Tougen: Anki grabbed my ribs and shook me. What struck me right away is how unapologetically real it is. It doesn’t hold your hand, doesn’t soften the edges, it just drops you into this war between humans and demons, and suddenly you’re face-to-face with Shiki, this boy who’s carrying way more weight than anyone his age should. And the thing is, you feel that weight.
There is this one scene-I will not spoil the set up but when Shiki is forced to learn the truth about his parentage, I tell you, someone punched the floor out of my footing. Not because it is some shocking anime twist (though it is), but because of how human his reaction was. Rage, sorrow, the almost infantile feeling of having been betrayed. I was sitting there thinking God, I have felt that before. Not in the half-demon sense of course, but in the way life blinds you and you realise that nothing is as safe or simple as you thought.
And then--because Tougen: Anki knows how to counteract the heavy with the light--there is this breath of humor, these almost awkward, human moments between the characters that made me laugh out loud. The show reminds you of this: the fate here is life and death, but these are still children on their way of self-discovery. The contrast helps to make the darker areas much more impactful tenfold
The animation? Gorgeous. The battle scenes are fluid, but the scenes that really stuck with me, were the quiet moments, the way that merely a look across the battlefield says more than a hundred strikes of a sword. Then there is the score. There is this creepy, thundering beat that runs under some of the most intense moments and it creeped under my skin.
However, the thing is that it has lingered in my head long after the credits were over not due to the battles, or even the world-building (though both are good), but because it made me question the issue of survival, identity, and feeling the burden of something that is not yours fully. The fight that Shiki is involved in is not only external, it is the type of internal battle that makes one pause and question what aspects of themselves they would fight to keep in the event that everything around them altered.
Thumbnail is designed by me on pixelLab and other images are screenshot from the movie