A leak reported
that Ken Wakui , author of the popular “ Tokyo Revengers ”
franchise , will begin a new manga about gangs and supernatural powers now
in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump , titled “ Negai no
Astro .” While this should be a positive announcement, it
seems that netizens have not forgotten the gruesome ending to Ken Wakui's flagship
work.
What happened with
the ending of “Tokyo Revengers”? In addition to being rushed and
anticlimactic, the series finale also serves as a sort of excuse for everything
else that happened during the rest of the story. Everything is undone
by the sudden introduction of a MacGuffin (a plot excuse that motivates the
characters and the development of a story, and that is actually of no relevance
in itself), and all the characters and the development they undertook
throughout The rest of the story is erased in favor of accelerating towards an
inexplicable happy ending .
The
reason for this sudden acceleration towards the end is unknown. It is unlikely that the series
was at risk of cancellation, as it was still one of the best-selling manga
series of all time at the time of its conclusion. Likewise, the author
of the series, Ken Wakui, did not make any public announcement or mention that
he had any problems with the publication of the series, whether due to stress
or other health-related factors.
However, if we look
at the last story arc of “Tokyo Revengers” as a whole, we realize that the
series was quickly losing its footing. The first problem, and the most
obvious, is that the final arc of the series never managed to reach the same
height as the penultimate one. In the penultimate arc, the series'
most prominent antagonist, Tetta Kisaki, was finally defeated and the central
conflict of the rest of the story was brought to an end. As a result,
almost all of the characters reached some kind of conclusion to their arcs,
except for Mikey and other characters who hadn't been given much attention up
to that point.
As a result of this,
the final arc introduced several new characters and conflicts, all of which
would have to be covered and wrapped up by the arc's conclusion. While
they had decent narrative weight and importance, these new stories and
characters couldn't build the same kind of story as the one crafted over
several arcs and over the course of several years.
This also
affects another fundamental issue: The final arc of “Tokyo Revengers” is very
rushed compared to the rest of the series. While other arcs took much more time to present the
characters' stories and show their possible conflicts with each other, in several
sections of the final arc of "Tokyo Revengers" the characters'
stories, flashbacks and main plot points They are covered in one or two
chapters. This leads to some very messy major reveals and less
impactful story arcs overall.
Finally, there's the
matter of new additions to the story world and lore in the final arc. In
addition to several revisions to the story to allow for the introduction of new
characters, the central concept of protagonist Takemichi's time-travel
abilities becomes much more of a MacGuffin. These abilities
begin to function in whatever way the author needs them to, resulting in sloppy
writing and a loss of interest in everything the characters do.
Can Ken Wakui regain
the trust of readers?
Source: WSJ_Manga
