHER previously unmentioned street gang with a single color jacket and connections to one of the Toman members. In this case, the Tenjiku gang, run by Mikey’s previously unknown half-brother Izuna.

As mentioned, the Tenjiku arc is the longest in the manga, capping at sixty four chapters (though a few were adapted into the end of last season). For whatever reason, they decided to cram all of this into thirteen episodes, meaning just about four to five chapters covered per episode. As you can imagine with that many chapters, a LOT of stuff happens in this arc. Toman faces its deadliest opponents yet in Tenjiku, with some being former friends, others vicious punks, and Izuna being driven by a near psychopathic urge to kill Mikey personally, as well as the reappearance of Kisaki, who has been at the center of everything wrong with the timelines Takemichi keeps jumping back into. Everything about that and more tries to get enough of the spotlight to feel important AND…it kinda just ends up making the story feel really congested. The most important stuff gets sufficient time, but the inclusion of so many bit characters trying to have mini character arcs simply reminds us of how bloated the cast has gotten, as well as how much of this kind of story has been done before in previous arcs. This is not helped by the fact that, after each arc has resolved, Takemichi has this big emotional closure speech about how everything is going to be alright this time and he can finally live in his present day…but then it only ends up worse and has to go back to the past again to REALLY fix things THIS time. After enough times, the “sorry Mario, your good timeline is in another castle” bit just makes everything else lose weight.

The fourth season has been announced some time ago, and the manga has just about enough for one or two more if they split it up like they did for the second and third, so at the very least we know that more of this story is coming for those who want it. Kisaki, the most recurring antagonistic force in the show, does have a conclusion here and it’s basically a total letdown, but he’s gone so we’re definitely in a new frontier with the remaining arcs. However, is it enough to make up for repeating more of the same bits again? Or that the increasingly bad timelines make it hard to feel hopeful for these characters? Or how stiff and janky the animation has become in this season? There’s certainly merit in this story and it for sure has its fans who will watch it to the last episode no matter what, but binging through all fifty episodes has only helped to highlight the show’s flaws more than anything else. Maybe that will feel different when we get to the Bonten arc, but for now, I’m just going to think about how if I could time travel, I’d stop myself from having to watch all of this.