Tokyo 24-ku (11)

Episode Synopsis:

The street battles intensify.  Koki, Ran, and Shu have all realized that some version of Asumi’s consciousness is inside the KANAE system, and is suffering greatly. Koki wants to put her into an eternal sleep.  Ran wants to delete her along with the system.  Shu isn’t sure what to do.  The three of them punch each other until they agree to work together to digitize Shu’s consciousness to go talk to Asumi’s consciousness.

Episode Review:

Episode 11 of Toyko 24-ku is monumentally bad.  I constantly shifted between two modes – laughing at how awful the dialogue and animation quality was, and feeling completely exhausted that this dumpster fire of an episode was still burning.  Almost every plot beat is either outright bad, disappointing, or laughable.  It’s honestly barely worth reviewing, but as a cautionary tale for all of you readers, I’ll give you a couple of lowlights so you’ll steer clear.

There’s a part where the supporters of the KANAE system are throwing Molotov cocktails at the poor, because any of last episode’s “we’ll turn the poor into felons so they can’t vote” subtlety is already long gone.

You know that part in anime where a character calls for someone to return home, and the returning person dies in a car/plane/explosion/no cause of death attributed?  And then the character blames themselves for killing the person?  And everyone watching, plus everyone that knows that character, knows it wasn’t their fault? That happens, but it’s even lamer and less impactful.

And then there’s the part where the three main characters stand in a baseball field, punching each other while they scream their feelings out loud.  For over eight minutes.  EIGHT.   MINUTES.

If that sounds exhausting to watch, you have no idea. 

But if there’s a silver lining to this failure cloud, it’s the terrible, terrible animation quality, because at least that we can all laugh at together.  Tokyo 24-ku played for time with two full-week delays and a clip-show “review” episode, but the end of the cour is swiftly approaching, and there were no more delays available to paper this thing over.  So before I leave you, please enjoy this gallery of bad quality.

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