Tokyo Revelation

Tokyo Revelation is a story about a lot of things - a hell of a lot of things - squeezed into a scant 60 minutes. Stripped down to its core, it's the tale of demons and their human accomplice, Akito Kobayashi, in their attempt to destroy all life, take over the world, cover the lands in a plague of darkness... you get the idea. Pretty standard demonic activities. Akito intends to do this by summoning the Devil himself, and to do so he must sacrifice loads of magnetite, a bizarre demon energy-source. He finds this in a girl named Sake, a student in his new class.

Fair enough, that's the villains accounted for. We then have Yosuke, Sake's well-meaning yet overprotective boyfriend, three members of a mysterious ninja clan, another equally mysterious group of what appears to be seers who do God knows what, and the hero of the piece, one Kojiro Soma, who grew up as Akito's only friend.

Okay, here goes... So Akito and his demonic friends (but are they really trustworthy, one wonders) are out to kill Sake, the ninjas want to save Sake to, you know, prevent the end of the world, the seers are decidedly odd but one little girl amongst their ranks seems to be in love with Kojiro, so she tries to save him, the demons want rid of Kojiro for reasons of their own, Akito wants the demons to get Yosuke for mocking him in front of Kojiro, and, when he discovers the demons are out to kill Kojiro, he wants the demons dead. On top of that we have Kojiro's little brother, Sinshiro a.k.a Convenient Plot Device/Comic Relief, random possessed schoolmates of Sake, a valiant dog, a nasty beast who goes by the name of Cerberus, Satan, and a collection of gods, goddesses and Cobalts. All this in an hour, folks. There's barely time to breathe. Plus we are treated to a couple of handy flashbacks, and the weirdest transfer-student introduction in the world. You have to see it to believe it.

I didn't really expect much of this anime. It seemed to be another run-of-the-mill good versus evil yarn, and it wasn't until a teary Akito embraced Kojiro on a rooftop that I realised that there was a whole lotta shonen-ai rampaging around the place. From that second onwards I was hooked, not to mention surprised. It hadn't said in the TV guide that the villain of the piece was in love with the hero, and despite the hero's initial discomfort there was definitely a chance of reciprocation.

Looking for some nice moral grey-areas? Step right up. Where else would you be rooting for a guy who'd just sent hundreds to their deaths? Looking for a lot of things that aren't really explained, more cheese than you can fit in a delicatessen, gratuitous female nudity and even a little bit of spontaneous and frankly inexplicable yuri? Then this, you bizarre individual, is for you. Looking for an engaging, interesting love story between two guys, with an unexpected - yet promising - ending, enough angst to turn a kid into a devil-worshipping psycho, and those wonderful words; "I love you"? Then get hold of this film. It's a (mostly) harmless, brainless kinda anime, but its fun to watch and just deep enough to turn a few cogs. It's not going to revolutionise televisual entertainment, and nor does it try to - it's trying to entertain you, and if you let it, it will succeed.