Tokyo 24th Ward First Impressions

“Shuta… You’re amazing. You really did come to save me. You really are a hero after all, Shuta.”

Learning that CloverWorks is producing a series introduces an odd series of emotions given their track record. Exactly one year ago, they were behind one of my favorite shows with Horimiya, they produced an artistic heap of confusion with Wonder Egg Priority, and they threw together one of my most arduous anime adaptations of the past decade with The Promised Neverland’s second season. It’s hard to foresee how a series will progress based solely on the first episode, but mercifully, Tokyo 24th Ward appears to lack the warning signs that were present in both The Promised Neverland and Wonder Egg Priority. There are some confusing aspects to 24th Ward’s premiere, but the core of the episode makes sense and is rooted in some fun sci-fi concepts. From an overview, there is a lot to like, though I remain unconvinced by some of the minute details. The biggest issue with Tokyo 24th Ward’s premiere is that it bends over backwards to make a ludicrous set-piece work out, and it’s hard not to envision more narratively satisfying ways of pulling it off.

The story centers on a trio of recent high school graduates living in an alternate history version of Tokyo, which includes a 24th ward located on a man-made island where they live. The trio of young men are both tied together and driven apart by a tragedy that occurred a year prior in what appears to have been some form of terrorist incident, which culminated in the death of the sister of one of the young men. The episode starts properly with a year having passed since the sister’s death, and the young men attend a memorial for the victims only to receive a mysterious phone call in the sister’s voice that warns them of a coming tragedy, and awakening abilities in each of them in order to prevent it. I avoided using the characters’ names here, because given this was a double length episode with a whole coterie of characters, trying to keep the names straight is just a pain when you don’t have the visuals or proper introductions. The biggest problem with this premiere is that the tragedy which our trio bands together to stop is the result of a cascade of chance screw-ups and weird happenstances. The core ideas surrounding the episode go down easy enough, but there is a moment where a character gets their leg stuck, and everything that follows is just head scratch inducing. It’s a shame, since the premiere did a solid enough job of introducing the characters and their outlooks, so to see the show fumble its storytelling and mess up in the final act of the episode is unfortunate.

The production is clean, but it isn’t CloverWorks performing at their very best. When comparing its visuals to the three titles I cited earlier from the beginning of last year, I’d say that it most resembles the visual quality of The Promised Neverland – Season 2. The character models are crisp and have some solid movement, but there is a modest amount of background CG that doesn’t look great. Where the studio does an impressive job is in its character designs. I’m not a huge fan of ridiculous hair colors in anime, but even taking into account the broad spectrum the show employs, it is remarkable that, even with a large and varied cast (Each of our three protagonists has their own inner circle of people who orbit them), there was never a moment where I struggled to recall exactly who someone was during the course of those 48 minutes. The OP brings some nice visual flair, but I found myself constantly distracted by the fact that the song sounded to me like the J-pop version of All-American Rejects. This is very much my own personal hang-up, and even then, it doesn’t change the fact that the opening is well-animated and edited.

Before I wrap up, a few Notes and Nitpicks:

• I don’t know how I feel about our main trio, Ran, Koki & Shuta, actually being nicknamed RGB in reference to their hair colors. They even named this first episode after it. It’s one thing for anime characters to have bizarre hair, but it always feels a bit illusion-shattering for them to reference it, unless it’s an instance of someone dying it.

• Each of the trio is given an ability in this episode with Shuta having enhanced strength and agility, Koki having the ability to influence others, and Ran… I’m not entirely sure what Ran was given. He’s the hacker in the group, but I’m not entirely clear as to whether his coding abilities were augmented or not.

• I started watching this without realizing it was a double-length premiere. I wasn’t able to watch it all in one sitting due to a meeting, so it was a good while before the thought started to cross my mind that, “This is a really long half-hour.”