Anime Review: Tokyo Majin Part Two: Martial Fist Chapter
Magami Academy in Tokyo looks like an ordinary high school at first. But it’s actually a nexus of mystical forces that draws unusual people from all over. Most of these people are under the Stars of Destiny, a group of 108 people destined to play an important role in the strange events to come. When transfer student Tatsuma Hiyuu arrives, it’s just in time for an outbreak of the living dead. He’ll have to find reliable allies quickly, because that’s just the start of the troubles!
Tokyo Majin (full title “Tokyo Majin Gakuen Kenpucho: To”) is based on the visual novel video game of the same title. A core group of five quickly assembles. Strawberry-loving martial artist Tatsuma and wooden sword-wielding junior bodyguard Kyouichi Houraiji are both orphans with tragic backstories and tend to hog story focus. They are joined by naginata-wielding student council president Aoi Misato, tomboyish archer Komaki Sakurai, and massively strong former delinquent Yuuya Daigo.
After the living dead come actual demons. But my DVD is of the second half of the series, after the demons are at least temporarily defeated. It opens with a new threat, the Martial Fist, targeting the Stars of Destiny directly. They manage to kill several characters off-screen, but all the named Stars that are attacked manage to survive at least the first attack.
It turns out that the Martial Fist is a secret order of assassins who exclusively target the most evil of criminals. And they have been told by their leader that the Stars are in fact those criminals. Which kind of demonstrates the down side of entrusting justice to an unaccountable group that doesn’t question orders. Not that all the Stars are completely blameless. Daigo in particular discovers that the assassin after him has ties to his criminal past.
Resolving this problem reveals the identity of the mastermind who’s been manipulating all the events so far in an attempt to destroy all humanity. Not time to finish the story yet, so he gets away.
Next up is the mass mind-controlling villain Chaos who tries to break Tatsuma in particular. Tatsuma’s unique way of dealing with this menace leads us into the final battle.
To fill out the 24 episodes, we have two bonus stories. One’s just a compilation of various flashbacks we’ve seen through the rest of the series put in chronological order to make the backstory more comprehensible. The last, “Arigatou”, takes place between the Martial Fist and Chaos storylines, and is about preparing for a school play.
The action scenes are okay but never quite rise to awesome.
The real problem is character overstuffing. As anyone who’s played the Suikoden series of videogames will remember, 108 named characters (and that’s just the hero’s side!) means that a good hunk of said characters get minimal screen time or characterization. Even with a good twenty or so characters dropped in the adaptation from visual novel to anime (including an entire sentai team!) many folks get shafted.
For example, the rock musician and one of the Martial Fist assassins falling in love? Don’t blink, or you’ll miss a third of that subplot. Teacher Ms. Alucard has the exact secret you’d expect, and her own thing going on with two other minor characters that seems to have nothing to do with the main plot and gets a two-minute resolution. The main plot itself leaves a number of threads hanging that will never be resolved.
Content note: Frequent violence, some gory. Suicide. Bullying, child abuse. A group of transwomen are repeatedly misgendered, including by Kyouichi, who they raised. (He also frequently questions Komaki’s gender status deliberately to get a rise out of her.)
Overall: Maybe the game was better? It’s never got an official release in the U.S. There are interesting moments scattered throughout, but the presentation is average at best. Recommended for folks who like a lot of extra characters in the story.
