The Summer 2025 Anime Preview Guide - Tougen Anki

Shiki Ichinose's blood is Oni, and his father's is Momotarou. Normally, those with Momotarou blood hunt the Oni―but Shiki's father refused to kill him as an infant. Instead, he adopted Shiki and raised him despite the rebellious attitude and dangerous temper that comes with Oni blood. When a member of the Momotarou Agency kills Shiki's father, he vows to avenge him.

Tougen Anki is based on the manga series by Yura Urushibara. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll, Netflix, and Amazon Prime on Fridays.

So far as I can tell, the Tougen Anki manga is the first and so far only major work from author Yura Urushibara, which is pretty obvious by the state of this story as of Episode 2. It contains all the hallmarks of an earnest but inexperienced writer's debut work: An overreliance on familiar tropes and story beats; a simplistic approach to characterization and worldbuilding; and, most apparent of all, a lack of confidence in the story's ability to communicate necessary information through any method other than the most blunt and direct expositional dialogue imaginable. There are some good ideas scattered about Tougen Anki here and there, but seeing as most of them are just carbon-copied from other famous shonen manga, the only way for Tougen Anki to stand out from the competition is to absolutely nail the execution.

Tougen Anki does not nail the execution.

Outside of a brief dream sequence before the opening credits hit, this second episode of Tougen Anki takes place almost entirely in a single, bare room. I'm pretty certain we don't see an establishing shot of any other location until over fifteen minutes have passed. In this room is an eccentric man who performs fancy push-ups with his umbrella and moves around on roller skates. As this man, Naito, absolutely refuses to let anyone forget, he wears roller skates because he is obsessed with efficiency. Meanwhile, Shiki sits there, tied to a chair, feeling angry and unable to control his emotions.

Naito will verbally remind everyone of Shiki's one personality trait, too. Naito likes efficiency. Shiki is angry. Later on, after going on and on about the nature of Oni and Momotaro and how to control blood powers through focusing your emotions, Naito will remind us again that he likes efficiency, and that Shiki is too angry. This is why Shiki has been kidnapped and forced to attend Rasetsu Academy, which is absolutely not like other schools, Naito tells us, just in case none of us could infer that based on the fact that it is built inside the earthen walls of an isolated island and houses an army of demon hunters. Also, don't forget: Naito likes efficiency, and Shiki is angry.

Even if the excruciatingly brain-dead exposition delivery mechanism that this anime calls a “script” weren't so rote, the uninspired filmmaking would still have sunk this episode. Like last week, the fight scene between Shiki and Naito is one time there is any life at all to be found amidst the constant cutting back and forth between two characters we don't give a damn about and their conversations about world-building elements that a fourth grader could have picked up on through context clues. The visuals of the different blood powers continue to impress, and so long as you forget about the fact that we're still stuck in the boring-ass room and wading through even more exposition, you might even find yourself having a bit of fun.

If all Tougen Anki can offer every week is a half-hearted promise of maybe one good fight scene and nineteen minutes of slop, then I am certain I don't need to see any more of it to know that this show is not for me. I can only recommend it to the hypothetical viewer who has never seen a single battle anime based on a children's comic before in their life. They might be able to get something out of this show, but even then, why settle for something so third-rate?

The minute recently expelled delinquent Shiki tells his old man, “I never want to become a lame adult like you,” we know that his father is going to die before the end of Tougen Anki's premiere. Shiki himself is a little too oblivious to realize he is the protagonist of a “Kid suddenly finds he can transform into a demon-monster-ultimate-weapon-type-of-thing” anime, so he doesn't know that he's just signed his old man's death warrant, but that's simply what happens when a kid mouths off to their parents in a show like this. How else is he going to feel guilty and revenge-motivated enough to kill the bad guy in however many episodes this series is going to produce?

Tougen Anki has exactly one thing going for it, and that is the stylish action it is capable of delivering once it is dunning speedrunning through its cliches and gives Shiki his demon powers. The fight he has against his father's killer is genuinely pretty badass. The choreography is good, the animation is consistent, and the show takes full advantage of Shiki's specifically gun-based blood powers. I was watching a video about the history of Todd MacFarlane's Spawn comics yesterday, and I remarked to my wife how I miss the days when a comic could have heroes and villains both whose entire catalogue of superpowers was some variation of having huge muscles and an infinite amount of giant guns to pull out of whatever vacuum they generated from back in the '90s. That whole aesthetic is gloriously stupid, and Tougen Anki channels that vibe with a single-minded purpose. You will be impressed by how many guns Shiki can shoot guys with, damn it.

Unfortunately, every other element of Tougen Anki is weak sauce, as of this premiere. The biggest issue is Shiki himself. He's a typical “asshole that yells a lot” character, and he's given no one to act off of who might help put his personality into a more likable perspective, since his doomed dad is also a gruff asshole who yells a lot. The show premiered with an English dub, which can sometimes help in situations like this, but while the actors do the best with what they're given, the material is just too weak and literally translated to be compelling. Hearing Shiki scream “Old maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan” as his father dies in his arms is unintentionally hilarious in both Japanese and English. I checked.

So, if you're interested in a show that can deliver cool fight scenes, then I have good news for you, since Tougen Anki will probably have that in spades. If you ask anything more than that from your anime, though, then don't expect much from this one. It's a grimmer and edgier Blue Exorcist that has ditched all of that show's charm and replaced it with…well, nothing at all.

Wow, it feels like the show went from speeding through all of its generic tropes to slowing down to a complete halt in episode two. It's ironic that, in an episode that's halfway filled with action and introduces our main character to the obvious mentor, everything feels really slow and clunky. I appreciate that this episode establishes many more rules about how the Oni blood powers work. The show also has to establish some level of hierarchy power, but outside of that, I think I found this episode actually more boring than the first one. There's only so much you can do to make two characters sitting in a room talking interesting, but I think I would've taken that over the actual action that I ended up getting.

I think that scene where Shiki is dragging his arm across the floor to get more blood is a perfect example of just how slow the pacing felt. I feel like a shot like that needs to be a lot more dynamic to keep me engaged. Instead, I have to listen to somebody slowly narrating different possibilities as the show moves in slow motion. But I also know that whatever cool thing our protagonist is about to do isn't going to have any major effect, so I'm just left waiting.

I think my problem with this is ironically similar to the problem I had in the first episode; I just don't know what I'm supposed to get attached to. I don't care about Shiki's relationship with his father, so listening to him screaming and demanding answers doesn't really do anything for me. I don't know enough about why the Oni organization exists; all I know is why Shiki would have a personal interest in it. There are now more characters literally in the last five minutes of the episode, so I have to watch next week in order to see if I'll even care about them either. There's just really not a lot here outside of stuff that I have seen dozens of times before. I hope the show gets better and establishes a bit more of an identity moving forward, but for now, I feel like I'm not really missing much.

Wow, Tougen Anki just sped run through every generic edgy shōnen action trope. Ever watch something that feels like it's trying to satisfy a checklist? Edgy teenager with a very off-putting hyper obsession? Check. Adoptive father that he's at odds with? Check. Is the kid secretly some demon or creature that needs to be executed? Check. Father dies in a heroic bit of self-sacrifice? Check. Kid gets adopted into a secret organization with a bunch of similar teens? You bet your bottom dollar!

In some ways, I could praise the show for trying to be economical in getting through all of the setup as quickly as possible. The problem is that I felt no attachment to anything that was going on outside of “oh, that kind of looks cool”. We witness only one conversation between our lead and his father before things take a turn for the worse, and I'm sorry, that's not enough to establish any emotional connection when we get to the eventual noble sacrifice, which I immediately called out when he entered the screen. Considering that was the main emotional crux of the episode, the rest of it just boiled down to a lot of yelling and flashy action.

I have to give a lot of props to Zeno Robinson because he is acting his butt off during this episode with all of those screams and pleas of desperation. If I did feel anything in this episode, it's primarily because of his performance and how he always tries to give it 110%. I liked how flashy everything looked with the oni blood powers, even if it did just feel like I was watching a scene from a Marvel game at times. I'm not just saying that because the powers of the Oni look like Venom and Carnage from the Marvel universe. The action seems to make use of cell-shaded 3D models to go for some more intense choreography. This works when the Oni are CGI because the blood texture on their body hides that well, but when it's just some guy swinging swords around, it looks like I'm watching a video game cutscene.

I'm sure this premiere is doing something for people who like these types of series, like Blue Exorcist or Deadman Wonderland. I need a little bit more than that to get completely invested. Maybe the ball will start rolling once we get introduced to the other misfit characters and get a sense for what exactly this organization is about. Otherwise, I'm not feeling this one as much as I thought I would.

Part of me wants to apologize to Gachiakuta this season. I was harsh on that series starting out—but maybe that's just because I needed an anime like Tougen Anki to remind me what some grade-A shonen slop was actually like. Forget any of the defining features expected of modernized energized action cartoons at this point. Tougen Anki is content to serve as a local cover band playing all the hits, with nary a cowbell or whammy bar to zazz things up even a little.

I just watched this first episode and can already feel it sloughing off my brain, so I'm not even entirely sure where to begin. Main boy Shiki is about as baseline as it gets, defined only by his love of firearms in order to inform the hilarious edgelordy deployment of them he does once his oni powers kick in at the end of this episode. Besides that, he got expelled from school before the beginning of the show, so I don't even have any classmate comparisons to help me get a handle on him. He's got no one to contrast with beyond his adopted father figure—whom if you've seen any of these shows before you know is not long for this world. God the expository dialogue in this show is the worst—as Shiki loudly declares his lack of blood relation to dear-old-soon-to-be-dead-dad for the whole audience to hear. How else would I guess?

At least I can't disparage Tougen Anki for taking too long to run through its stock obstacle course. This thing gets going quickly enough, with old dudes running other old dudes over with cars as "shocking" exposition about who's a descendant of an oni and who's one of Momotaro's gets blurted out.

Look, I'd probably like this show more if it was confirmed to be comprised of as much cool old dudes fighting each other as this opening episode indicated. But sadly, that's just not meant to be. I was willing to bring my rating of this episode up by a whole half a point had Shiki's grandpa actually subverted my expectations and survived his "such heroic nonsense" stand, but no. It's all basic sacrifices and tragically timed power awakenings before credits roll to indicate that Shiki will, in fact, be joining a secret society of oni superpower users to march onto the rest of whatever this anime has to offer.

Beyond that, what else does it have? There's a decent amount of sauce on the backstory part of the production at the beginning, but it dries up before things really get going. Shiki's dramatically revealed Oni form is a smooth gun-tendrilled knockoff of Marvel's Carnage who barely does anything to hold my interest once the cool old men are done fighting. The aesthetic of the show is couched in glowing pink and purplish black that's neat-looking for a second until you realize how hard it's covering for any further sense of style the anime is clearly lacking. I can't believe I'm saying this, but if you need some edgy standby shonen in your season, you'd be way better off getting to the aforementioned Gachiakuta. At least that has notoriety in a few ways I can still recall. Tougen Anki is categorically destined for the dustbin of this cour.

Tougen Anki feels like it was assembled from parts of other, more popular shonen battle anime. It's a little bit Chainsaw Man, a little bit Demon Slayer, a little bit Jujutsu Kaisen, probably some others I don't recognize because I avoid battle shonen as a general rule. It doesn't have a lot of big ideas like the season's other, more high-profile offering in the same genre, Gachiakuta; it's just a punk-ass teenager who discovers he can turn his body into guns when his adoptive father gets murdered in front of him.

And you know what? I think I had more outright fun watching it than anything else so far this season. I even felt something once or twice.

Take the first scene: Shiki sits at his desk in his room full of airsoft guns, chuckling on the phone about how he was expelled from school. He hangs up, and his body language shifts, now looking uncomfortable and lost at having been kicked out of education. In the space of just a couple of minutes, I feel like I know something about the protagonist, and I didn't have anyone sit down and tell me or have an omniscient narrator explain it. The dialogue continues in this manner – not naturalistic, exactly, but it's smooth and avoids clunky exposition by showing instead of telling whenever possible, and having characters explain things at points where it makes sense instead of long “as you know” style monologues. Is a punk with a heart of gold the most original or exciting thing in the world? Nah. But he has a personality, and it's competently conveyed through character acting. That goes a long way.

The action direction is just as slick, outside of a couple of clunky shifts into CG and an ill-realized smoke effect. Shiki's power, being able to form guns out of his goopy red oni body, is not only seeded well with his airsoft obsession, but it's… kind of cool. This is coming from someone who doesn't usually care for gun-driven action shows! The climactic scene takes place in a big, empty warehouse, making for a fairly straightforward fight of characters running at each other with weapons without interacting with the environment, which isn't the most thrilling, but the reds and golds of the lighting set the tone and mood just right.

Tougen Anki is pure junk food. It's a bag of Doritos, dusted with fake cheese, salt, and MSG powder. And sometimes, that's exactly what you're in the mood for.