Tokyo Revengers #01 — Ugly Crying

April 10th, 2021

 

Not so much revenge here, or even the promise of any.

Impressions:

There's significant irony here in what, by the swelling triumphant background music, is meant to be the big moment of triumph. "I hate my life and want to change it, but I'm not going to do that, so you do it!" It's a good thing magic randomly kicked in because if he hadn't gotten warped back to the future, then… what? He had already accepted his lack of agency and was done trying? Sure seemed like it the way he earlier just went along with getting beat up and doing absolutely nothing differently. Maybe a few more silly faces of him ugly crying will change my mind. …Nope.

At best, we have to accept that it took him an entire day of sitting in the past, going through horrible memories, before it even occured to him that there might be an opportunity to change things, and even then, he did so by accident and then tried to foist off responsibilty onto someone else. It is another show in no hurry to engage with either its own premise or the story it supposedly wants to tell, but is very happy to draw all manner of very corny traumatized faces, full of snot, blood, and tears as he wails for his impotence. This is a potential to grow, damn it. To confront his past mistakes and at least try to overcome them. I know he eventually ugly cries at the right people, which is what they're calling him stepping up to the plate… at least if they follow the source. But it didn't happen this week, and between the two Saturday heroes reading headlines from the future and trying to stop them, the stoic robot somehow manages to be slightly more human, empathetic, and believable.

   

Posted in Tokyo Revengers | 2 Comments »

2 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Ark noir says:

    The ova video was a better hook and storyteller than ep1

  • The Phantom says:

    The whole thing about going to the past is that it will change everything, even the slightest thing will alter the course completely, they can not just selectively alter small things thats not how it works, basically everything here is contrived and poorly handled so far.