#highschool arc

WARNING FOR MEGA BIG TOKYO MANJI REVENGERS SPOILERS!!!

So in Part 1 we established that Mikey honestly needed an entire part/arc just about saving him because of his dark impulses and huge serial killer potential >>> aka yeeting Kisaki and disbanding Toman was not enough because now we need to save him from himself.

So, Mikey is dark, but why does Takemichi need to go back just to save him? Well in the first place, part of who Takemichi is is someone who wants to save everyone, and Mikey isn’t just anyone, but actually someone very important to Takemichi. We see their friendship development with cute and wholesome moments, we see how devastated Takemichi is when he witnesses Mikey’s death even after Mikey nearly murders him (going so far as to have flashbacks, placing his importance to Takemichi right up there with Hinata), and my dude literally says he thinks of Mikey’s smile when he contemplates how happy he is getting married in the good future (i.e. he really can’t be happy unless Mikey is too). A lot of people found this annoying, but I was actually quite moved because this is just who Takemichi is, and because he saw that Mikey was Drowning and wanted to be saved even when I the reader didn’t

I’ll be honest, when Mikey tells Takemichi to let go of his hand and let him die when he tries to commit suicide by jumping off a building, I was like “let him have his peace Takemichi”. Clearly no matter what Mikey will always turn dark, and he himself knows this, so let him end it. And then Takemichi screams at Mikey to ask for help, and this happens:

And I felt this scene like a slap to the face and a stab in the heart. I had accepted Mikey’s dark turn as inevitable just like Mikey had, which can be seen in the video he leaves Takemichi telling him not to try and save Mikey 12 years later in their future. This is important because this is after he hears about what he’s like in the future, so even before anything happens he’s already putting measures in place with the assumption he’ll turn dark.

And Mikey seems okay with that, doing things like separating himself from everyone else (we know that in the good future, no one has been in contact with Mikey for roughly a decade), and indeed he ends up in a different dangerous gang. He portrays this as his role and destiny to the point that he encourages the people around him to accept it too. Just like Draken, Mitsuya, and Chifuyu, I too kind of thought Takemichi would be better off leaving Mikey to do what he is ‘destined’ to, especially when Takemichi finally got the happiest ending after everything that happened. 

But Mikey is not a bad person. Technically speaking, he hasn’t actually committed any of these atrocities, yet he goes as far as to prepare measures against falling to these dark impulses. The scene where he asks Takemichi to keep him in line is one big piece of evidence that he already knew about his dark impulses, but believed he could overcome them. 

Once again, only after hearing of his various futures does he stop taking measures to help himself and start taking measures to save the people around him (i.e. through making that video to prevent Takemichi from coming after him, avoiding contact with all the people he cares about so they don’t get caught up in whatever he becomes, etc.).

And Takemichi is the only one who sees this, who recalls that scene. Really, all the pieces are there for us ourselves to understand Mikey, and really the chapters in the ‘good future’ leading up to the confrontation with Future Mikey set us up for the new arc, and show why it was always going to happen, right from the beginning. 

So Mikey can be, and most importantly, unlike what we were all tricked into thinking, wants to be saved. The signs were all there from the beginning, so the recent developments aren’t random. If anything, the entire scene solidifies the fact that he wants to, and should be allowed to be saved, not only because his eyes are no longer ‘dead’ when he finally breaks down and asks for help, but also because he clearly wants to be helped so bad, he created a time leap connection with Takemichi, which we know from earlier no longer works with Naoto as he no longer has “an intense desire to change the future”.

Edd gets flustered, thinking about it. Him, getting to kiss Matt? Sounds like something out of a fairytale. One where Matt is prince charming, perhaps. It was pretty tempting, actually.

“..M-maybe… th-there are a few times that th-the thought crosses m-my mind…” Edd sneaks a glance at Matt. Very tempting indeed. 

I said in my review of Tokyo Manji Revengers I would talk about why the new arc was inevitable.

WARNING!!! SUPER SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Right, so first of all Mikey (real name: Sano Manjirou) is one of my favourite characters. Don’t ask me why, I don’t pick who I fall for. Anyway I found a lot of people were pissed and upset at the new arc, which arrives right after we think the madness has ended: everyone is healthy and happy, Hinata and Takemichi are about to get married, and Toman has been disbanded. Naoto and Takemichi can’t do the handshake time leap thing anymore either.

And then boom, we find out Mikey is decidedly not happy and healthy, and actually part of a different sus gang since Toman no longer exists. Our boy Takemichi tries to ignore it (”this is the path Mikey chose”), remembers how he promised to act in place of Mikey’s deceased older brother and knock some sense into him when he goes astray. 

So naturally our “I want to save everyone including Mikey even if I hafta ditch my wedding” protagonist goes after Mikey, gets shot like three times by Mikey, and just barely prevents Mikey’s suicide attempt. He announces he will do whatever it takes to help Mikey so he gets his happy ending with the rest of them, and then we get this heartwarming scene:

And this scene shows just how much Takemichi cares, compared even to us, the readers, but let me build up to that.

Let’s start from the beginning. Mikey is the leader of the Tokyo Manji Group (Toman), as well as one of the founding members. We learn about him pretty early on, when Naoto informs Takemichi that he must “prevent Sano Manjirou and Kisaki Tetta from meeting at all costs”. Initially you assume because these two are the ones who formed the gang, but that isn’t true as shortly into the manga we learn Toman already exists as quite a righteous group... at least as righteous as a gang run by middle and high school delinquents can be.  

Of course we piece together the actual underlying story to all of this drama right beside (or sometimes way before) Takemichi, one of the main factors being how Kisaki is responsible for turning Toman corrupt, into a gang that dabbles in underworld stuff like drugs, human trafficking, and all around terrorizing. We follow Takemichi as he thwarts all of Kisaki’s plans while on his ‘missions’ into the past. But what is often implied in everyone of his missions: a lot of the time, the future of Toman is based around Mikey.

I mean, duh, Mikey is the leader of Toman. But Mikey has always been an rather signifcant character from the very beginning of the manga, and not just becaue he’s the first one to notice and recruit Takemichi into the gang. See, from the very first ‘mission’, it’s always been about Mikey: save Draken because when he dies, Mikey turns dark. Mikey turns dark, Kisaki takes advantage (?), Toman turns corrupt, Hinata dies to Truck-kun.

All the missions are in some way all centered around how they affect Mikey, what happens to Mikey, how does this change Mikey, and thus how does this affect Toman, and then subsequently the future lives of everyone Takemichi cares about, which extends beyond just Hinata and Naoto as the story progresses. However we, and Takemichi too, assume the bad future is fixed after Kisaki’s turn with Truck-kun ensures he is no longer a threat and scheming to turn Mikey dark so he can be his ‘shadow leader’ or whatever the heck he thought would make him bae material for Hinata (idk Kisaki has been and will always be strange to me for some reason, but ig that’s why I found him a villain I was actually wary of).

Anyway we all assume everything is done and done because with Kisaki gone, there’s no one to turn Mikey dark, and since Mikey disbands Toman, there’s no gang to turn corrupt, right? Well let’s go back to what gave us the ‘bad ends’ in the first place.

Mikey has dark impulses. It’s stated explicitly. But we can see this in the way he gets violent, his completely dead and dark eyes, and the way it always feels like eggshells around him, his past, the people around him (Draken, Baji, Kazutora, Ema, Shinichiro, Takemichi). Most notably, the way that once he turns dark, he turns dark, going on killing sprees. Frequently he becomes a murderer in various bad futures, becoming someone who has fallen to those dark impulses. One memorable ‘bad end’ had Mikey murdering everyone from Toman in various an painful ways, nearly about to off Takemichi too. 

The most important thing to note is that in this future, Kisaki was already dead. So even without Kisaki, Mikey’s dark side can and will run wild. Thus, from the very beginning, Mikey was always a character prone to becoming dark. Thus, it should come as no surprise that even without Toman and without Kisaki, he still managed to go dark in the final ‘good future’.