‘Tokyo Revengers’: The Otaku Phenomenon Takes the Theater by storm

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The movie version of the manga, a worldwide phenomenon, is released on the big screen to the delight of the potential audience, addicted to this teenage adventure with youth gangs and time travel

One of the adolescent phenomena of the moment is coming to the cinema. The fever aroused by “Tokyo Revengers,” first a manga written and illustrated by Ken Wakui, then an anime series and now a live-action movie, is worth studying. It remains to be seen if all of his followers will actually go through the box office to see the jump to the big screen, as with ’50 Shades of Grey’ -the launch doesn’t have an exaggerated distribution for these payments- but the passion for the Eastern popular culture between the youth and the little ones it is something obvious.

Far from stagnating, the devotion to Japanese comics has grown exponentially among the new generations -sales have increased by 60%-, along with the cult of animation and audiovisual productions coming from the East -the madness unleashed by the series Korean “The Squid Game”-. The launch of the film’s original graphics on hand created endless queues in bookstores before the doors of some establishments opened the day before it hit the market. An image that seemed unique in the video game business today, as it was when the new records of some extreme cult musicals saw the light.

The live-action version of ‘Tokyo Revengers’ features a cast of young Asian actors with added value of attraction and is directed by the prolific Tsutomu Hanabusa, whose work is limited to professionally illustrating a story that combines the typical school environment of Japanese films with teenage gangs fighting with bare fists, as in the ‘Crows’ saga – wisely started by Takashi Miike -, with time travel and time loops, an ingenious tool that also dazzles Japanese filmmakers (‘More beyond the two infinite minutes’, recommended to watch , is a recent example).

In addition, of course, there are plague scenes and a textbook novel that appeals to the small audience, with some glimpses of yakuza cinema going through the right sieve. Creating creative distances, just to mention a close reference to cuchufleta, it’s like ‘Elite’ in soft format, with no drugs or sex but hosts like bread, script deviations and unexpected surprises, obviously leading to increased interest dramatically. Endearing characters and a waste of figuration in the service of an adventure with fantastic overtones.

A childish-looking 20-year-old, while watching the news on TV while eating convenience foods in his dilapidated tiny house, discovers how his high school sweetheart has lost her life at the hands of a clan of villains known as the Tokyo Manji Gang. whose aesthetic matches gendertics. The young protagonist leads an infamous life, immersed in routine, but an unexpected accident, doesn’t it?, forces him to take a leap into the past, a decade ago, returning to the time of his school life. Such a supernatural opportunity can allow you to change your existence and save your loved one. Simplicity as a virtue.

A certain dizzying humor pervades the tone of ‘Tokyo Revengers’, dirty jokes included. It sympathizes with its apparent innocence in a violent and disturbing setting. Actually, despite so much flogging, there is a gushing romance. Probably the presence of love as the engine of the world is one of the reactions to the story’s ability to captivate, childishly attract the young audience (who perhaps should spend their time on other things). Perhaps the rooms are filled with teenagers who haven’t even started acne yet, boys and girls avoiding their school or family problems, getting carried away by a well-orchestrated hodgepodge of references they probably consider original because of their blessed age.

The film opens fire with a scene rich in blood and aggressiveness. Walking on the wild side in fiction is something inherent in man as he has the use of reason, and there is nothing better than believing that he is an adult who is a child doing adult things. For example, tasting this bicoca without your ancestors’ consent is a smart minor, probably ahead of his time and his classmates adopting his unruly otaku identity.

The search for artificial paradises, cultural stimuli or self-identity in adolescence, fleeing from a reality that interests the new generations less and less, fuels trends that grow unstoppably among today’s youth. There seems to be no end to the otaku phenomenon, the passion for Eastern popular culture in all its facets. It has no ceiling, on the contrary, because far from losing power, this movement is currently experiencing another undeniable attraction in the West, thanks in part to the rise of online entertainment platforms. The wide range of this material in the on-demand menus, be it webcomics, series or movies, expands the target audience of fatal fans. The digital age has been the definitive award for the dissemination of the rich Asian images.

Source: La Verdad

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