I was very harsh with the first half of this season of Tougen Anki. I thought this show was a by-the-numbers shounen that barely had anything new or inventive to bring to the table. Anything unique it did bring was vastly undercooked to the point where it barely mattered at all in the grand scheme of things. I thought the designs and presentation were incredibly generic. I felt nothing for almost all of the characters in the show. In fact, I went so far as to pretty much use this show as a poster child for everything that is wrong with shounen series. My friend put it best when they described the show as “the kind of shounen that people are actually talking about when they are describing why they hate shounen.” But I wanted to give the show the benefit of the doubt and hope that the story would get better in its next arc. To be fair, it did get better…but only by the smallest of margins.

The Nerima arc continues a lot of the narrative shortcomings that plagued the previous arc. Some fights absolutely mean nothing emotionally in the grand scheme. Situations are either under-explained or overly explained with very little room in between, and I'm not really feeling much for most of the characters involved because they don't even feel like actual characters. In some cases, it's even worse here because anything that was set up in the previous arc seems to have more or less gotten sidelined. Most of the extended cast, like Shiki's classmates, are pushed to the side to the point where I genuinely forgot they were in this show for large swathes of episodes. Most of them are such non-entities in the show that one of them even has an entire fight scene to himself that takes up an episode, and I couldn't even remember his name.

While I can't say much more about the music as it still lacks a real identity outside of a very rare insert song, the action scenes and choreography have definitely improved. There are more dramatic camera angles, some creative set pieces like fighting underground or fighting at the top of massive skyscrapers, and the dramatic finishes can be a little entertaining. It definitely seems like the animation team was finally able to perfect the 3D model integration that they were going for. It genuinely does feel like it fully improved throughout the show. However, there are two major issues with the combat. The first is that while all the fights themselves are creative, there's that little voice in the back of my head, wondering how any of this is even possible or how the powers of this world work. It was established very early on that the Momotaro would make use of bacteria in order to manifest their abilities, similar to how the Oni would manipulate blood. The show will go out of its way sometimes to explain how all of these powers work, like how one person can use blood as a radar system by manipulating the vibrations of the blood, or how Momotaro can use their bacteria to infect another person in order to see through their eyes. Then, of course, there are also basic manifestations like turning your blood or the bacteria into solid weapons. That's cool and very easy to understand.

But then some powers are so specific and random that I'm not really sure what logic they're supposed to lean into. There's one character who can use their powers based on what tarot cards they draw, while another character pulls a random weapon out of their butt every standby phase. Thematically, it's a little bit cool, but I'm not really sure what logic these abilities are seeped into. When I say logic, I don't mean real-world logic. I mean, the show itself doesn't do a good enough job of explaining how these powers actually work, only what they do. It's extremely lopsided. When you have episodes dedicated to fights between characters with completely random abilities, as an audience member, I can't get invested in the tension of the fight because it feels like, at any point, a character could just pull a random atomic bomb out of their butt. There needs to be logic in the way that a fight is constructed so I can properly break down the character back-and-forth. If I can't do that, then you might as well throw two action figures against each other and call it a day.

The other reason why I can't get into its action is that there's no emotional stake in almost any of these fights. Characters will show up out of nowhere for the first time and explain their motivation, like it had episodes' worth of backstory informing them. I don't care about one character developing an intense rivalry with another just because he likes to fight. I don't care about that one member of Shiki's class winning his fight because his only character trait is that he gets angry. I don't care about one of the Momotaro being obsessed with fate and tarot cards because these aren't character traits, they're just gimmicks and nothing more. They're legitimately only two elements of this show that got emotional beat from me, and they weren't even impressive. I was so desperately starved for some type of connection that I latched onto the nearest thing I could

The first one is Mudano, who is probably one of the only legitimate characters in this entire series. His backstory isn't explicitly laid out; if anything, it's one of the only intentionally vague elements of the show that I think is pulled off with any type of respect or gravitas. He used to be a very dangerous Oni who killed a bunch of Momotaro throughout the war. But now, he's mellowed out a lot and just wants to teach the next generation so that no more people have to die. When other people are fighting, they keep making comments about how Mudano is not as ruthless as he used to be, and I find that interesting about him. His fights feel like a glimpse into his backstory, and every time he shows up, I feel like his relationship with other characters is slightly recontextualized. See, the show CAN have a decently well-written character!

The only other character that I did actually care about in the show was Jin. Getting his backstory and understanding why he's such an angsty teen was fine. He's legitimately one of the only characters in the show who actually goes through any type of change from the beginning of the show. He puts his life on the line and realizes that he wants to be there for others to prevent any more deaths like his family's. He even opens up to Shiki at one point, and I feel sorry for him. It's not a lot, but it's something.

There's also the new Mikado, the Momotaro, that gets introduced just to have a friendship betrayal storyline with Shiki, but even then, it's so unimpressive and basic. His relationship with Shiki is that of two characters who are similar but on opposite sides of a war. It is a tale as old as time, and you've heard it a million times before. In fact, the minute he showed up, I immediately knew every single narrative beat that was going to follow between these two all the way up until the end of the show. I don't like it because it's predictable and very shallow since these two only knew each other throughout the course of maybe a day or two, but their friendship apparently was so deep that I was supposed to feel emotionally invested in the overall betrayal that led to the show's final fight.

The actors in the show across both languages are trying so hard to make this material sound more important than it actually is. The only reason I want to mention the plot point between Shiki and Mikado is that Zeno Robinson and Brian Timothy Anderson have such great chemistry in the dub, which is what I primarily watched. Anderson sounds betrayed over finding out that Shiki is an Oni, like he put his heart and soul into that performance. Damien Hass was also really fun in the cartoonishly evil way as Shinya. Dude played the villain that you absolutely want to get demolished perfectly. Almost everyone's performance made me want to get more invested in the show than I was, but… I just couldn't.

This is, hands-down, probably one of the worst shounen series I've ever seen. At best, it's incredibly safe and predictable, while at worst, it just feels boring or an insult to my intelligence. I wish there were more here that I could latch onto. Aside from some pretty action and one or two decent setups, most of this show just felt like a slog. It got to a point where it felt like I was finishing a show out of obligation to write this review rather than because I was genuinely interested in what I was watching. That, to me, is one of the worst feelings that you could leave a reviewer with. If you were at all curious about the show, trust me, you're better off watching something else.