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Tokyo Majin
Anime DVD Review
The wrestling club captain, the archery team captain, the class delinquent and the mysterious transfer student. In high school, during the day, these people aren't even friends. But when the light fades, and the hordes of zombies fill the streets, they band together to try and save their city from destruction.
Feeling a bit like Resident Evil or Silent Hill (the games, not the movies), the zombies are terrifying and the muted palette of colors helps convey a feeling of having the life sucked out of them. The series appears to be intentionally directed as a series of disjoined sequences, which don't seem to make much sense until your brain either gets used to it, or it starts coming together as the episode progresses.
 This series hits hard, and isn't shy about dealing out sequences that are gruesome and bloody, yet compelling, with sharply defined characters that you immediately find likeable. The series is brutal in it's depiction of horror and the undead ravaging Tokyo, but it also blends in a funky sense of humor, mostly through the actions of the characters, who are only high-schoolers, after all, and are struggling through their formative years, while battling the forces of the underworld. Tokyo Majin then tops off the mix by adding in a bunch of other bizarre weirdness for good measure.
 On top of that, they are hounded by the high-school journalism major, who essentially becomes their private paparazzi, and she wants to know why these individuals, who wouldn't even converse during school hours, are getting together in the darkness.
And as things progress, and hormones start to come into play, romance will blossom between some of these people, who aren't even friends. And mixing romance with work is always a recipe for trouble.
Tokyo Majin is the best new anime series you've never heard of. But in a few weeks, it'll be the series you can't get enough of.
Reviewed by Brian Cirulnick, February 2008
Below: Scenes from Tokyo Majin.
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