Spoilers for Tokyo Revengers season one
Tokyo Revengers doesn’t look like an anime series that’ll break your heart. The story centers on a group of delinquents and features fights that make you question whether or not some of these kids really are in middle school. The fighting, however, is just part of the series. I dare say it’s a giant smokescreen to hide the fact that a lot of these kids are dealing with some devastating emotional scars.
Mikey needs a therapist. Please, I beg.
The series is no longer about traveling back in time to save the main character’s childhood sweetheart. I mean. It is. But really, our main character just … has to save everybody—himself included, as he faces the life he ran away from 12 years ago. Takemichi has an impossible task in front of him that just gets worst and worst as the episodes progress. Just when you think he’s got it figured out, something else happens that forces him to relook at everything and try again.
Assuming there even is an again.
That being said, Tokyo Revengers does have its fair share of heartwarming moments and hilarious antics because, well, these are a bunch of teenage boys we’re dealing with and the leader of the big bad gang gets excited over a parfait. Don’t leave yours unintended. He will eat it.
Outside of the series, however, is an alternate version of it that’s been airing over on the official Japanese YouTube channel and it’s exactly what you need to watch after the whirlwind of a first season we’ve had.
Chibi Revengers shows us a much more lighthearted version of the story that still works within the overall plot. Everyone is drawn in a chibi animation style with all of the voice actors reprising their roles as the characters. While it isn’t translated, there are a lot of fans on YouTube doing the lord’s work and translating the episodes with English subtitles.
After watching a couple of the shorts (they’re about two minutes apiece) I found myself wishing that we could’ve gotten these on Crunchyroll the way we did with Jujutsu Kaisen (the Juju Stroll that would air after the credits). Much like Juju Stroll, Chibi Revengers is a nice little breath of fresh after you just spent 20 some minutes feeling your heart slam to a complete stop because someone died, or might die, or died a second time, and … oh my god I just wanna watch these boys solve their problems with rock paper scissors and not an all-out war, okay?!
Chibi Revengers works in a couple of different ways. Sometimes, episodes are different takes on events that have happened in the series (ie: why get ready for “Bloody Halloween” when you can get ready for regular ol’ Halloween and imagine what costumes the boys would wear).
Other times, it’s a chance to see a scene that we didn’t get to see (ie: Chifuyu talking to Mikey about wanting to leave Toman). Sometimes, we get more details about character relationships (sorry y’all, there’s a Baji and Chifuyu episode), and sometimes we learn random facts like … Pah has a dog. Peh doesn’t like the dog. The dog doesn’t like Peh all that much, either, but the dog does like Draken.
The end.
Give Chibi Revengers a shot, if for nothing else, for Mikey’s sweet tooth being on full display.
(Image: Ken Wakui, KODANSHA/TOKYO REVENGERS Anime Production Committee)
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