In a special jurisdiction area built in Tokyo Bay commonly known as the 24th Ward, the population enjoys a very safe life thanks to the Hazard Cast—a surveillance system that predicts accidents and assists victims immediately. However, the system cannot foresee the exact nature of these accidents nor prevent them from happening.
Ran Akagi, Kouki Suidou, and Shuuta Aoi—a trio of friends nicknamed "RGB" due to their hair color—experienced the tragic nature of these limitations when Suidou's sister Asami passed away in a fire at her high school. A year later, Shuuta still blames himself for failing to save Asami, while Ran pursues his dream to become a famous street artist, and Kouki works in the Hazard Cast intervention unit.
After the RGB trio reunites at a commemoration for the victims of the school fire, each of them receives a mysterious phone call. Bewildered to hear Asami's voice, the three friends are shown images of the future and asked to choose between two grim alternatives. Refusing to be bound by predetermined outcomes, the three tackle this troubling event head-on, marking the beginning of a series of cruel dilemmas that they will have to overcome in order to protect the 24th Ward and its people.
[Written by MAL Rewrite]
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ZNoteTaku
SPOILER-FREE! It’s important to remember that anime is not made by studios, but people. They may be released and financed under the company name, but it is men and women, sometimes from around the world, who are the ones that actually put pen to paper (or stylus and mouse to screen, rather) to produce the content we care about. The studios’ management is involved as well, but the current landscape of the anime industry is often not friendly to its staff, sometimes dumping projects on them with no time to get them finished or rushing them out the door despite their lacking quality. More and morestories like these are becoming documented, and it’s important to acknowledge them.
"Tokyo 24th Ward" was a Winter 2022 anime that regrettably got this problem. One month before the show started airing, key animation director Kiminori Itou vocally stated on Twitter that he was not optimistic about the project, and that the amount of time given to the production paled in comparison to CloverWorks’ other two shows that aired this season, Akebi’s Sailor Uniform and My Dress-Up Darling. This puts "Tokyo 24th Ward" in a weird light – if it succeeded despite itself, it would be all the more impressive. If it failed, it would likely be the result of the series not having enough time to pull itself together. Whether that is the result of CloverWorks themselves, or Aniplex, the company that licensed it, we can only guess. Either way, it is the end product that determines an outcome like that.
The series takes place in a futuristic, economically-divided ward that might be integrated into the larger city of Tokyo. After their friend Asumi dies in a fire at their old elementary school, childhood friends Shuta, Ran, and Koki all receive a mysterious phone call at the same time from someone claiming to be Asumi. Upon answering the call, they receive a vision of one of their friends and her dog stuck on a railroad track and must decide whether to allow the train to hit them or slow down the train and risk hurting the passengers. The phone call also imbues them with enhanced abilities, as they spring into action to try and resolve this rather-literal Trolley Problem. As time passes, more Trolley Problem complications will be presented that the three friends must contend with, and it will test the boundaries of their friendships, the ward, and whatever is causing these things to happen.
One of the Trolley Problem’s caveats in practical application, among many, is that it presents two moral extremes for which there is no possible alternative, which dangerously runs the risk of being too disconnected or disassociated from real life to have any significant meaning (even if one can cherry-pick actual stories of Trolley Problem-esque occurrences). An additional downside is that it can reduce a person’s perception of a situation down to its numerical value rather than an empathic value, which doesn’t necessarily bode well for psychological interpretation. To put it another way as Spock did, one could look at the Problem and argue that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,” without understanding the resulting implications for who lives and who dies and the world beyond the problem’s framework. Thus, a story using the Trolley Problem starts on a fundamentally shaky ground because it needs to frame the scenarios as being justifiable both in terms of setting them up and the extremes it presents.
The fact that "Tokyo 24th Ward" takes place in a futuristic setting allows its incorporation of the Trolley Problem to work more seamlessly than it would otherwise. Because the series utilizes advanced machines, surveillance, and revolves primarily around the lives of its three main characters, the Problems read as being the expected result of things not occurring within expected parameters. The machines not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, or actually doing precisely what they’re supposed to be doing but in an unforeseen manner, is why the Trolley Problems themselves manifest. Shuta, Ran, and Koki all have various outlooks on the Problems, which helps fuel the conflict surrounding the moralistic decisions they face, as well as their tolerance of each other’s reasoning.
But as far as the three friends are concerned, their chemistry together, regardless of being fractured from Asumi’s death, isn’t pleasant to watch. Shuta fashions himself as the hero of the 24th Ward and upset that he failed to save Asumi, but fails moreso to have a character beyond being a “nice guy” with a superhero ideology, and sadly not much in the way of intelligence. Wanting to help people is certainly noble, but the more-fascinating relationship among the mains, the one between Ran and Koki, is such because they are at complete odds with one another – Ran is a graffiti artist that uses his talents to convey messages, while Koki is a by-the-book, calculating individual with a penchant for siding with law and order. They naturally gravitate towards different circles and schools of thought.
Interestingly enough, for people who supposedly care so much about Asumi, including the fact that Koki is her brother, it is mind-boggling that Shuta, Ran, and Koki never at any point have an earnest conversation about whether it really is Asumi talking to them, or someone pretending to be her. Especially given the crazy happenings that led to the events in episode one’s climax, one would reasonably expect that there would be some kind of brainstorming session to determine what precisely happened. Even if no conclusion had been reached, even if tempers get particularly flared, or even absent any agreement, this is a conversation that needed to happen. Months in-universe transpire without that dialogue.
The reason for this is because, without Asumi’s insistence that when the three are working together that anything is possible, the narrative doesn’t really have a friendship to cultivate for them. The show plays up the chasm between the three in light of Asumi’s death, which makes sense. But whether through flashback or present-time events, we see little evidence of an earnestness between the mains that existed beforehand. Hence, a dialogue taking place evaluating the truth of whether Asumi called them after the first episode cannot happen because the connection via friendship is, more or less, nonexistent.
Instead, the second episode follows the Ward putting on a cooking festival for the residents, resulting in a controversy over someone buying up all the cabbage. This handling of storytelling priority is a part of what makes "Tokyo 24th Ward" so bewildering; the series will propose plots or threads that are theoretically interesting, but shies away from exploring many of them. And when it does try to explore some of those threads, its sense of dramaturgy makes for some questionable decisions. During that same cooking festival arc, the three main characters are outside a warehouse and are deciding whether to bust in and get the cabbage they need for their friend’s okonomiyaki recipe, only to be told by someone that they don’t need to do that because they found some more cabbage lying around that they could use. There’s a build-up that insinuates some kind of action-style sequence will occur, only to pull the rug out from under itself by saying that such a thing wasn’t necessary in the first place.
The roster of secondary characters is wide, and it’s rather sad that they tend to be vastly more interesting and theoretically-compelling than most stories involving the trio. Given the outcomes of some of the Trolley Problems that take place, the secondaries occasionally have to face the ramifications of the trio’s decisions. Kozue is one particular character who stands out in this respect, as an entire episode is centered around her in the aftershock of what happened. But she, like many others, is stymied by "Tokyo 24th Ward" having her take actions or decisions that either lead to unspectacular payoffs via poor buildup or head-scratching choices.
And unfortunately, not even the overall animation or aesthetic can carry the show along, either. It seems that Kiminori Itou’s frustrations make themselves most evident in this regard. Despite the decent look of the cityscape and the ward itself, the character designs are rather uninteresting or are, at worst, horribly off-model. Watching this show from week-to-week made it feel like the show got quite shortchanged in regards to the animation side of production, and given that episodes were delayed twice with a mid-series recap thrown in, this really becomes a nuisance. That doesn’t mean that there are no moments that don’t work, because some do. But given the level of animation CloverWorks is capable of, they are few and far between.
Perhaps the biggest frustration within "Tokyo 24th Ward" is that the various ideas that are on display here are indeed more than capable of filling out a twelve-episode narrative. But as presented, it is oversaturated and cannot accommodate everything in a satisfactory manner. The result is a slew of concepts that are half-baked, unable to reach anything moderately close to full realization, whatever that could be. If the show wants to propose a series of ethical or moralistic decisions that our characters are thrust into, or paint its world with overarching themes that carry particular significance for its characters, then it needs to make a commitment to actually investigate them seriously. It doesn’t need offer a complete, perfect solution to each question (and it would be presumptuous to assume one exists), but the exercise of engaging with the discussions the show wants to have must still be fun in and of itself. For me, this wasn’t.
One could argue that the series is not trying to actually probe that deeply about its concepts, that a series where conflicts are presented to generally last a couple of episodes doesn’t bear the responsibility to fully flesh them out. But when the series puts forward the ideas of economic class disparity via Shantytown, ethical decisions about who should live and die via the Trolley Problems, technology’s growing presence in our lives and its misuse, and stopping crimes before they happen (among other things), it’s not really a compliment to make a claim that the show doesn’t have to put in the legwork. It doesn’t need to be on the level of elegant prose, but it cannot read as disingenuous, which was what it left me with. By the time the final episode had rolled around and presented its last predicament, my interest had, much like Asumi, long since died.
"Tokyo 24th Ward" is an inconsistent lumping of concepts and aesthetic, trying to have its various pieces come together in a way that makes sense, but cannot commit to doing so. Its drama often does not work both at the individual episodic level and the grander narrative overall, with characters making unusual decisions or having revelations that lack dramatic weight and sensibility. The designs are often off-model, and the plot is a hodgepodge of events that don’t deliver despite trying to make use of its Trolley Problem framework. Ultimately, it was a misfire. It’s ironic that a series about having to make decisions with little time to spare was made by animators and writers with little time to spare themselves. Delaying an episode an extra week or having a placeholder recap is only a temporary band-aid for a larger wound. This is one case however where life imitating art resulted in the worser of two results.
NomineMalum
Tokyo 24th Ward is an original anime, it’s a drama thriller. I have been waiting to see a few episodes before reviewing this series to have a good idea of where this was going. So, is this anime worth watching after 12 episodes? YES OF COURSE! STORY Tokyo 24th Ward has an interesting premise. It’s the story of three friends (Shu, Ran and Ko) who have to decide on life-and-death situations after they receive visual messages from their deceased friend. And all of that happens in the 24th ward of Tokyo, an artificial island that has a dystopian feel. However, in the first three episodes, it doesn’t feellike the series knows what it wants to be. Is it an action thriller, is it a slice of life, is it science fiction, or all the above? I was left wondering where the story is going. Because, let’s be honest, it wasn’t very clear. Nevertheless, the first three episodes are still entertaining. I felt invested enough in the characters to continue watching. Fortunately, the series does find its ground starting episode four. I just think that it needed more time to introduce the main plot. But once it gets going it’s even better. The story has stakes, action and also emotion. So I’m definitely excited to see where it’s going next. I just hope that considering the nature of the story, the writers have an endgame. One thing is sure, the writers have created an engaging and rich world.
CHARACTERS
The main three characters (Shu, Ran and Ko) are well written and quite compelling. They are so different from each other. Ko is the serious one who wants to follow the rules no matter what, while Ran is a art lover and a free spirit. And Shu is the guy who wants to be a hero so he is always going to try to help people. Shu is definitely my favorite character. He has the most potential and he’s so endearing. And as the story goes, it’s interesting to see the gap forming between them. They were once friends but obviously, they don’t have the same vision on how to handle the whole situation. Thus, they don’t work as an actual team and do things on their own.
ANIMATION
Tokyo 24th Ward has bright and colourful visuals. It’s quite striking. CloverWorks has created a beautiful world. It’s anchored in our present world with elements of dystopian science fiction. I’m impressed by its quality. It’s one of the main strengths of this series.
OPENING AND END CREDITS
The opening credits give me vibes from Banana Fish. And it has a lot to do with the fact that it’s also Survive Said The Prophet who sings the opening for this series. This is a killer Rock group! It’s a dynamic opening with a song that stays in your head. I can tell you I have listened to ‘Paper sky’ on repeat. As for the end credits, it’s sung by the three lead actors as their characters. And I can’t resist hearing Yuma Uchida’s singing voice. It’s a really fine end credits.
VERDICT
Tokyo 24th Ward struggles to find its ground in the first episodes but once it does, it delivers. This series has compelling characters, Shu is an instant favourite! And, it’s visually striking.
SCORE
8/10 A VERY GOOD SEASON FOR TOKYO 24-KU
Sheklon
Should you ever watch Tokyo 24th Ward? It depends on whether you're expecting something particularly good out of it or not. It should be noted that this show had severe time constraints which lead to many serious production issues, to the point that even the key animation director manifested his pessimism towards the series on a personal Twitter account. Considering this context, the reader is invited to investigate the matter and I will not add another negative comment about the production to the existing pile. Regardless, I will say I had fun watching this series and was genuinely surprised at the amount of interesting concepts and charactersthey managed to include despite the aforementioned problems (though I'm a little biased towards the sci-fi genre). However, these same characters and concepts never get fully explored, and the show lacks in providing a strong or specific message about anything that sticks to your memory. Many of the themes revolve around philosophical issues that humanity will likely face in one way or another in the future, such as how accurately can we predict incidents or accidents within society; how preventable these situations are; and how should we ethically respond to that knowledge. Yet, the anime either never had the time to or was never interested in exploring these themes in a fulfilling manner — it feels more like an introductory class on philosophy and technology. The characters that participate in the story, while some likable and believable, are not very deep either, and will sometimes only act in favor of the plot, with no prior indication that their behavior was in line with their mindset or moral beliefs (this is because we never get to know those things in detail, or they are simply not there).
It saddens me that the show never got to seize its full potential, for it had enough good ideas behind it that it could make up a long and iconic series had it tried to be one. However, due to the rush of the current industry and most likely a lack of inspiration from low-spirited animators and writers, it was never meant to be something great.
If you like futuristic narratives and want to watch something off the genre for entertainment, then I'd recommend it as long as the sadly very unpolished animation and frequently off-model characters don't bother you (as well some other VFX issues, such as a low quality blur on the screen in various frames). But if you worry about good animation and expect to engage in a complex story or become familiar with three dimensional characters, this show will probably only disappoint you.
Drakestalker
It’s funny how we all have these things that we know, but we don’t really know them. That is to say we are in possession of the information – rattling around in our brains somewhere – and we understand it on an abstract intellectual level, but we have no genuine understanding of it, for we’ve never actually been brought face to face with the first-hand reality of it. Slavery is a good example of this. We all understand the mechanics of slavery, consider it to be one of the greatest crimes against humanity, we get mighty agitated about it, and compete to see who is morefervently opposed to it whenever the subject comes up, but we’ve never actually seen a slave, so other than signaling our virtue, we don’t do much of anything else. Slaves exist in Saudi Arabia today. Open slave auctions exist in Libya today. You know this. I know you do. But it doesn’t quite click, does it? It doesn’t horrify your soul. It doesn’t give you that debilitating anxiety where you literally feel like you can’t sleep until it is fixed. And why should it not? It is the exact crime against humanity that we all intellectually agree is unconscionable in the abstract, yet most of us sleep just fine at night knowing that there are human beings who live in literal slavery in the Middle East right this instant. Why is that? Why are we able to just get on with our daily lives? Because we’ve never actually been there. We’ve never seen them. We’ve never seen a Saudi slave. We’ve never seen an open market Libyan slave auction. As such, it just stays at the back of our minds, mere information, a thing we know, but we don’t really know.
This is how I feel about TikTok misinformation. Ask anyone. We all know that TikTok is full of misinformation. Any old Joe can give you the skinny on the subject. It’s a secret to no one that, given the precious little information you can distill in under a minute, you can make just about anything look good and interesting. Hell, if I were to make a 60 second montage of the sakuga scenes from the first season of the K-Project, the result would the coolest looking anime TikTok in the world. Everybody and their mothers would be in the comments going crazy asking for the name of the show! Name? Name? Name? Surely this must be an awesome anime. Wrong! What you would get is some of the most boring 4 hours you will ever spend in your life.
Everybody understands this. We all are in possession of this information and understand it on an abstract intellectual level, and yet, until we personally get suckered by some ad on TikTok, we believe ourselves to be above the propaganda. Oh, those people fall for this sort of thing all the time, but not me, no. I’m /tfwtointelligent. I would never fall for it. Oh, hey, look at that YouTube short of this out-of-context cool scene from an anime. It must be a really cool show! What’s it called? Tokyo 24? Wow, I can’t wait to watch it! I’m sure I’ll have a great time with it. Jesus fucking wept.
Yes, I just compared TikTok to slavery. No, I’m only half-joking.
Tokyo 24 is a kind of shitty Minority Report wanna-be where technology is invented to predict crimes and the show attempts to make some kind of ethical point about it – ‘attempts’ being the operative word. Aside from the prevalence of the increasingly ubiquitous left-wing notion that crime is caused by poverty and lack of opportunity, so being against crime effectively translates to hating poor people, there’s really nothing interesting about this anime, that is if you consider that trite social commentary in any way, shape, or form interesting in the first place. “Instead of using his billions to eradicate poverty, Bruce Wayne decided to cosplay as a bat and beat up poor people!” Yes, thank you for your input, Lipsquiesha, very insightful.
To go with the general left-wing tilt, the series is permeated by that kind of degenerate neon-punk aesthetic that seems to be all the rage nowadays. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then just watch the League of Legends True Damage music video on YouTube. It’s gross. What kind of moron wears neon spray paint on their clothing? You’re not in an Avril Lavigne music video. Grow up. Yes, I’m sure it’s society’s fault you’re terminally unemployable, not the neck and face tattoos. And of course there’s loads of LGBT and non-binary and whatever the fuck else representation. Does that really come as a surprise?
Here's the rub, though.
Depending on your political orientation, you might think that all of this so far is wonderful. Ok, splendid, I’m happy for you, but even if you approve of or at least ignore the political agenda, what you’re otherwise left with is still uninspired, insipid, badly written garbage.
You have a trio of 3 dudes as your main characters, but the de facto protagonist is somehow the least interesting of all of them. Tokyo 24 tries to present him as a sort of Naruto-type talentless, though honest hard worker, but it just doesn’t land. There’s nothing exciting or compelling about him. When your hot-headed, pure-hearted meathead spends every other episode in some kind of comatose depression because of one thing or other, you’ve fucked up. The other 2 are just about as paint-by-numbers as they come. One is a glasses nerd who has a stick way too far up his ass and never questions authority. The other one LARPs as Banksy and thinks that defacing people’s property is art and will change the world.
The anime really wants to sell you on the idea that they were a unit, a tight-knit group of friends, a team. They even come up with a group name for the trio, RGB, and they will really shove that nickname down your throat every chance they get. The acronym somehow comes from their names. I won’t even pretend I remember their names. But again, it simply doesn’t land. I never got the impression they had any meaningful chemistry or even liked each other all that much.
In actual fact, RGB means Red Green Blue, i.e. the primary colors in additive color synthesis, the combination of which can result in every other color of the spectrum. I’m sure you’ve heard of RGB lighting before. Now you know what that means. As such, some corporate shill over at CloverWorks thought naming the series’ golden trio RGB would be a hella clever way to relate to the ‘kids these days’. In case it’s unclear, Banksy’s hair is red, Glasses Nerd’s hair is green, and dollar store Naruto’s hair is blue.
CloverWorks have put out some good stuff since their inception, great stuff even, but this ain’t it, chief. This just ain’t it.
Early on, way too early, a paternal figure character dies – a pretty dumb death, if I’m being perfectly honest. There’s a reason Joanne waited until the end of book 6 to kill Dumbledore. Who the fuck was this guy? Why do I care about him? Oh, that’s right, I don’t. What should have been a very emotional moment and a turning point for the characters’ interpersonal dynamics fell completely flat for me.
In essence, everything about this show seems to go from 0 to 100 instantly with no preamble or jobbing and you are expected to just accept it and remain invested. It’s not unheard of for anime characters to get into shouting matches while spilling their hearts out during arguments. Generally speaking, this can be a very effective vehicle to help the audience relate to the characters’ emotions. Swing and a miss as far as Tokyo 24 is concerned – the totally believable RGB dream team trio will get into these shouting matches a couple of times throughout the course of the series, but the pacing is just all jank. The argument will start because of the most insignificant issue, and then, before you’ve taken even two seconds to scratch your balls, all of a sudden, they’re yelling themselves hoarse. Words cannot describe how artificially manufactured it feels.
Perhaps the worst scene in the show was the one where they start bona fide fighting each other. You know how in many action movies and series, once the dude and the other dude have been fighting for a good while, and they’re both completely gassed out, they’ll start to just slug each other in a protracted manner with whatever little strength they’re still able to muster? Yeah, the creators of Tokyo 24 thought it would be a great idea to have that scene for their main RGB trio, but it was so contrived, that it was the exact moment my investment evaporated completely and I gave up on the anime. If memory serves, I burst out laughing. The way they’re hitting each other didn’t even make sense. Since there’s 3 of them, they can’t just hit back whoever just hit them. Instead, Not Naruto would punch Banksy, and then Banksy would slug Glasses Nerd, and then Gasses Nerd would sucker Not Naruto. They were taking it in turns like some retarded game of rock-paper-scissors.
Just about the only thing vaguely connecting the RGB dream team seems to be their dead childhood friend, first name Mary, last name Sue. Ok, a tragic past, a dead loved one, that can be a compelling backstory. I mean, that’s literally all there is to Afro Samurai’s character description, and he’s one of the coolest anime protagonists ever. The issue with Mary, however, is that she’s not a real character. She’s just human valium. In every single flashback, without exception, she’s always seen laughing, smiling, giggling, being happy, being jovial, making jokes, giving sage advice, cheering everyone up, the light of everyone’s life. Yeah, that’s not at all irritating or exhausting.
Just in case I’m not being transparent enough, I’m kidding about her name. It’s not actually Mary Sue. I’m just expressing my contempt – also, I don’t actually remember her name. Come to think of it, for all I know, it could very well have been Mary Sue.
Even the one thing the show had going for it, the cool scene from the YouTube short I initially saw, felt somehow way less cool in context because of poor build-up and dogshit pacing, and I was left completely underwhelmed. I watched it with my girlfriend and both of our reactions amounted to something along the lines of “Oh… I thought it was gonna be more… well, more.” It was one of the rare occasions where obnoxious TikTok edits with phonk music spliced in made the scene more intriguing than it actually is, rather than distract from it, because there was no substance to distract from.
Don’t waste your time. Watch Legend of the Galactic Heroes instead. I know you’re still putting that one off.
KANLen09
Note: There will be little spoilers in this review, though it'd be best to put it all together like a fine douche portrait of an intellectual philisophical research paper of a work. Overly exuberant ambition, undermined by problems from behind-the-scenes pre-production woes to wistfully "grand" exposition and storytelling, that only begrdudgingly concocts as a servitude to hide the fact that you don't actually need to be a "big brain" of a fool to even understand a conch of this work. This is the story of Tokyo 24-ku a.k.a Tokyo 24th Ward, brought to you by CloverWorks, the studio now infamous for the "3 shows per seasonlineup" moniker that the Black Sheep of the season has to suffer inherent problems, and this show is that Black Sheep of blame.
Let's start by laying the groundwork for this show: directed by Jojo director Naokatsu Tsuda, with scriptwriter and series composer Vio Shimokura from Nitroplus (the company responsible for churning out visual novel games, created from writers like the acclaimed Gen Urobuchi), Tokyo 24-ku can be summed with these words alone: groupism, artificial intelligence, altruism, utilitarianism, individualism, consequentialism, principle of double effect. But the most important aspect of how Tokyo 24-ku works is by this barreling issue called the "trolley problem", first invented and accounted in a 1967 philosophy paper by English philosopher Philippa Ruth Foot, one of the founders of contemporary virtue ethics that are inspired by Aristotle, along with fellow philosophist Judith Jarvis Thomson.
To understand Tokyo 24-ku, you need to understand what is this "trolley problem" all about. This thought experiment is described as such: a series of thought experiments in ethics and psychology, involving stylized ethical dilemmas of whether to sacrifice one person to save a larger number, that usually begins with a scenario in which a runaway tram or trolley is on course to collide with and kill a number of people (traditionally five) down the track, but a driver or bystander can intervene and divert the vehicle to kill just one person on a different track. Then other variations of the runaway vehicle, and analogous life-and-death dilemmas (medical, judicial etc.) are posed, each containing the option to either do nothing, in which case several people will be killed, or intervene and sacrifice one initially "safe" person to save the others.
And this trolley problem is placed on the 3 central characters: Shuta "Shu" Aoi, Ran Akagi and Koki "Ko" Suido, or as nicknamed as such: RGB, because of their hair colours. How all these events conspired to turn on their heads, falls on their history growing up in the 24th Ward a.k.a Shantytown as childhood friends with their own typical ambitions in life, being raised in different family backgrounds, hobbies and personalities, with friends being close and typical as family-like. But one event changes everything, and that's when their historic elementary school suffered an arson attack that at first, was thought to be a rando terrorist attack, but it was insignificant things like rats nibbling on old wiring that caused the school to catch fire, and that someone was Koki's younger sister Asumi whom was caught in the flames, the causal effect to lose her life. Asumi is close to the RGB boys, in fact, she'd call them as such to signify their closeness, but with her death, she is seemingly not done yet as her tentative soul lives through phone calls to the RGB guys to present to them the trolley problems known as "Visions", though for what purpose remains to be seen in the beginning, that slowly begins to unravel the ugliness that's harnessing those "Visions" and the very things that make up the special district of the 24th Ward.
So first off, I mentioned that you do not need to have a big brain to understand this show, because at hindsight, these trolley problems or "Visions" start out as being 2-way choices of limiting innocent deaths by the count. But as time progresses, the Visions get progressively more nuanced, taking into accounts of the nihilistic nature of human radical behaviours from the likes of utilitarianism, altruism and consequentialism, that despite the descriptions of the trolley problem at hand, raises the stakes that would always result in a win-lose situation. And this is where the mysterious Carneades comes in to thwart the RGB guys, thereby raising the stakes higher that death is imminent for at least an innocent being despite the choices that they make. This is pretty significant because Carneades (in history) is known as an academic skeptic, whom holds the belief that all knowledge is impossible a.k.a acatalepsy (meaning "inability to comprehend", incomprehensibleness, or the impossibility of comprehending or conceiving a thing), except for the knowledge that all other knowledge is impossible, that human knowledge never amounts to certainty, but only to plausibility. On the basis of truth, Carneades argues that if there were a criterion, it must exist either in reason (logos), sensation (aisthêsis), or conception (phantasia). But then reason itself depends on conception, and this again on sensation; have no means of judging whether humans' sensations are true or false, whether they correspond to the objects that produce them, or carry wrong impressions to the mind, producing false conceptions and ideas, and leading reason also into error. Therefore, sensation, conception, and reason, are alike disqualified for being the criterion of truth.
Alas, the happenings within Shantytown have a butt-ton of problems to deal with. Starting with the RGB guys, or as I would like to call them, Shuta "Mr. 24 hero" Aoi, Ran "DoRed" Akagi and Koki "SARG" Suido, each of their ambitions are very different, and yet thus serve a different aspect that shows the faction divisions within the ward. The red-haired Ran Akagi is the leader of his graffiti group called DoRed, whom exhibits a strong personality and is able to convey his emotions and feelings through the art of graffiti, which has progressed in the series to be more like a cult following for people opposing the government's radical changes against their will. Together with friends like Kinako, technological hacker Kudo "Kunai" Naito, and influencers like Kuchikiri (better known as 0th) Ran is a force to be reckoned with. The green-haired Koki Suido comes from his familial line of intelligents, with his father Gori being the mayor of the 24th Ward, save for the deceased sister Asumi. Together, they run the 24th Ward with the usual bigotry treatments of fabrications and lies (as you would expect of any governmental system) heralding from the system utilized to keep the ward in their grasp, funded with the help from fellow chief researcher Sakiko "Satchan" Tsuzuragawa. And this is so because Koki works in SARG, Shantytown's police faction equivalent to keep harmony within the midst from the likes of Hazard Cast (their version of police surveillance control) and the KANAE System, named after the Suido family's deceased mother (which is an upgraded feature that severely limits privacy in exchange for security) through phones specially supplied to and heavily controlled in the ward, known as cPhones. The blue-haired Shuta Aoi, he's your typical neighbourhood boy with a childish ambition to match, and is the one that always knocks time off around with the people of Shantytown, doing the regular work that's just like the normal average layman. Together with Mari Sakuragi whom manages the 24th Ward's popular okonomiyaki restaurant "Itadaki", Shuta is the most average person alive whom has a good side to him being of childlike wonder, yet scramble to action when the Visions occur because he finds it to be a recurring dilemma of choice, because he is known as Mr. 24 the hero of Shantytown, and he wouldn't want anyone dying right in front of his eyes to befall emotional curses upon himself.
The other characters ploughing through this wonky series, it's sad but obvious to say that they're nothing more than plot movers, because where else would you concoct characters that only have ulterior motives, only to scrap them when their duties are done. Guess this shows that character dynamics are essential, yet when executed wrongly, can become the most glaring of issues to question why does "this and that" characters need to be around to begin with. A very hard pass on having too many characters to reflect the adage of "too many cooks spoil the broth".
By now, you should've known the terror that is the behind-the-scenes production woes at CloverWorks, and probably already guessed it by now: the Wonder Egg Priority curse has struck again. In case you didn't know, in Japan, it's prohibited for staff to share what's going on with the production of shows, think of it as like NDAs. But yet above all, one person did: chief animation director Kiminori Itou, whose pessimistic troubles were so rampant enough that he literally documented, chronicled and shared the events leading up to release on his Twitter account. Starting way back last year on October 24th when the anime was officially announced (and mind you, that was after announcements for both Sono Bisque Doll and Akebi's Sailor Uniform), the staff only literally had 2 months (give and take) to create, make and finish the entire production, even if it meant that they had to outsource animators to finish up the job. To put things into perspective, Episode 1 (the double-length premiere) was only completed in the nick of time before the TV broadcast. What resulted in all of that was inconsistent animation, visuals that look nice but was hampered to the point of overlays (the RGB guys displayed many instances of overlay visuals), and though the CloverWorks name is attached to it, the perception that the Wonder Egg Priority curse had already taken over the entire anime in general was already realized even before we the audience actually got to see Episode 1 in the flesh. Yikes, what a mess.
Of all the bad occurences in this show, there is some sliver of hope, and although the musical function is decent, I just can't feel it with so much dialogue and information being pushed down to our throats. All I can say that the OP is great, and come on, it's the same J-Pop band that brought you Vinland Saga's 1st OP. Survive Said The Prophet never misses, and shows their pedigree here. The ED's title references the RGB colour codes in unison to the RGB MCs, though the song is a bit on the meh side.
When all is said and done, even after taking everything into consideration, music alone can't really save the entire hectic production that leaves people to having tireless crunch and overwork, it's just so inhumane to see this, but this is the life of the anime industry in Japan, and there's no way to salvage this practice for years to come (that's why we advocate KyoAni in a different light, geddit?). Whatever the reason here, if Wonder Egg Priority was a showcase that if not taken severely enough, then Tokyo 24-ku is the next work to point a finger at both CloverWorks and Aniplex on a practice so deadly that it could cost people their lives and precious time wasted. And this is a protest that the anime industry will not listen to, because it's quantity over quality, and money is the root of all evil.
So there you have it: the classic case of greedy corporations at the oversight of quality, that rather of Tokyo 24-ku as a standalone show telling its own internal side of the story, there's an external side waiting to be scrutinized and criticized just as hard. What a shame, really.
Pegasus-LoD
Simple short review: Totally Spoiler free! My thoughts are based on the anime only! The story line is psychologically really good, the arts and musics are realistic to the theme, the animation could have been improved if more time was given on it and character development was done well too. Don't judge something just by seeing other's point of view and seeing covers only. After seeing full anime I can say Tokyo 24-ku is worth the time I spent watching it. If anime quality was more realistic and good, then I would give it 9/10 score. But everything has it's own worth!
Guts-Valley
No good deed goes unpunished-Perfect way to some up this anime. I rate it an 8 but could easily be a 9 or a 10 the only reason why I didnt rate it so because I didn't sign up for this very dark story. I'll try but most likely SPOILERS! We are introduce to an opening something out of a boy band and you are left thinking this is going to a happy anime of superheroes something like myhero or tiger bunny. We are quickly brought down to earth when we get a (spoiler) death scene. The anime goes back and fourth ofbeing a happy anime to a dark tune it is very alarming. This anime has a lot of religious undertone which looks like i was the only one to catch it, I might do a question post asking who else sees it. This super hero doesn't have your typical villain, the villain believe it doing the right things and so do the heroes they believe they are right and it present the audience with a very gray message all around to the very end. It is very political and if you are an American you are preach to and it is very subtle I think many did not get it went over their heads when the patriot act, social media, and influencers were brought up. Please give a watch I can't be the only one to think to was great story wise be advise this isn't your happy anime.
P.S You must watch to find out why title it "No good deed goes unpunished" this anime show you how cruel the world can be.
kdsekai
This is masterpiece for me…. Actually at first i thought it was just some kind of other animes ive seen but when i saw the last two episode i cried asf. The ending was so touching! Like tbh I don’t think they need to release season 2 because they ended it so well! Episode 9 was the ep where it revealed the history thatd make the first other eps makes sense. And still goosebumps for me seeing the connections of characters 😭 i still can’t get over with final ep. Others might get bored bec theres so much happening and could be overwhelming but justwatch it till the end id say
_slowdiver
Ahhhh, what a mess. Apart trying to be preachy with its contrived messages, it's pretty clear that this show was more of an afterthought compared to the other two shows that aired from Cloverworks in the Winter 2022 season. Not even the talented, well-known seiyuus in the cast could save how bland the show became. I can imagine a conversation in the office like this: you have one week to give me a decent show we can air just because. And someone just happen to have a book for every character you would need for the current social landscape. And there you go (I really don'thave much more to say...I'm just trying to fill up space to post the review...)
This show is the worst show of the Winter 2022 season. Or among the worst.
PyraXadon
You know when you watch something because you think the concept is cool? But it ends up flopping because it’s trying too hard/too much? Yeah. Story: In an artificial and isolated island in the middle of Tokyo lies the ’24th ward’. The people who govern this island for better or worse have a desire to officially join the city of Tokyo as an official district. But are required to pass a certain threshold of ‘safety’ in order to do so. As such, the system known as the ‘Kanae System’ monitors the threat potential of its citizens in order to take out any potential outliers that threaten thesafety of society. It’s here where we meet our three protagonists, affectionally called the ‘RGB boys’, who’ve drifted as a result of an incident several years back. Now in their young adult years, the city’s threat system contacts the three boys and offers them a trolley problem under the guise of a familiar name/figure in order to solve the ward’s problems. Giving them the chance to change the future with…mixed results thanks to conflicting motivations.
On paper, Tokyo 24th Ward is a series that really should’ve worked. It’s in the same vein as psycho-pass and similar shows like that where the narrative is wrapped around proposing a question. In this case, we ask whether or not the order of a computer that governs society and restricts privacy is better than one without. Sacrificing privacy for safety and safety for potential social unrest. A fair question to ask in our current day society. One that I’m sure could’ve worked if it was an idea that was well-implemented. But for this show…that’s debatable at best.
Trolley problems are kind of the main thing this show tries to do. Every few episodes bringing forth a new issue that the RGB boys must deal with that tests their ideals for the future as well as their cooperation. Not only that, but we’ve got backstory. A lot of backstory. Ones that deal with not only how the RGB boys drifted apart, but also why the security system is the way it is. As well as character backstory for a myriad of side characters who all have a stake in the narrative as a whole. Oh, and did I forget the one episode where one of the boys just…grabs his chest for a whole day? Or the one time there was a cooking competition? Tokyo 24th Ward is a classic example of a show that bites off more than it can chew. The show only spans around 12 episodes. But with about 8-9 plot threads throughout the whole thing, the show feels a lot less like a cohesive narrative and more like spaghetti being thrown on the walls.
As such, nothing in this show really sticks for longer than maybe a few minutes. Whatever’s shown either in the last episode or several minutes prior is typically cast aside and replaced with something else that’s about as equally important. By that I mean it should be important to the story, but the show really doesn’t make a strong case for letting stuff last longer for more than a few minutes. Hell the whole graffiti war happened all of a sudden and just kind of ended for no reason? Honestly I still don’t understand that whole thing, and I doubt the series does either. Pacing suffers immensely because of this, and I can’t really make a strong argument for the narrative threads the show tries to make because the end result that culminates in the last two episodes just feels hollow and empty.
Admittedly, I did have some hopes for the series. Thinking it was going to be at least an entertaining piece of media that wasn’t typically anime fare- But I see now that my hopes of getting another dark horse of the season correct was swiftly snuffed. Admittedly, the story conceptually isn’t bad. It’s just that with the insane amount of fluff padding out the runtime, the numerous plot threads, and the poor pacing not executing on the theme/ideas very well just kinda made the show fall unceremoniously without any real takeaways to be had. Like sure, the trolley stuff is cool and all, but maybe a little bit more time on the cutting room floor to make sure the narrative…made sense as a whole would’ve been nice.
Characters:
The RGB boys consist of a graffiti rebel, a wannabe hero, and the dude with glasses who thinks he’s got a better sense of morals because his daddy is the mayor of the entire ward. Very different characters. And at no time do they ever agree on anything. While I think the dynamics make for some fantastic character contrasts that could result in some fantastic character interaction…the truth is often more disappointing than you think. The three characters constantly fight throughout the series, never really being on the same page on anything after the first episode. Made even more egregious because they kind of go off on their own separate things but are mostly just…bystanders to the plot? It’s a really weird viewing experience having the protagonists just watch things happen as the 24th ward erupts in flames. And they don’t really do much aside from interact with their immediate circles and make some indirect impact on the plot. Suffice to say, the RGB boys aren’t really that compelling of a group, and even less so as individual characters since the poor pacing and scattered focus really hemorrhaged their ability to be actual characters in their own story. Which is a shame cause the few times they actually get together are really cool. It just doesn’t have many lasting impacts because it happens so few times that it’s more of a spectacle than a natural narrative point.
Side characters aren’t really much better off since any and all screentime they get is devoted towards building up the world. Or showing off why the place is such a shithole. Backstories are almost entirely shown to give significance to why characters should matter instead of who they are. Without their connection to whatever’s happening in the moment, I’m almost certain that the side characters wouldn’t have anything meaningful to them. Even the ‘antagonist’ of the show isn’t really worth mentioning because the actual role they play is again, geared towards building the world. Like everyone’s just following a torn up script and doing their best to follow along with what’s happening on the screen.
Truly one of the most underwhelming casts I’ve seen in recent history. And it’s a little sad given again, the potential of this series.
Aesthetics:
I’ve said before that Cloverworks is a coin toss in quality. And truthfully, if 24th ward has anything going for it, it’d definitely be its look. On the surface the show isn’t really that interesting to look at. And…it isn’t. But, there’re a few aspects I do like about this show, chiefly in the background art and the designs of the RGB boys.
On the note of background art, Ran’s portfolio (or the R in RGB) and all of the other tagging that goes on in the series is genuinely impressive to look at. Props to the artists that made those cause all of the tagging that goes on in the show’s Shantytown looks really good and I would really like to see all of the background cels that show all of the different pieces of art that was shown in the series. On the note of character design, I personally really like how the RGB boys look, as everything from their clothing to their hairstyle is reflective of the kind of people they are as well as their goals. (I.E. Ran has more of a wild hair to emphasize his loose/anarchic way of life whereas Kouki is more put together and well-dressed to show off his organized and higher income bracket lifestyle.) That and the boys are literally colored Red, Blue, and Green with their eyes swapping colors in order to give them an extra bit of connection with each other. It’s cheesy, but it’s a touch I appreciate.
Survive Said the Prophet’s “Paper Sky” should by no means be as good as it is. It’s a weirdly inspirational rock song that sounds like something you’d here at a concert. It’s a really enjoyable listen for me that was undoubtedly one of my highlights when watching this show. Maybe it’s a little generic for what it is, but considering what this show is, I’m more than willing to give this song a pass because it at least stands out for me. “255,255,255” (They were proud of the RGB puns they put in this show weren’t they?) sung by the RGB boys’ seiyuus is a song that I’d say is as good as its OP sister. It’s a lower energy and comfortable song that stands out to me because it’s just a chill beat that, while maybe a little generic, has an energy to it that I really like.
Final Thoughts:
The word of the day is disappointment. And I’m sticking by that. There’s not a lot about the 24th ward that I think is worth mentioning aside from the fact that the showrunners bit off more than they could chew. The potential for a good series that maybe would become a sleeper hit was there. The first episode was honestly a pretty good first episode that set the standard for what I thought the series would become. Didn’t think that would be the peak. Yeesh.
In spite of that, I still think the showrunners tried to do something good here. Within the show I could tell that there were good nuggets of ideas that they really wanted to show/portray. The struggle between a life of safety vs. a life of privacy did have some genuine merit here. And the issues in the ward definitely weren’t just haphazardly thrown in there as the very idea of the Shantytown full of poor, starving people being restricted even more certainly strikes an uncomfortable note. But they just weren’t able to bring these ideas to fruition in a way that truly made sense. And for that, I lament Tokyo 24th Ward just kind of falling to the wayside, never to be spoken about ever again once the season’s been finished.
Even so, I still wouldn’t recommend the show. There’re far too many narrative problems for it to be even worth someone’s time. If they had maybe been given more time or thinned down the plot threads to be more streamlined, I’m sure we could’ve ended up with something good. As it is…yeah, not really feeling this one. If you’re giving me a full cour of content and it’s unclear on how we got from Point A to Point B then I think the story needs another pass on the drawing board. Like seriously, what was the whole point of the graffiti war if was hardly there for an episode…
Wosee
Story structure is a continuous plot about the overlapping paths of our 3 main characters and the different decisions they take to reach the path they believe the best. As our characters go they are fleshed in an okay manner, even the majority of side characters. The artstyle is on the good side and the animation is simple okay in the few scenes there is action. As you can see i cannot say much more without spoillers but overall this show has been pretty meh to okay, not solid or anything but just okay with an also okayish ending. It could be much more you could say but thisis the kind of show you forget it exists, not because it is bad but because it took the middle option many times to be neither bad, so bad its good or good in general.
