Tokyo Underground

I enjoyed this series but lets face the reality this has already done before, and better so don't expect much, this is an average story about the adventure of a more or less average boy pushed forward by his feelings (I'm talking about love) to fight against all the obstacles.

Actually the story isn't so bad but I get the feeling I've saw the same things happend to a boy inside the cockpit of a huge robot, welding a sword or following a dangerous path seeking revenge.

Sound effects didn't grab my attention, and some parts of the plot aren't very convincing. May be the worst ... part are the supporting caracters because they are too swallow with many cliches.

So go ahead and spend good time; there is a small dose of humor, cuteness, courage, despair as the main character grows stronger, and defeats overconfident and too talkative enemies (yeah monologues really heat up fighting scenes).

"Tokyo Underground" is your typical mindless superpower action flick. A boy skilled at fighting encounters a mysterious girl one fine day. One thing leads to another; he soon discovers his inner superpowers, and ends up trying to protect the girl from the army of bad guys who wants her for their own evil purposes. Sounds pretty generic right? There can't possibly be much originality in this show, right? Right. There really isn't anything special going on here.

The animation and action are bog standard, with everyone's superpower being elemental in nature; there's nothing that's not been seen many times before. Likewise, the sound and the voice ... acting are also nothing out of the ordinary. The plot is fairly predictable and I have a feeling that the ending is pretty bad, even though I can't remember exactly what happens in it, such was the impression "Tokyo Underground" made on me.

The character department represents both the best and the worst this anime has to offer. The main character belongs in a more uncommon class of shounen heroes - the ones who are actually accomplished fighters from the start, instead of one of those regular wimps with huge potential. The wimpy character archetype also appears in this anime in the form of the hero's sidekick, who is also the comic relief guy, a character who survives more on luck than anything else. He does surprisingly well in his role and is probably my favourite character in this anime (though that's not saying much). His persistent attempts to get another character to remember his name is probably the most amusing thing in this rather dull anime. Ironically, I also can't remember his name (nor anyone else's, for that matter).

On the other hand, the anime also has some really contrived character interactions. In one such scene early on, two people, one of which is the protagonist, both got badly hurt trying to protect a third person, and for some reason, the person they were protecting got all distressed over the protagonist - who she barely knew at that point - and did not seem to care about the other badly injured protector, who was actually a close friend of hers. You can see what went wrong here: in an over-zealous attempt to involve the hero in an obligatory romance, the makers have neglected to make the interactions believable. The series had quite a few of this kind of scenes, so it's by no means an isolated case.

All in all, "Tokyo Underground" isn't terribly bad; there were some entertaining moments, though nothing to get too excited about. It's a forgettable experience that's difficult to recommend due to its total lack of notable aspects and originality - why would you watch this when there are plenty of similar but superior shows out there does a far better job in every way? So move along; not much to see here.

Tokyo Underground feels like a lot of other shonen action series from around this point in time. You have a guy with short hair, average height, decent fighter, spirited, and a good heart. You also have the sweet maiden character who is completely useless or the tough but not really tomboyish girl. This one has both.

Tokyo underground has all these things in common and more but it falls short in a few things making it actually lesser than a lot of the others. First of all in our main character. Even though he is supposed to be such a good fighter he never uses any ... of those skills after he gets his power. In fact the only thing he EVER does is an air slash. It's the only attack he knows or uses and besides the rare occasion that he uses the wind to cushion a fall or guard it's the only time he ever uses his wind. They act like he gets stronger by the end but because it's still the same attack you can't see this besides the fact that his wind can now apparently blow back stronger opponents. But at no point during the series does he show any growth or change in the slightest. The rest of the cast isn't much better. Chelsea has more variety in her attacks but she never changes or gets stronger either. The nerdy kid gets a gun but uses it maybe 4 or 5 times throughout the entire series. I could go on but we'd be here all day.

This leads to the second problem which is all the fights are fairly boring. Rumina just dodges attacks until he can launch his wind slash, Chealsea is a little cooler since she punches things but they aren't very impressive either, and the Nerd is just dead weight. Also none of the enemies put up a really impressive fight. The fights are done poorly and the enemies are almost all defeated with the heroes half trying. No one ever really seems to truly push them to their limit and thus there is no fear of them losing or excitement in watching it.

The third problem with this series is the pacing. The plot has a habit of slowing down at points for the sake of establishing characters, plot points, etc and that's good but then it seems to speed through to the next slow point making things feel rushed especially near the end. Leading up to the last few episodes is a talk of the Obligatory fight tournament arc of shonen. Well they spend a few episodes gathering members and preparing for the tournament....which we never really see. All but one or two matches are just glanced over and then the tournament doesn't even finish in the end for spoiler reasons. I swear they spent more time talking about and preparing for this thing than they spent actually doing it. Because of this the pacing just feels choppy and unfocused a lot.

Overall it's not a bad series exactly but it's only average at best and there are so many other shonen that at least do a better job with the characters, fighting, and pacing.