Anime Spotlight #12: Time Travel Done Right

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. the Animeister

I generally schedule my posts to publish at midnight, and this is the twelfth issue of Anime Spotlight. So today's content is brought to you by the number twelve! If you've read my Anime Spotlight on Midnight Occult Civil Servants, you know that I have an interesting relationship with midnight, and that I enjoy anime about supernatural crime-solving. And last week, I covered an anime about an unconventional type of pop idol (Zombie Land Saga). This week, I'll cover two anime. Both are about time travel (this was the best I could do as an intro and segue regarding time without having access to my own time machine so I could take more time to write something better while also grappling with pressing academic deadlines), one is about supernatural crime-solving, and the other is about an unconventional type of pop idol.

We begin, as time travel so often does, with the latter. Vivy: Fluorite Eyes' Song takes the I, Robot-meets-X-Men: Days Of Future Past approach, as Japan (and presumably the rest of the world, but this is an anime, so only Japan matters) suffers a mass AI malfunction that causes almost every public service droid to go into a murderous rampage against the human race. I say "almost" because Vivy, a decomissioned idol bot codenamed "Diva," is selected (through various future acts of kindness and Butterfly Effects) by a shape-shifting cubic droid (think the cabinet-looking thing from Interstellar) from the future to be the savior of the human race. In each episode, expect gorgeous visuals, beautifully choreographed and animated fight scenes, often spectacular use of (granted, obvious) CGI, and profound writing, as Vivy must come to terms with her destiny as a warrior, solve the episodic mysteries of what caused the future massacre, and discover what it means for a machine to have a soul (she was originally a singer, after all, and what good is a singer who cannot compose or perform from the heart?).

The reveal of how the massacre came about is shocking and heartbreaking, even if you think you know what to expect, and the unique perspective of time travel as multiverse theory parsed through an AI's decision tree perfectly capture the implications of happy endings and dark futures with equal measure. I was disappointed with how some of the in-between time skips were handled, but this series is almost perfect in its execution.

Did you ever watch the Cell Saga of Dragon Ball Z and wonder why Chi-Chi was screaming at Goku for turning Gohan into a delinquent when they learned Super Saiyan Grade 4? Was that all otaku nonsense that I just wrote? Well, whether or not you know what I'm talking about, the whole delinquent thing comes from blonde or bleached hair being associated with street gangs in Japanese culture. Today's second selection, Tokyo Revengers, just so happens to prominently feature several Tokyo street gangs with blonde or bleach-accented hair. Our hero this time is Takemichi (mispronounced by his...friends?...as Takamiji, probably for clever, Japanese wordplay reasons that I don't have time to research right now), a twenty-something freeloader who seemingly gets pushed in front of an oncoming subway train and wakes up in middle school, when he had been going through a delinquent phase in an effort to gain his peers' respect. But before he seemingly died, Takemichi learned the exact date and time that his one-that-got-away, Hinata, and her would-be detective brother, Naoto, were killed, thanks to a convenient (but not too convenient) news broadcast. When he shares this information with a younger Naoto and shakes his hand, a new future is created in which Naoto survived, establishing a link for Takemichi to travel between points in time as long as he keeps Naoto alive. From the new adult Naoto, Takemichi learns that Naoto saved him from the train that killed him (sealing the time travel handshake mechanic, which is either a fast retcon, a hint that Naoto might have originally been the person who pushed him, or a time paradox, depending on how hard you're willing to think about it), and that Hinata still died at the hands of a group called the Tokyo Manji Gang. Armed with this information, Takemichi returns to the past once more, planning to work his way inside the gang and either destroy them or turn them into a non-violent force. But as with many trial and error time travel stories before it, circumstances become far more complicated than "stop gang, happy ending." What ensues from there is twist-filled suspense, subtle, threat-subverting comedy, touching adolescent romance, and brutal, bloody gang fights that range from one-on-one fistfights to chaotic battles royale. Tokyo Revengers doesn't look nearly as good as Vivy, nor does it wrap up its time travel mechanics as tightly, but it's just as worthwhile of a watch, earned a crossover event with the Grand Summoners mobile gacha (do not Google if you like having money), and is reported to be getting a second season in the near future.

I wish I could time travel back to my first crack at college so that I could have majored in English instead of Computer Science, not wasted my time in the University arcade or racked up student loan debt, waited for a bookkeeping promotion at my first workplace instead of getting fired from the in-store coffee kiosk for slapping the butcher in a fit of caffeinated, self-entitled rage, moved out of state to the middle of nowhere, and spent over ten years trying to fill the emptiness in my soul with even more debt that I racked up through mobile gacha games. But my wish hand is empty, my shit hand is full, and you can't run a non-existent time machine on either one, so let's just watch movies and anime until Antarctica looks like Hawaii and EDM has driven us all more insane than some of us are already.

I don't have a movie planned for this week, so stay tuned for a surprise (Ticket Stubs, maybe?), and next week's Anime Spotlight raises a glass for forever.

Animeister,

Time Out.