Tokyo Revengers Anime Returns with Christmas Showdown Arc

The popular Tokyo Revengers anime will return with an adaptation of the Christmas Showdown arc.

The new anime project was announced at a special event held for the series in Tokyo on Dec. 18. A trailer and new poster that were originally revealed at the event were posted online by Japanese entertainment company Pony Canyon. The new arc follows up the Bloody Halloween battle between the Toman and Valhalla gangs that was seen at the end of the anime's first season. The announcement did not specify a premiere date or how the Christmas Showdown arc would be released; it's currently unknown if the arc will be part of the anime's second season, or if it will be released on its own as a TV special, OVA (original video animation) or a movie. The event also announced that the first game in the franchise is in development, which will be released on iOS and Android devices.

Tokyo Revengers was was created by Ken Wakui in 2017, and in just four years it has managed to become one of the biggest manga and anime franchises in Japan currently, with over 40 million copies in circulation. An anime adaptation of the series premiered earlier this year with a 24-episode season. The anime series was produced by Liden Films, the animation studio that also produced the anime adaptation of The Heroic Legend of Arslan. The series was directed by Deadman Wonderland's Koichi Hatsumi, with Basilisk's Yasuyuki Mito serving as the anime's scriptwriter.

2021 also saw the premiere of the Tokyo Revengers live-action movie, which became the highest grossing non-anime film in Japan for the year. The movie outgrossed big-budget American blockbusters such as Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Fast 9: The Fast Saga in its home country. The movie stars actor Takumi Kitamura as its central protagonist, the time displaced Takemichi. Kitamura will also play another iconic anime delinquent in Netflix's upcoming adaptation of Yoshiro Togashi's beloved shonen manga Yu Yu Hakusho, which is currently scheduled to premiere in Dec. 2023.

Tokyo Revengers tells the story of Takemichi Hanegaki, a 26 year-old burnout who is devastated to learn that the only girl he ever loved, his childhood sweetheart Hinata Tachibana, has been murdered. Takemichi gets a second chance to fix his life and save Hinata's when he wakes up one day to discover that he his mind been transported back in time into his teenage self's body in 2005.

The first season of Tokyo Revengers is available for streaming on Crunchyroll. Ken Wakui's manga is available digitally from Kodansha, and will be released in print by Seven Seas Entertainment in May 2022.

Source: YouTube, Twitter