When you hear the word "anime" what pops into your mind? Do you think of the beautiful movies of Hayao Miyazaki? Do you think of generic shonen series like Dragonball Z, Naruto, or Bleach? Perhaps you think of the artistic and Avant Garde works of Satoshi Kon or Masaaki Yuasa? For someone like me who was born in the late 1980s and grew up in the 1990s watching the anime available on American TV, I first think of highly formulaic action series with clear character archetypes, mediocre animation, and attempts to use pointless gore and nudity to make themselves edgier than the animation of other countries. Tokko aired on 2 separate channels in the US: Syfy and Chiller. It is the very epitome of mediocrity. It perhaps above all other series I can think of perfectly represents what my generation thought of "anime" at the time.
Plot and characters: 4/10
Spoilers!!! (Not that anyone reading this would care)
Tokko begins with a group of teens fighting demons that attacked them years ago and now those demons wish to finish the job. The teens all have special brands on their bodies that help the demons hunt them down. This plot point was completely stolen from Berserk, but I digress. Our teenage heroes slay the demons with magical swords and many times the action and plot heavily resembles that of Bleach. Although actually Tokko came out the year before Bleach. The demons that are causing trouble in the human world all came through a portal opened by mad alchemists seeking immortality. In order to seal the portal, the powerful 108 demons (Hindu/Buddhist reference) must be defeated and their shards reclaimed. With 108 main enemies to defeat, you would think that this series would drag on for years. Although that was indeed the writer's original intent, the series was dropped after 1 season and ended forever on a complete cliffhanger. A brief Radio Drama came out only in Japan that was supposed to wrap up the plot, but even that didn't work out! The characters are all the exact types you have seen again and again! I have said before that this is one of the most generic anime you will ever see, and I REALLY mean that.
Art and Music: 5/10
The opening "Sunny Day" is very generic J-pop tune representative of the time. The OST is completely forgettable. It isn't bad, but it isn't good either. The animation was considered mediocre then and would probably seem a bit dated to young viewers today. The people on Syfy channel really thought this anime would sell because it had some tits and blood, but no one really paid attention. This anime quickly vanished from the public mind and plunged into the deepest obscurity.
Overall: 5/10
Tokko is not a good show, neither is it a particularly bad show. It is an extremely generic action anime of the late 1990s/early 2000s. It is the exact kind of anime that me and my peers grew up watching on American TV at this time. If any of my fellow "oldtaku" want a blast from the past, they should watch an episode of Tokko and have a laugh. If younger readers of this review want to see what watching anime was like in the old days when all the anime we saw was either on TV or at the local video store, then check out an episode. This was the kind of stuff we watched, because the total quantity of anime available to us was low and the quality was also fairly low. We usually were much less cynical and jaded than today's otaku. We didn't attack series for lack of realism as if everything NEEDED to be a Chekhov play(or Ping Pong). We didn't freak out that visual quality wasn't 1080p. If something didn't absolutely SUCK ASS, like the shit Central Park Media always dumped on us, we were God damn happy! That is why we watched shit like Tokko and were content with it. Before you young ones judge us, try and put yourselves in our shoes and imagine what it was like.
