For Takemichi Hanagaki, his second year of middle school was when he peaked. He had a small amount of respect as a thug, a loyal group of friends, and even a girlfriend.
Fast forward twelve years later, and he is a single adult that can’t hold down a job. He has even found out that his middle school girlfriend was murdered by the vicious Tokyo Manji Gang.
After an accident, he finds himself back in middle school and discovers that he can travel back and forth in time in order to help change his past and his future.
Combining delinquents with time travel is certainly a way to stand out, but it also does prevent Tokyo Revengers from becoming mired in the long-standing tropes that gang anime can’t shake. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Tokyo Revengers, head on down below.
Anime Like Tokyo Revengers
For Fans of Gang Politics
IWGP – Ikebukuro West Gate Park
Ikebukuro is a thriving commercial district by day, but the different gang activity at night can cause issues for those that live there.
Makoto Majima works independently of any gang loyalty to solve various disputes in the neighborhood, often aided by the G-Boys, a strong gang led Makoto’s school friend Takashi Andou. However, when a rival gang known as the Red Angels starts to move in on the G-Boy’s turf, tensions rise between the two factions.
Both Tokyo Revengers and Ikebukuro West Gate Park focus on a blooming gang war in the neighborhoods of Tokyo. However, while Tokyo Revengers and its time travel plot focus on preventing bloodshed, Ikebukuro West Gate Park is about solving intrigue that is threatening cause a gang war between the two neighborhood gangs.
Tokyo Revengers is a more youthful feeling series where things are solved with a punch to the face. Ikebukuro West Gate Park is a more realistic gang series where people are more reserved, serious, and avoiding violence is the goal so no one goes to jail. As such, the main character, as someone not part of either gang, is often acting as a mediator.
K
In this world, there are those referred to as Kings. They were individuals bestowed with great supernatural power and they use it to recruit others to their clan. To protect those members is a King’s great duty.
However, after a murder of a Red clan member, a student is accused of homicide. During the man hunt, the city devolves into full-on war among the Kings.
Both Tokyo Revengers and K are about cities often on the verge of a gang war, and they are both about making those gangs look and feel a lot more powerful than any gang in real life. Tokyo Revengers goes for flashy stereotypes of delinquents with punches that have all the power and impact of a typical shounen anime. Alternatively, K has gangs with actual powers.
In both series, you watch characters try to navigate various intrigues that are pushing rival gangs towards conflict.
Banana Fish
During the Iraq War, a soldier named Griff goes insane and starts killing his own platoon. After being subdued, all he kept speaking was the words “banana fish”.
Years later, Griff is taken care of by his brother Ash, a boy who ran away from home and was taken in by mob boss Papa Dino who abused him.
Now, Ash seeks to unravel the mystery of this banana fish, a phrase that keeps mysteriously popping up in his life.
Tokyo Revengers takes gang wars and turns it into a more traditional shounen action anime experience where the thugs are creatively designed and punches feel a little more like superpowers than they should. However, Banana Fish tells a grittier tale of taking down a Mafia family where violence feels more steeped in reality and there is no time travel to retry certain traumatic incidents.
While both series are about bloody gang politics and have a strong emphasis on fraternity, Banana Fish is forever embroiled in the “is it gay?” debate. Is the main relationship a gay romance? Some think it is, some think it is not. Regardless, it never takes the firmest stance any which way on the subject, but inviting the question at all may not be something everyone is looking for in their gang violence anime.
Durarara
Tokyo’s downtown district of Ikebukuro is awash in strange rumors, everything from colorless color gangs to a headless rider roaming town populate the rumors.
For Mikado Ryuugamine who just moved there from the countryside, he is but one witness to the district’s slew of strange events.
Part of the charm of Tokyo Revengers is that it is a time travel anime about gang politics, and as such, has free reign to have as many interesting characters as it pleases. It always has some new gang or character to introduce, and they always have their unique character quirks. Durarara, despite only a small element of it being about gang politics, offers the same.
Like Tokyo Revengers highlights the unique gangs of Tokyo, Durarara highlights the unique characters in one Tokyo neighborhood. There are multiple stories going on in Durarara, all weaved together by the end, but only one of those stories is about brewing gang tensions.
Rokudo’s Bad Girls
Tousuke Rokudo is a first year in Aomori High, a school that is full of delinquents. While he has two good friends, he is frequently bullied by the thugs that run rampant at school.
After Rokudo receives a package from his grandfather with a scroll that is said to be able to protect him from impending danger, a strange star appears on his forehead.
Rokudo and his friends discover that now every time a delinquent girl sees him, she immediately falls in love with him. In an effort to have the nice school life of his dreams, Rokudo uses this to try and shows these girls the charm of living a happy, peaceful school life with friends.
While Rokudo’s Bad Girls is a harem anime, like Tokyo Revengers melds delinquents with time travel, Rokudo’s Bad Girls melds delinquents with the harem genre. Furthermore, they also, weirdly enough, share a similar art style.
Both series are about pretty weak main characters that have a special power that allows them to befriend delinquents. Tokyo Revengers has him use the power of time travel to save lives while Rokudo’s Bad Girls has him use his ability to make delinquent girls inadvertently fall in love with him to help them live a happier, more peaceful school life.
Tokyo Revengers and Rokudo’s Bad Girls provide different experiences, but also strangely similar ones at the same time.
Bungou Stray Dogs
The orphanage that Atsushi Nakajima has been living at has been recently plagued by a tiger that only he can see. Blaming him for the incident, they kick him out.
Now homeless, he wanders the streets until he meets the eccentric Osamu Dazai and saves him from drowning. As it turns out, Dazai is a supernatural detective and agrees to help him solve the mystery.
While Tokyo Revengers is fully dedicated to a plot of gang intrigue, Bungou Stray Dogs, as a similarly long running action anime, only starts off with a Mafia focus. It explores other things later, but the Mafia still plays quite a large role.
Aside from an at least initial focus on gang politics, both Tokyo Revengers and Bungou Stray Dogs share a passion for creating unique characters and enjoys creative action scenes. However, as Bungou Stray Dogs has characters with various powers, it is quite a bit more flashy than the brawls in Tokyo Revengers.
Tokyo Tribe 2
Tokyo may seem like a city of individuals, but a number of tribes inhabit it. The Saru run Musashino, the Wu-Ronze have Bukuro, and the Hands are in Shindyuku.
If they stick to their own territory, everyone lives peacefully, but things never stay so for long.
If you liked the gang-based delinquent plot of Tokyo Revengers, but didn’t so much need the whole time travel aspect of it, Tokyo Tribes 2 provides a more compact story of gang politics.
Tokyo Tribes 2 just focuses on gang intrigue and little else.
For Fans of Time Traveling
Erased
Recently, the detached, struggling manga artist Satoru Fujinuma finds himself going back in time to just minutes before tragedy strikes around him.
He has saved many lives with this power of “Revival,” but when he is wrongly accused of murdering someone close to him, Fujinuma finds himself sent back to his childhood. As he discovers, the recent death in his life is somehow connected the kidnap-murder of three children in the area that is about to happen.
This time, he may be able to use his power to save more than just one life, easing his past regrets in the process.
Both Tokyo Revengers and Erased are time travel anime fully dedicated to the main character stopping at least one murder using time travel.
Both series feature the main character going back to a period where they were younger and making various moves to change the future while in the past. However, Tokyo Revengers is a longer tale due to him occasionally going back to his present time, finding a new problem, and then traveling back in time again to address it.
Erased is a more compact mystery whereas Tokyo Revengers is using the time travel aspect to set up its arc-based storytelling.
Steins;Gate
Mad scientist Rintarou Okabe spends his days tinkering around and creating futuristic inventions with his lab assistants in Akihabara, but nothing of any consequence.
That is, until one day when his Phone Microwave, a device that changes bananas into green gel, gains the ability to send e-mails to the past, altering the flow of history.
Now Okabe must frantically deal with the consequences of selfishly messing around with the past.
Both Tokyo Revengers and Steins;Gate, although about very different subject matter, do tell a time travel story in the same type of way. Both series are about main characters altering time, then having to alter it again to fix the new things wrong with their present time.
While Steins;Gate doesn’t necessarily start its time travel plot because of a murder, it eventually becomes about fixing a murder.
Unlike Tokyo Revengers that focuses more on gang politics than the finer points of time travel, Steins;Gate sets up a more sci-fi-focused and conspiracy-laced story regarding the Butterfly Effect and if it can truly be overcome to get a happy ending.
Summer Time Rendering
After his parents died, Shinpei went to live with the Kofune family on Hitogashima Island. After leaving for school in Tokyo he has not been back since, but after receiving word that one of the two Kofune daughters, Ushio, drown tragically, he returns for the funeral.
However, with bruises on her neck, there is some doubt if Ushio’s accident was truly an accident.
As he considers her death, strange things begin to take place on this island that forces Mio, Ushio’s sister, to recall an old tale about how seeing a person that looks just like yourself foretells your own death.
While featuring different settings, Tokyo Revengers and Summer Time Rendering are time travel anime that are attempting to do the same exact thing. Both series are about going back in time to save someone, seeing how that affects the present, then trying it again for different results.
While Tokyo Revengers is a shounen anime, so every step forward requires a step backwards that they need to fix in a new arc, Summer Time Rendering tells a more compact story.
Also, Tokyo Revengers is no stranger to violence, but Summer Time Rendering does use more graphic gore throughout the story.
Tokyo 24th Ward
On an artificial island in Tokyo Bay labeled as the Tokyo 24th Ward, a fire at a middle school changed the lives many, including three childhood friends, Ran, Kouki, and Shuuta.
Having drifted apart after the incident, they are brought together on the first anniversary of the fire when their phones ring simultaneously and they receive a call from Asumi, a girl that died in that fire, showing them a tragedy that will come to pass and asking them to choose the future.
Although Tokyo 24th Ward isn’t a time travel anime, its plot has all the same elements of one. Like Tokyo Revengers is about using knowledge of the future to save someone, Tokyo 24th Ward is about characters privileged to information from the future that they then use to try and save someone.
Both series have uniquely designed characters as well as interesting action and intrigue. However, Tokyo 24th Ward has more sci-fi elements and it gets its action from saving people, not really from fighting people.
For Fans of Manliness and Brotherhood
Rainbow – Criminal Seven of Compound Two Cell Six
In 1955 Japan, delinquency is on the rise. For Mario Minakami and six other teenagers, they are not alone when they are sent to Shounan Special Reform School on criminal charges.
Once in their cell, they meet the older inmate Rokurouta Sakuragi, a former boxer, who teaches them how to survive in their new harsh prison environment.
Tokyo Revengers may be a shounen time travel anime about gang politics, but while it started about saving his old girlfriend from dying in the future, it sure became a lot more about the brotherhood he felt in the gang. When it comes to anime about how the bonds of brotherhood can get you through the hard times, there is no finer watch than Rainbow.
Both series are about more criminal-minded men bonding together through difficult situations. Of course, the “difficult situation” in Rainbow is about being in a post-War youth prison. It is a bit grittier, but Tokyo Revengers and Rainbow share strong messages of fraternity.
91 Days
Set during Prohibition, a man named Avilio returns to Lawless, a town famed for brewing illegal liquor, after the murder of his family by the mafia. A mysterious letter prompted him to return and infiltrate the Vanetti family to get his revenge.
This anime tells the story of the 91 days leading to the tragic end between Avilio and Nero Vanetti, the Don’s son.
While Tokyo Revengers is focused more on Japanese-style delinquents, 91 Days tells a Mafia story.
While 91 Days isn’t about time travel, it does feature the main character growing close to the young leader of his gang. However, while Tokyo Revengers is often a tale about rehabilitation by changing events from the past, 91 Days is a bit more vicious tale of revenge. Unfortunately for Avilio, he has to carry out revenge against a man he came to befriend and have some respect for as a person. The brotherhood of it all is what makes his vengeance difficult.
Gungrave
Brandon Heat and Harry MacDowel grew up on the streets together and both turned to crime in order to get by. However, when their activities are noticed by the eyes of the expansive Millennion mafia syndicate, the pair find themselves brought under their wings and rising through the ranks.
Things go well until one fateful day that changes it all.
Years later, Brandon Heat is brought back from the dead to fight Millennion and its new leader, Harry MacDowel.
While Gungrave isn’t a time travel anime, it does tell its story split between events in the past and events in the present. However, what really makes Gungrave similar to Tokyo Revengers is that they both follow the relationship of someone who rises to run a gang and the underling that supports them right up until they disagree with the terrible things they are doing.
However, instead of trying to change the past to keep his friend from suffering, Gungrave takes a more straightforward approach about being brought back from the dead to kill all his former friends in his old Mafia organization.
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure
In 1868, Dario Brando saves the life of English nobleman, George Joestar. When Dario dies, George hopes to repay the favor by taking in his son, Dio.
Unfortunately, Dio wants the Joestar household for his own and tries to take it with the help of an Aztec stone mask with supernatural powers.
This triggers a chain of events that will affect the Joestar house for generations to come.
As Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is, like the title says, often very bizarre, it can be a different experience than Tokyo Revengers at times. However, while it is not always about delinquents, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure has a long love affair with delinquent characters who value the bonds of brotherhood.
While both series love their thugs, what Tokyo Revengers and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure have in common is a shared theme of brotherhood between quite manly and creatively designed characters. However, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure does have a high bar for entry because it can be quite weird. Yet, that same weirdness really does charm you given enough time.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Tokyo Revengers? Let fans know in the comments section below.
