Director Tsutomu Hanabusa is coming back for another round of explosive teenage time travel beatdowns with a sequel to last year’s hit manga adaptation, Tokyo Revengers. The news was announced on Saturday in a teaser announcement from the studio which you can view in the player above, featuring snippets of the first film including lead actor Takumi Kitamura who will reprise his role once more.
The inaugural film and its upcoming 2023 sequel are based on Ken Wakui’s 2017 manga and centers on Takemichi Hanagaki, a loser living in a crappy apartment who learns that Hinata, the only girlfriend he ever had was killed by the villainous Tokyo Manji Gang. Upon getting shoved into a time portal and sent back ten years, the accident sets off a series of opportune events for Hanagaki to undo his past, climb the ranks of the gangs, and save Hinata’s life.
The first film opened last year following a delay from its initial 2020 release out of Warner Bros. Japan, due to the pandemic. The film also premiered at festivals, including at Fantasia, for which I reviewed the film here.
If Kitamura’s name reads familiar, you might remember him from other recent films like Eiichiro Hasumi’s Over Drive or Sho Tsukikawa’s 2017 novel adaptation, Let Me Eat Your Pancreas. Kitamura was also revealed this past month as the lead in a first among several official images in the upcoming live-action series adaptation of Yu Yu Hakusho, which is headed to Netflix.