Harutora Tsuchimikado is the usual block-headed shonen character. Frankly, I feel insulted as a guy with how brain-dead shonen male leads are. Harutora is often infuriatingly dense and hotheaded to the point it hampers the story. Anyway, he is made into a familiar by his childhood friend, Natsume. Together they attend a mage school where Natsume has to pass herself off as the male heir of her family. The family’s last male heir became one of the most powerful mages, and Natsume is believed to be his reincarnation. See what I mean about many things mixed in? I skipped all the other details behind this just for the sake of simplicity. Anyway, there are three factions, or cults, that watch for this reincarnation. Events ensure that mix with slice-of-life with magical hijinks.
Kon, Harutora’s fox girl familiar, stole the show. Of course, this being anime, there had to be jokes about Harutora doing bad things with the underaged fox girl. Ugh. Honestly though, the story may have done better by dropping all of the usual global reaching conflict and centering on Kon, Harutora, and gang.
There really isn’t too much to say about this one. The animation is dull. Action scenes lack excitement with people standing still or running in circles chanting things. Oh look a fireball! The CGI looks out of place. Some of the familiars are better suited for a mecha story. I mean, robot looking guardians summoned by magic?
Tokyo Ravens is middling. It isn’t great, but it isn’t completely terrible. Harutora, like most meat-head shonen characters, is annoying. We have so many meatheads, in part, because of anime watchers. Many of us tend to be introverted and on the nerdy side. Meatheads allow us to imagine what it would be like to live as an impulsive extrovert.
Meatheads have confidence many fans lack, but on the whole, the genre needs to get away from impulsive, dense heroes. Some of this is because these types of characters are a way to escape stilted social obligations. Who wouldn’t want to punch out a boss or someone mouthing off? But, this impulsive behavior and lack of critical thinking is terribly clichéd. Perhaps it is my cranky “old” age setting in, but anime needs to make more protagonists like Spice and Wolf’s Lawrence and the original Fullmetal Alchemist’s Ed. Protagonists that think before acting.
