Tokyo Revengers is a popular recent manga and anime franchise, with its source material selling incredibly well in the last few years while Season 1 of the anime was a smash hit with viewers. As per its name, Tokyo Revengers takes place in Japan's capital, which gives it some immediate overlap with another esteemed manga/anime title, Tokyo Ghoul.
Fans are often tempted to compare these two popular series since they both involve Tokyo. That may seem superficial at first, but at a second glance, Tokyo Revengers and Tokyo Ghoul actually have a lot in common story-wise and character-wise, even if one involves time travel and delinquent gangs while the other involves flesh-eating monsters.
How Tokyo Revengers & Tokyo Ghoul Depict Broken Worlds
Tokyo Ghoul and Tokyo Revengers both take place in a setting very familiar to many Japanese anime fans, and they likewise twist the world's largest city into something truly monstrous. In the shadows of skyscrapers and high-rise apartments exists a gruesome underworld with its own laws and ecosystem, and Tokyo Revengers and Tokyo Ghoul explore this in separate yet similar ways.
In each series, hundreds of people are trapped in a grim world of violence and predation. Those living on the "outside" are hardly even aware of the corruption and horror under the surface of their city -- or at least, they steer clear of it. Tokyo Ghoul imagines a world where flesh-eating ghouls hunt human prey with impunity, and these territorial creatures sometimes form gangs such as Aogiri Tree or loyally follow powerful ghouls such as Yamori/Jason. The CCG investigators who track and slay these ghouls often struggle to keep up.
Similarly, Tokyo Revengers depicts Japan's criminal youth underbelly where violent, law-breaking teenage boys band together into uniformed street gangs and savagely assail one another to defend their territory or pride. There's nothing supernatural about that, but then again, delinquents and youth gangs are all too real for many anime fans, which makes it even more chilling. Too often, frustrated or lost youths fall off the grid and embrace a life of senseless violence and crime, fighting in the concrete jungle of Tokyo while hidden from plain view.
Thematically, both series are depicting a world that is "wrong" in Tokyo Ghoul's own words, and the protagonists can't stand it. Nothing good comes from punks joining violent street gangs, or vicious ghouls and merciless CCG investigators slaughtering many innocents on the opposite side. Their streets are running red with blood in these series, and a lot of the victims are actually innocent. Tokyo is suffering, so it's up to the protagonists to fix that and change the future.
The Roles Of Ken Kaneki & Takemichi Hanagaki
Tokyo Revengers and Tokyo Ghoul feature similar protagonists, even if the former series is about youth gangs and the latter is about seinen-style gore and monsters. Ken Kaneki and Takemichi Hanagaki are both relatively innocent and naive male leads when their respective arcs begin, but both get dragged into Tokyo's brutal underworld to fix the "wrong" and somehow create a better future. Kaneki and Takemichi are serious underdogs but both acclimate to the horrific worlds around them, and even start to embrace their own inner monsters. They can't be a punching bag for long if they intend to survive and change this world.
The kind and gentle Takemichi goes back in time with Naoto's help to prevent the rise of Tetta Kisaki within the Tokyo Manji gang, and in so doing, prevent the tragic death of his beloved Hinata. To do this, Takemichi must re-enter the world of delinquents and do as they do, even if it's terrifying and painful. He endures all kinds of verbal abuse, threats and repeated beatings during his adventure, but slowly and surely rises in the ranks of Toman to gain a position of influence and change the ways of Draken and Mikey.
Similarly, Tokyo Ghoul's Kaneki became a half-ghoul after his encounter with Rize Kamishiro and learned to embrace his ghoulish side to wield the necessary power to truly change his world. He hated the violence that ghouls and humans inflicted on one another but had to join the fight and fight fire with fire, just like the time-traveling Takemichi. The great city of Tokyo needs heroes like these more than ever, and everything is at stake.
