In Tokko, Tohru Fujisawa departs from the romance of past works and instead offers a sexy mind trip. All Tokko images © 2006 Toru Fujisawa-Kodansha/Tokko Production Committee/Manga Ent. Llc.

Tokko, Volume 1
TV series, (four episodes), 2004. Director: Masashi Abe. 100 minutes. DVD bilingual $29.99. Distributor: Manga Video.

Tokko comes from the awesome mind of incredibly talented Tohru Fujisawa of Great Teacher Onizuka (GTO) fame. In Tokko, Fujisawa makes a total departure from the light-hearted and oddly romantic comedy style of GTO. This time around instead of GTO's high school high jinks and poking fun at the Yakuza, we have a sexy mind trip exploding with demonic battles and carnage. Fujisawa weaves the story of a young man named Ranmaru Shindo who is trying to solve the mystery behind who killed his parents and slaughtered the other 382 people living in his apartment complex in Machida five years earlier.

The series opens with a strange sort of montage that shows Ranmaru and his sister Saya coming home from school to find a horrific scene of scattered body parts from floor to ceiling and more blood smear than paint on the walls. The montage then blends into a dream like sequence where Ranmaru is being chased by demonic creatures and is eventually saved by a mysterious girl with a sword who appears before naked and blood soaked. At this point Ranmaru suddenly awakens from fear, and he begins a narration tells us that this is a reoccurring dream that he has had ever since the massacre. It appears that the dreams have become more frequent and clearer to Ranmaru lately, as if foreshadowing of what is to come.

Tokko's tendency to rush through the storyline and get to the action is probably where this anime is the weakest.

All of the intensity of the dream sequence is broken by the introduction of Ranmaru's sister, Saya, who is a bit too flirtatious with her brother for both my comfort level and Ranmaru's. Saya is largely the comic relief that is badly needed to help balance out all the angst and violence of the series. Often her silliness, while blatantly cheesy, is a welcome ray of light in the otherwise oppressively dark story. But she is not the only one who adds humor to the story. We also have Ranmaru's boss, Kunikida, who makes up for what he lacks in common sense with yelling and fire power. Just from the small amount that Kunikida appears in these first episodes, I am afraid that he may be a bigger danger to Ranmaru than the actual demons that are haunting him.

The first episode continues in a very expositional fashion. Ranmaru has recently graduated with his friend Ichiro from the Special Mobile Investigation Force Academy and have become part of the Tokko division. Several characters are then abruptly and haphazardly introduced. I found this to be a bit frustrating because the poorly constructed character introductions left me confused instead of having a better understanding Ranmaru's world. This includes the introduction the girl that has been appearing in Ranmaru's dreams. Tokko's tendency to rush through the story line and get to the action is probably where this anime is the weakest. In just a few minutes the story glances over several key characters introductions and backstory about a special section within the Tokko force that is made up of elite officers that deal with the supernatural.

Honestly, it was just easier for me just to keep watching and hope that I would be able to figure everything out as the story continued to unfold. Thankfully as the mystery surrounding Ranmaru begins to unveil itself things become easier to understand. On the bright side, this rush to move through the meat of the story let the fans get right into some of the bloody demon slaying action in the first episode. And that is always a good thing. In a sort of ironic twist, the on the fly explanations within the fighting are easier to understand than the hurried character dialogue in the expository scenes.